News
Gaza ceasefire deal being finalised, Palestinian official tells BBC
Judge clears way for release of Trump election interference report
Buy something or leave, Starbucks says
The tricky questions facing some of Trump's nominees for top jobs
Dead bodies seen in videos from South African mine
A pink powder is being used to fight California fires. It's getting everywhere
'Your husband's being tortured, and it's your fault'
Spain plans 100% tax for homes bought by non-EU residents
Prosecutor who investigated Hunter Biden denounces president's criticism
TikTok says report of possible sale to Musk 'pure fiction'
S Korea begins impeachment trial against suspended president
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Business
US tightens control on AI chips export drawing pushback
How a viral post saved a Chinese actor from Myanmar's scam centres
'Trump 2.0' looms large over the global economy
'Crazy growth': How one product created a multi-million dollar brand
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Culture
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The terms of a deal between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages are being finalised, a Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations has told the BBC.
It comes as US President Joe Biden said a deal was "on the brink" of coming to fruition, and that his administration was working urgently on the matter.
An Israeli official also told news agency Reuters that negotiations were in "advanced stages", with a deal possible in "hours, days or more".
US President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, and with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar - who is mediating the negotiations - on Monday.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Biden was also due to speak with Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.
Sullivan said a truce and hostage deal could be done "this week" - the final week of Biden's presidency.
President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was also present in Doha.
Trump previously threatened that "all hell" would break loose if the hostages were not released before he took office on 20 January.
Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told reporters that progress had been made and that the deal looked "much better than previously".
But the latest developments come as Netanyahu faces fierce opposition to a potential deal from within his governing coalition.
Ten right-wing members, including some from Netanyahu's own Likud party, have sent him a letter opposing a truce.
The Palestinian official told the BBC that Hamas and Israeli officials were conducting indirect talks in the same building on Monday.
Revealing some potential details of the agreement, the official stated that "the detailed technical discussions took considerable time".
Both sides agreed that Hamas would release three hostages on the first day of the agreement, after which Israel would begin withdrawing the troops from populated areas.
Seven days later, Hamas would release four additional hostages, and Israel would allow displaced people in the southern to return to the north, but only on foot via the coastal road.
Cars, animal-drawn carts, and trucks would be permitted to cross through a passage adjacent to Salah al-Din Road, monitored by an X-ray machine operated by a Qatari-Egyptian technical security team.
The agreement includes provisions for Israeli forces to remain in the Philadelphi corridor and maintain an 800-meter buffer zone along the eastern and northern borders during the first phase, which will last 42 days.
Israel has also agreed to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including approximately 190 who have been serving sentences of 15 years or more. In exchange, Hamas will release 34 hostages.
Negotiations for the second and third phases of the agreement would begin on the 16th day of the ceasefire.
The father of an Israeli-American hostage told the BBC's Newshour that he "wants to believe" that Israel has "gotten to 'yes'" on a deal.
Jonathan Dekel-Chen said he "lives in terror" every day because of his fears for his son, Sagui.
Gaza's civil defence agency reported that a wave of Israeli air strikes on Gaza City on Monday killed more than 50 people.
"They bombed schools, homes and even gatherings of people," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Israeli military said it was looking into these reports. Separately, it said five soldiers were killed on Monday in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The war was triggered by Hamas's attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken to Gaza as hostages.
Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 46,500 people have been killed during the war.
Israel says 94 of the hostages remain in Gaza, of whom 34 are presumed dead, as well as another four Israelis who were abducted before the war, two of whom are dead.
A judge in Florida has agreed that the US Justice Department can release part of a report from a special prosecutor who alleged that Donald Trump illegally tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
The special counsel, Jack Smith, resigned from his post last week.
In a ruling Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way for releasing the portion of Smith's report on the election interference case, possibly within days.
She ordered a hearing later in the week on whether to release the part of the report on allegations that Trump illegally kept classified government documents.
The president-elect, who takes office on 20 January, can appeal the ruling to a higher court.
Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the US Justice Department investigations into Trump. Special counsels are chosen by the department in cases where there is a potential conflict of interest.
Trump was accused of illegally keeping documents and, in some cases, storing them in rooms at Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, his residence which he owns. In the interference case, he was accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election result.
Both cases resulted in criminal charges against Trump, who pleaded not guilty and sought to cast the prosecutions as politically motivated.
But Smith closed the cases after Trump's election in November, in accordance with Justice Department regulations that forbid the prosecution of a sitting president.
Since then, there's been a legal back-and-forth over the material related to the cases.
Last week, Judge Cannon put a temporary stop on releasing the whole Smith report, over concerns that it could affect the cases of two Trump associates charged with him in the classified documents case.
Walt Nauta, Trump's personal aide, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago , are accused of helping Trump hide the documents.
Unlike Trump's, their cases are still pending – and their lawyers argued that the release of Smith's report could prejudice a future jury and trial.
Starbucks says it is reversing rules for its cafes in North America that allowed people to use their facilities even if they had not bought anything.
The changes, which are set to come into force from 27 January, are a U-turn from a policy introduced six years ago that allowed people to linger in Starbucks outlets and use their toilets without making a purchase.
The move is part of the "back to Starbucks" strategy - a plan announced by the firm's new boss as he tries to tackle flagging sales.
The world's biggest coffee chain says its new code of conduct - which also addresses harassment and bans smoking and outside alcohol - aims to make its stores more welcoming.
"Implementing a Coffeehouse Code of Conduct... is a practical step that helps us prioritise our paying customers who want to sit and enjoy our cafes", a Starbucks spokesperson told BBC News.
"These updates are part of a broader set of changes we are making to enhance the cafe experience as we work to get back to Starbucks."
The company said the new rules will be displayed at every store and staff will be instructed to ask anyone who violates the code of conduct to leave. That includes allowing employees to call the police when necessary.
In 2018, Starbucks decided to allow free access to its coffee shops and toilets after the controversial arrest of two men at one of its Philadelphia cafes.
Other changes set to be introduced later this month include offering one free refill of hot or iced coffee for customers who buy a drink to consume on the premises.
Starbucks has been trying to boost flagging sales as it grappled with a backlash to price increases and boycotts sparked by the Israel-Gaza war.
Brian Niccol, who previously headed the Mexican food chain Chipotle, was brought into Starbucks last year to help turn the business around.
Mr Niccol has been trying to improve the customer experience at Starbucks' cafes by revamping its menus and coffee shops.
Some of Donald Trump's key allies will face a grilling by senators this week, as part of a tense process that will see them either approved or rejected for the roles the president-elect has nominated them for.
The hearings, which begin on Tuesday, are the first chance for senators to publicly quiz some of Trump's more controversial picks.
They will then need to be confirmed to their roles by a vote. And while the upper chamber of Congress is now controlled by Trump's Republican Party - just three defections could be enough to deny a nominee a job.
Here are some of the difficult questions those nominees are likely preparing to face.
Pete Hegseth - defence secretary
Kristi Noem - homeland security secretary
In the spotlight on Wednesday will be the woman who could be tasked with carrying out one of Trump's top campaign pledges - billed by his team as the largest mass deportation of illegal immigrants in American history.
As the president-elect's choice for homeland security secretary, Noem could be quizzed on the logistics of enacting this pledge. A mass deportation programme on the scale proposed would likely face logistical or legal difficulties, experts say.
Noem could also face questions on other potential immigration policies, such as Trump's vow to end birthright citizenship.
She has been a loyal and vocal backer of the president-elect's pledges, which is consistent with other nominees and appointees for Trump's second term in the White House.
Marco Rubio - secretary of state
The man picked to lead Trump's foreign policy agenda was once on the other side of a confirmation hearing for a Trump nominee for secretary of state.
During the session in 2017, he needled Rex Tillerson - urging him to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal which Tillerson refused to do.
If that session signalled a divergence in views between Rubio and Trump - who were then rivals - the two appear much more closely aligned eight years later.
Rubio is now in the frame for one of the most coveted jobs in Trump's administration and is expected to encounter relatively little resistance in his path to confirmation.
But senators on Wednesday could test his loyalty with a line of questioning about future American support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Trump has cast this as a drain on US resources - a view that could jar with Rubio's hawkish views on foreign policy.
Howard Lutnick - commerce secretary
Another nominee facing a possible test of loyalty to Trump in his Senate committee hearing (which is yet to be scheduled) is one of the officials who would be tasked with delivering Trump's sweeping tariffs.
Trump has threatened import taxes on a variety of goods arriving in the US - including from some of its top trade partners - in what he says is as an effort to protect US jobs.
Lutnick, the billionaire chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has embraced this proposal - despite this position being at odds with others in his industry and some leading economists.
He is likely to face direct questions over the impact of sweeping new tariffs on the US economy and consumers.
Tulsi Gabbard - national intelligence director
Robert F Kennedy Jr - health and human services secretary
Kash Patel - FBI director
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Disturbing videos have emerged showing the dire situation at a disused gold mine in South Africa where scores of illegal miners have reportedly been living underground for months.
They have been there since police operations targeting illicit mining started last year across the country.
In one of the videos, which the BBC has not independently verified, corpses wrapped in makeshift body bags can be seen. A second shows the emaciated figures of some miners who are still alive.
A long-delayed rescue operation, that last week a court ordered the government to facilitate, began on Monday.
In a briefing held on Monday near the site of the rescue operation, Giwusa leadership, alongside community figures, said the videos shared "painted a very dire picture" of the situation underground.
"What has transpired here has to be called what it is; this is a Stilfontein massacre. Because what this footage does is show a pile of human bodies, of miners that died needlessly," Giwusa president Mametlwe Sebei said.
He blamed the authorities for what he described as a "treacherous policy" that was deliberately pursued.
The department of mineral resources, leading the rescue effort, told the BBC that Monday's operation included the lowering down of a cage that has been hoisted up once loaded with people.
This structure is designed to hold six or seven people, depending on their weight, according to Giwusa. It has been going down the shaft - descending about 2km - every hour. The union said that by the end of Monday 26 miners had been brought up alive along with nine bodies.
Department of mineral resources spokesperson Makhosonke Buthelezi could not confirm whether the priority will be to retrieve those who had died or those in need of medical attention.
A briefing will be held by the department, together with the police ministry, on Tuesday to provide an update on the operation.
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
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As crews battle devastating wildfires in southern California, vivid images have emerged of air tankers dropping bright red and pink powder on Los Angeles suburbs.
The eye-catching substance - fire retardant - is now a common sight in the area, blanketing driveways, rooftops and cars.
Officials said thousands of gallons of the substance were dropped in the last week to stop the flames from spreading.
But what exactly is in it, and how does it help fight the wildfires?
The flame retardant is a product called Phos-Chek, which is sold by a company called Perimeter.
It has been used to fight blazes in the US since 1963, and is the main long-term fire retardant used by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It is also the most-used fire retardant in the world, according to a 2022 report in the Associated Press.
The exact formula of Phos-Chek is not public knowledge but the company has said in previous filings that the product is 80% water, 14% fertilizer-type salts, 6% colouring agents and corrosion inhibitors.
As for its color, the company said it is "a visual aid for pilots and firefighters alike." After a few days of exposure to sunlight, the colour fades to earth tones, it said.
The retardant is typically sprayed around a wildfire on vegetation and land that is fire-prone to stop the flames from spreading to that area.
According to the US Forest Service, retardants "slow the rate of spread by cooling and coating fuels, depleting the fire of oxygen, and slowing the rate of fuel combustion as the retardant's inorganic salts change how fuels burn."
Its use has been controversial in the past over its potential effects on the environment.
A lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an organisation made up of current and former employees of the US Forest Service, accused the federal agency of violating the country's clean water laws by dumping chemical fire retardant from planes onto forests.
It argued that the chemical kills fish and is not effective.
Svitlana says she never considered betraying her country, "not for a second."
"My husband would've never forgiven me," she says, as we meet in her flat near Kyiv.
The 42-year-old had been waiting for news of her husband Dima, an army medic captured by Russia, for more than two years when she suddenly received a phone call.
The voice at the end of the phone told her that if she committed treason against Ukraine, Dima could be eligible for better treatment in prison, or even early release.
"A Ukrainian number called me. I picked up, and the man introduced himself as Dmitry," Svitlana explains. "He spoke in a Russian accent."
"He said, 'You can either burn down a military enlistment office, set fire to a military vehicle or sabotage a Ukrainian Railways electrical box.'"
There was one other option: to reveal the locations of nearby air defence units — vital military assets that keep Ukraine's skies safe from Russian drones and missiles.
As Dmitry set out his proposal, Svitlana says she recalled instructions that the Ukrainian authorities had distributed to all families in the event of being approached by Russian agents: buy as much time as possible, record and photograph everything, and report it.
Svitlana did report it, and took screenshots of the messages, which she showed to the BBC.
The Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, told her to stall the Russians while they investigated. So she pretended to agree to firebomb a local railway line.
'Your husband is being tortured and it's your fault!'
As we sit in her immaculate sitting room, with air raid sirens periodically wailing outside, she plays me recordings she made on her phone of two of the voice calls with Dmitry, made via the Telegram app. During the call, he gives instructions on how to make and plant a Molotov cocktail.
"Pour in a litre of lighting fluid and add a bit of petrol," Dmitry explains. "Go to some sort of railway junction. Make sure there are no security cameras. Wear a hat – just in case."
He also gave Svitlana a tutorial in how to put her phone on airplane mode once she was 1-2km away from her intended target, to avoid her signal being picked up by mobile phone masts that could be used by investigators.
"Do you know what a relay box is? Take a photo of it. This should be the target for her arson attack," explained Dmitry, who demanded proof of completion of the task.
"Write today's date on a piece of paper and take a photo with this piece of paper."
In return, Dmitry said he could arrange a phone call with her husband, or for a parcel to be delivered to him.
Later, the SBU told Svitlana that the man she'd been talking to was indeed in Russia, and she should break off contact. Svitlana told Dmitry she'd changed her mind.
"That's when the threats began," says Svitlana, "He said they'd kill my husband, and I'd never see him again.
For days, he kept calling, saying: "Your husband is being tortured, and it's your fault!"
"How concerned were you that he might go through with the threats to harm Dima?" I ask Svitlana. Her eyes moisten. "My heart ached, and I could only pray: 'God, please don't let that happen.'"
"One part of me said 'this person has no connection with the prisoners.' The other part asks: 'What if he really can do it? How would I live with myself?'"
In a statement to the BBC, the SBU said co-operating with Russian agents "will in no way ease the plight of the prisoner; on the contrary, it may significantly complicate their chances of being exchanged."
The authorities are urging all relatives to come forward immediately if they are approached by Russian agents.
Those who do, they say, will be "protected," and treated as victims.
But if relatives agree to commit sabotage or espionage, says the SBU, "this may be classified as treason. The maximum punishment is life imprisonment."
The authorities regularly publicise arrests of Ukrainians who allegedly commit arson or reveal the location of military sites to Russia.
Pro-Kremlin media is awash with videos purporting to show Ukrainians torching army vehicles or railway electrical boxes.
Some of the culprits do it for money, paid by suspected Russian agents, but it is thought there are attacks carried out by desperate relatives, too.
Petro Yatsenko, from the Ukrainian military's Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, says around 50% of all families of PoWs are contacted by Russian agents.
"They're in a very vulnerable position and some of them are ready to do anything," Petro says, "but we are trying to educate them that it won't help [their loved ones in captivity]."
Petro says an act such as setting fire to a military vehicle isn't considered a significant material loss to the Ukrainian Armed Forces:
"But it can destabilise the unity of Ukrainian society, so that's the main problem.
And, of course, if someone shares the location of, for example, air defence systems, that's a big problem for us too," he admits.
The authorities don't publish the numbers of Ukrainians held as prisoners of war, but the number is thought to be more than 8,000.
A source in Ukrainian intelligence told the BBC the number of cases where relatives agree to work with Russia is small.
The Russian government told the BBC in a statement that the allegations it uses prisoners' families as leverage are "groundless," and Russia treats "Ukrainian combatants humanely and in full compliance with the Geneva Convention."
The statement goes on to accuse Ukraine of using the same methods:
"Ukrainian handlers are actively attempting to coerce residents of Russia to commit acts of sabotage and arson within Russian territory, targeting critical infrastructure and civilian facilities."
Svitlana's husband Dima was released from captivity just over three months ago.
The couple are now happily back together, and enjoy playing with their four-year-old son, Vova.
How did Svitlana feel when her husband was finally set free?
"There were tears of joy like I've never cried before," she says, beaming. "It felt like I had snatched my love from the jaws of death."
Dima told his wife the Russians didn't act on their threats to punish him for her refusal to co-operate.
When Svitlana told him about the calls, he was shocked.
"He asked me how I held up," she says, and winks. "Well, as I always say, I'm an officer's wife."
Spain is planning to impose a tax of up to 100% on properties bought by non-residents from countries outside the EU, such as the UK.
Announcing the move, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the "unprecedented" measure was necessary to meet the country's housing emergency.
"The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants," he said.
Non-EU residents bought 27,000 properties in Spain in 2023, he told an economic forum in Madrid, "not to live in" but "to make money from them".
"Which, in the context of shortage that we are in, [we] obviously cannot allow," he added.
The move was therefore designed to "priorit[ise] that the available homes are for residents", he said.
Sánchez did not provide details on how the tax would work nor a timeline for presenting it to parliament for approval, where he has often struggled to gather sufficient votes to pass legislation.
But his government said the proposal would be finalised "after careful study".
It is one of a dozen planned measures announced by the prime minister on Monday aimed at improving housing affordability in the country.
Other measures announced include a tax exemption for landlords who provide affordable housing, transferring more than 3,000 homes to a new public housing body, and tighter regulation and higher taxes on tourist flats.
"It isn't fair that those who have three, four or five apartments as short-term rentals pay less tax than hotels," he said.
The special prosecutor who led a years-long investigation into Joe Biden's son, Hunter, has criticised the president for making "baseless accusations" about the case and defended his investigation in a final report.
In the report, released Monday, David Weiss called his prosecution of the president's son on gun and tax crimes "impartial" and "not partisan politics".
Hunter Biden's lawyer said the report showed Mr Weiss's investigation "was a cautionary tale of the abuse of prosecutorial power."
Biden issued an official pardon for his son, who was facing sentencing for two criminal cases, in early December.
While issuing the pardon, the president said his son had been "singled out" and called his cases "a miscarriage of justice" and "raw politics".
Mr Weiss called those statements "gratuitous and wrong".
"I prosecuted the two cases against [Hunter] Biden because he broke the law," he wrote in his report.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges earlier in September, and was found guilty of being an illegal drug user in possession of a gun in June.
His father's full and unconditional pardon for his son came after the president had repeatedly said he would not give him clemency.
It was not the first time a US president has pardoned a family member.
Bill Clinton pardoned his younger half-brother, Roger Clinton, for a 1985 cocaine-related offence in 2001.
In 2020, Donald Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka, who pled guilty to federal charges of tax evasion and illegal campaign donation payments in 2005.
In his report, Mr Weiss acknowledged that, but added: "none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations".
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine counts of federal tax fraud in September, for which he had been facing up to 17 years in prison.
He was also convicted of three felonies in connection with a gun purchase in June, for which he had been facing up to 25 years in prison.
The investigations into the president's son had resurfaced uncomfortable and embarrassing details about his personal life, including his addiction to crack-cocaine and alleged payments to escorts.
President Biden had mostly kept quiet during the investigations into his son but came fiercely to his defence in his pardoning.
"There has been an effort to break Hunter - who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution," President Biden said.
"In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me - and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough."
He added: "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision."
The pardon covers the period from 1 January 2014 to 1 December 2024, "including but not limited to" the tax and gun crimes for which he was found guilty.
Mr Weiss said due to that unconditional pardon, he could not make any "additional charging decisions" relating to Hunter Biden over that period.
"It would be inappropriate to discuss whether additional charges are warranted," he said.
Mr Weiss has previously defended his inquiry into the president's son.
In 2023, he told the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee there had never been political pressure or interference in his work from the justice department.
Mr Weiss's investigation into Hunter Biden was heavily scrutinised on both sides of the political spectrum.
Democrats said it was politically charged and felt that Hunter Biden had an unfair target on his back.
Republicans believed the justice department was not pursuing charges aggressively enough and showing the president's son unfair favouritism.
Hunter Biden's guilty convictions came after a collapsed plea deal in 2023.
A judge declined to approve the deal - which Republicans had branded a "sweetheart deal" - that would have had Hunter Biden plead guilty to the tax evasion charges to avoid the more serious gun-related charges.
In a statement released Monday, Hunter Biden's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, criticised Mr Weiss for the failed deal.
"Mr. Weiss also fails to explain why he reneged on his own agreement, a reversal that came at the 11th hour in court as he and his office faced blistering attacks from Republicans," Mr Lowell said.
TikTok has called a report that China is considering allowing a sale of the social media company's US operations to Elon Musk "pure fiction."
The firm's comments came in response to a report by Bloomberg that Chinese officials are weighing an option that could see its business in America being sold to the world's richest person if the US Supreme Court upholds a ban on the app.
Supreme Court justices are due to rule on a law that set a 19 January deadline for TikTok to either sell its US operations or face a ban in the country.
TikTok has repeatedly said that it will not sell its US operation.
"We can't be expected to comment on pure fiction," a TikTok spokesperson told BBC News.
Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that one possible scenario being considered by Chinese officials would see Musk's X social media platform take control of TikTok's US operations.
Musk is a close ally of US president-elect Donald Trump, who is set to return to the White House on 20 January.
Last month, Trump urged the Supreme Court to delay its decision until he takes office to enable him to seek a "political resolution".
His lawyer filed a legal brief with the court that says Trump "opposes banning TikTok" and "seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office".
That came a week after Trump met TikTok's chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The Biden administration has argued that without a sale, TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.
The company has repeatedly denied any influence by the Chinese Communist Party and has said the law to ban it in the US violates the First Amendment free speech rights of its users.
South Korea's constitutional court has held its first hearing to decide if suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol should be removed from office after his shock martial law attempt last month.
It ended within four minutes because of Yoon's absence - his lawyers had earlier said he would not attend for his own safety, as there is a warrant out for his arrest on seperate charges of insurrection.
In December, Yoon was suspended after members of his own party voted with the opposition to impeach him.
However he will only be formally removed from office if at least six of the eight-member bench votes to uphold the impeachment.
According to South Korean law, the court must set a new date for a hearing before they can proceed without his participation.
The next hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Yoon's lawyers have indicated that he will show up for a hearing at an "appropriate time", but they have challenged the court's "unilateral decision" on trial dates.
The court on Tuesday rejected the lawyers' request for one of the eight justices to be recused from the proceedings.
Yoon has not commented publicly since parliament voted to impeach him on 14 Dec and has been speaking primarily through his lawyers.
Investigators are also seperately preparing for another attempt to arrest Yoon for alleged insurrection, after an earlier attempt on 3 Jan ended following an hours-long standoff with his security team.
Yoon is South Korea's first sitting president to face arrest. The second bid to take him into custody could happen as early as this week, according to local media.
The suspended leader has not commented publicly since parliament voted to impeach him on 14 Dec and has been speaking primarily through his lawyers.
Yoon's short-lived martial law declaration on 3 Dec has thrown South Korea into political turmoil. He had tried to justify the attempt by saying he was protecting the country from "anti-state" forces, but it soon became clear it was spurred by his own political troubles.
What followed was an unprecedented few weeks which saw the opposition-dominated parliament vote to impeach Yoon and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who succeeded him as acting president.
The crisis has hit the country's economy, with the won weakening and global credit rating agencies warning of weakening consumer and business sentiment.
Former presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Park Geun-hye did not attend their impeachment trials in 2004 and 2017 respectively.
In Park's case, the first hearing ended after nine minutes in her absence.
Roh was reinstated after a two-month review, while Park's impeachment was upheld.
Authorities in India say more than 20 million people are expected to take part in the first major bathing day at the Hindu festival of Kumbh Mela (also known as the Mahakumbh), in the northern city of Prayagraj.
The day would kick off with the Naga sadhus - the ash smeared naked Hindu holy men with matted dreadlocks - taking a plunge in the icy waters at dawn.
The festival, held once every 12 years, started on Monday, with more than 16.5 million pilgrims bathing in the holy rivers.
Hindus believe that the bathing rituals will cleanse them of sins, purify their soul and help them attain salvation by liberating them from the cycle of birth and death.
Officials say more than 400 million are expected to participate in the 45-day spectacle which is described as humanity's biggest gathering. It is so large that it can be seen from space.
Tuesday's bathing rituals, called the Shahi Snan - or the royal bath - will see the ascetics arrive in batches at the Sangam - the confluence of India's most sacred Ganges river with the Yamuna river and the mythical Saraswati - in colourful processions.
Their outing is a major draw for people from across India and around the world who come to seek their blessings.
Their presence also holds a special significance for the great masses who believe that the river waters get imbued with the purity of the saints' thoughts and deeds when they bathe in the river.
What are the big bathing days?
* 13 January: Paush Purnima
* 14 January: Makar Sankranti
* 29 January: Mauni Amavasya
* 3 February: Basant Panchami
* 12 February: Magh Purnima
* 26 February: Maha Shivaratri
The origin of the festival is rooted in the mythological story about a fight between the gods and demons over a Kumbh (a pitcher) of nectar that emerged during the churching of the ocean.
As the two sides fought over the pot of elixir, a few drops spilled over and fell in four cities - Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik.
The Kumbh mela is organised in all the four cities, but the biggest festivals are always held in Prayagraj.
The bathing dates and auspicious times are decided by astrologers, based on the alignment of specific planets and constellations.
Hindu seer Mahant Ravindra Puri says the rare planetary alignments at present make this year's festival "extra special" and "a Maha [great] Kumbh".
Mahant Puri will be leading tens of thousands of holy men from his akhara to Tuesday morning's bath.
"We believe that during Kumbh Mela, the waters of the sacred river will be imbued with nectar," he says.
"And those who have faith, Ganga maiyya [the river goddess] will bless them with whatever they want, whatever they need," he adds.
Besides the saints and ascetics, Tuesday's bathing will also see millions of ordinary pilgrims making their way to the river.
On Monday, in the mela ground, we met Chitiya Ahirvar who is visiting from her village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The 60-year-old who is travelling in a group of 20 bathed in the river in the morning and will be going back for a repeat on Tuesday .
"I prayed to the river goddess for my children's well being and happiness," she said.
Mavaram Patel, a businessman who is visiting from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, said he had heard a lot about the Kumbh Mela but did not have the opportunity to visit earlier.
"Kumbh Mela is part of our ancient tradition. It's one of Hinduism's most important festivals," he told the BBC.
Mr Patel said he prayed to the river goddess for the "happiness and welfare" of his "family and the wider world" and plans to take a dip in the river on Tuesday morning too before leaving the city.
"Visiting Prayagraj and bathing during Kumbh was on my bucket list for a long time so I'm happy to be here," he said.
* Published2 hours ago
After the extreme winds and deadly fires last week, lighter winds over the last few days have helped firefighters tackle the remaining blazes raging around Los Angeles.
However, with Santa Ana winds set to strengthen again this week, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles are warning of the potential for further "explosive fire growth".
How strong will the winds get?
We are entering another crucial period for containing the fires that continue to burn in California.
With high pressure building over the Great Basin (an area around Nevada, Utah and Idaho), Santa Ana winds are set to strengthen again over the next few days.
Winds blowing in from the east or north-east, are set to peak on Tuesday, with gusts up to 70mph (112km/h) possible.
The strongest of the winds will be to the north and east of Los Angeles, including the counties of Ventura and Los Angeles.
Last week, winds in excess of 100mph (160km/h) were recorded and the presence of a deep area of low pressure centred on the border with Mexico, boosted the strength of the Santa Ana wind. That area of low pressure has now moved away and the winds won't be quite as fierce this week.
[Map showing Santa Ana winds in California, coming from the east or north-east. Wind gusts on Monday of mainly 30 to 55mph, Tuesday 30 to 70mph, and Wednesday 15 to 50mph. Strongest winds will be to the north and east of Los Angeles.]
What impact could the wind have on fires?
Even though winds are lighter than last week, their dry and gusty nature means they are still capable of causing explosive fire growth.
The Santa Ana wind is very dry. With humidity levels remaining low, further moisture will be stripped from vegetation making it easier to catch alight and more likely for the fires to spread rapidly.
The US National Weather Service has various red flag warnings in force across southern California. Red flag warnings mean that "warm temperatures coupled with very low humidity and strong winds are expected to combine, bringing a greater risk of fire danger".
Strong winds may help to spread these fires extremely quickly and their gusty nature adds to the unpredictability around their direction and speed of movement.
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How long will the Santa Ana winds last?
There is some good news here. Lighter winds are forecast to develop after Wednesday bringing a longer window than we've seen so far, for fire fighters to contain the remaining blazes.
Rain would also help the situation by returning some moisture to the ground and surrounding vegetation. However, the weather forecast still shows very little rainfall on the horizon.
The lack of rain during what should be California's wet season, has been a key reason behind why the fires took such a firm grip and spread so rapidly.
Parts of southern California have barely seen any rain in recent months.
And in contrast, the wet conditions we've seen here over the last two years have encouraged the growth of vegetation meaning there is a lot more of it to burn right now.
The ongoing dry weather means that even if fires are extinguished, the area will still be ripe for more to develop.
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Firefighters are battling to control huge wildfires in Los Angeles that have killed at least 24 people, devoured thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
It's a rapidly changing situation - these maps and pictures show the scale of the challenge, where the fires are and the damage they have caused.
The largest blaze, in the Pacific Palisades area is the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history. More than 23,000 acres have now burnt.
Placing the area affected on to maps of New York and London gives a sense of how big that is, stretching from Clapham to Greenwich in the UK's capital, or across large areas of lower Manhattan and Queens.
Where are the Los Angeles fires burning?
* Palisades fire: The largest active fire is burning between Santa Monica and Malibu. Burnt area: 23,713 acres.
* Eaton fire: Second largest fire burning north of Pasadena. Burnt area: 14,117 acres.
* Hurst fire: To the north east of the city. Burnt area: 799 acres. It's 89% contained, according to LA officials.
But six other fires have been contained.
Kenneth fire: In the West Hills area, just north of the Palisades. It was contained on Sunday afternoon, after burning through 1,052 acres since Thursday.
Lidia fire: Reported in the hills north of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 395 acres.
Archer fire: Small fire that started on Friday and burned through 19 acres.
Woodley fire: Small fire reported in local parkland. Burnt area: 30 acres.
Olivas fire: Small fire first reported in Ventura county about 50 miles (80km) east of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 11 acres.
Sunset fire: Reported in the historic Hollywood Hills area near many famous landmarks, including the Hollywood sign. Burnt area: 43 acres.
Largest fires have burnt thousands of buildings
Officials say more than 12,000 structures have been destroyed by the two biggest fires - about 5,000 each in the Palisades and Eaton blazes.
As the maps below show, the fires are largely burning uninhabited areas but they have spread into populated areas.
Analysis of satellite data by experts from CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University shows some buildings escaped damage within the fire zone, but many were damaged or destroyed. More could be at risk depending on how the infernos spread.
Among the buildings already destroyed in the Palisades blaze are many of the exclusive properties that line the Malibu waterfront to the west.
Slide your cursor across the image below to see an aerial view of what the area used to look like and what it looks like now.
Both the Palisades and Eaton fires can be seen from space, as shown in the satellite image below.
A combination of an exceptionally dry period - downtown Los Angeles has only received 0.16 inches (0.4cm) of rain since October - and powerful offshore gusts known as the Santa Ana winds have created ripe conditions for wildfires.
Santa Ana winds flow east to west through southern California's mountains, according to the National Weather Service.
Blowing across the deserts further inland, they create conditions where humidity drops, which dries out vegetation. If a fire does start, the winds can fan smouldering embers into an inferno in minutes.
How did the Palisades fire spread?
The map below shows just how rapidly the Palisades fire spread, intensifying in a matter of hours. At just after 14:00 on Tuesday it covered 772 acres and within four hours it had approximately tripled in size.
The Palisades fire now covers more than 23,000 acres and thousands of people have been forced to evacuate the area, as more than 1,400 firefighters try to tackle the blaze.
The Eaton fire has also grown rapidly from about 1,000 acres on Tuesday to more than 14,000 acres, forcing thousands more people to flee.
Photographers have also been capturing the heartbreaking level of damage the fires have caused on the ground - as these before-and-after photos demonstrate.
The Jewish Temple in Pasadena was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The Centre's website says it has been in use since 1941 and has a congregation of more than 400 families.
With authorities still working to contain the fires, the scope of the losses is still unfolding but they are on track to be among the costliest in US history, with losses already expected to exceed $135bn (£109.7bn).
Urgent preparations are now being made in Ventura, about 50 miles (80km) along the coast, after the National Weather Service forecasted strong winds which could spark new fires across the region.
The winds in Los Angeles itself are not expected to be as strong. The BBC's John Sudworth says firefighters there are reasonably optimistic they can cope.
At least 24 people have died in the Los Angeles fires as two major blazes continue to burn across the sprawling Californian city.
Firefighters made progress over the weekend in containing the Palisades and Eaton fires but warn that the return of high winds - forecast until Wednesday - could see them spread again.
They are already among the most destructive in LA's history in terms of buildings destroyed.
What's the latest?
The number of people under evacuation orders in LA County has decreased since Saturday, but the destruction is immense.
More than 12,000 structures - homes, outbuildings, sheds, mobile homes and cars -have been destroyed including 7,000 in the Eaton fire.
The fires could turn out to be the costliest in US history, with damage projected at up to $150bn, according to a preliminary estimate by AccuWeather.
Celebrities who have lost their homes include Mel Gibson, Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, who attended the Golden Globes just days ago, and Paris Hilton.
Tens of thousands of homes are also without power.
Where are the fires?
* Palisades: The first fire to erupt a week ago and the biggest in the region. It has scorched more than 23,654 acres, including the upmarket Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. It was 11% contained as of Sunday morning
* Eaton: Affecting the northern part of LA, blazing through areas such as Altadena. It is the second biggest fire in the area, burning more than 14,000 acres. It is 27% contained
* Hurst: Located just north of San Fernando, it began burning last Tuesday night. It has grown to 799 acres, and is almost fully contained
Was LA prepared for the fires?
What caused the fires?
What role has climate change played?
Although strong winds and lack of rain are driving the blazes, experts say climate change is altering the background conditions and increasing the likelihood of such fires.
Much of the western United States including California experienced a decades-long drought that ended just two years ago, making the region vulnerable.
"Whiplash" swings between dry and wet periods in recent years created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that was ready to burn.
US government research is unequivocal in linking climate change to larger and more severe wildfires in the western US.
"Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.
Fire season in southern California is generally thought to stretch from May to October - but the governor has pointed out earlier that blazes had become a perennial issue. "There's no fire season," he said. "It's fire year."
Have you been affected by the fires in California? Get in touch here.
Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
"By the end, I was just wondering how I would prefer to die."
Spending 35 hours trapped in a pitch-black air pocket in the upturned hull of a boat has taken its toll on Lucianna Galetta, her voice cracking as she recounts her ordeal.
A video she managed to film briefly on her phone, now shared with the BBC, shows the space where she thought her life might end - and how surging sea water and floating debris prevented her escape.
Lucianna was the last of 35 survivors to be rescued from the wreck of the Sea Story, an Egyptian dive vessel that sank in the Red Sea on 25 November last year. Up to 11 people died or are still missing, including two Britons, Jenny Cawson and Tarig Sinada from Devon.
At the time, Egyptian authorities attributed the disaster to a huge wave of up to 4m (13ft), but the BBC has spoken to 11 survivors of the Sea Story who have cast doubt on the claim. That has been supported by a leading oceanographer, who told us weather data from the time suggests a wave could not have been responsible, and that a combination of crew error and failings in the boat were the likely cause.
As well as describing the terror of being trapped in a rapidly sinking boat, the survivors accuse the company which ran it, Dive Pro Liveaboard, of several safety failings. They also say the Egyptian authorities were slow to react, something which may have cost lives. We have put questions to Dive Pro Liveaboard - based in Hurghada - and the Egyptian government, but not received any reply.
This, for the first time, is the inside story of how the Sea Story sank, as told by those who made it out alive.
The luxury dive boat set off from Port Ghaleb on Egypt's Red Sea Coast on 24 November. On board were 31 international guests - mostly experienced divers - and three dive guides, along with 12 Egyptian crew. They were on a six-day trip, with their first destination being Sataya Reef, a popular diving spot.
Like many of those on board, Lucianna's first impressions of the Sea Story were positive. "It looked like a really nice boat, very big, very clean," she says, speaking from her home in Belgium.
The company had transferred over Lucianna and others at the last minute from another boat, which had hundreds of good online reviews. Several guests were told they were getting an "upgrade" but some were frustrated because it was not going to the destination they had booked.
Conditions that night were quite rough, although the survivors we spoke to, including experienced sailors, say the boat seemed more unstable than they would have expected.
At one point, a few hours before the capsizing, a small inflatable boat slipped off the back of the Sea Story. A passenger filmed as the crew battled to bring it back on board - the oceanographer the BBC spoke to says the video shows conditions which were not unusual and consistent with 1.5m (5ft) waves.
"Looking out at the waves, the weather wasn't terrible," says Sarah Martin, an NHS doctor from Lancaster who was on the trip. But, she says, "furniture was sliding around the deck - we asked the crew if it was normal and they just shrugged, so we didn't realise the danger we were in".
"I didn't sleep that night because the boat was rocking so much," says Hissora Gonzalez, a diver from Spain, whose cabin was on the lower deck.
She describes how the boat rolled sharply several times until, just before 03:00, it flipped onto its side with a loud bang, followed by silence as the engines died - and total darkness.
Shouting could soon be heard coming from other cabins, as people were thrown from their beds. Possessions were scattered around, blocking exits and making escape difficult. One survivor - who had been sleeping outside on deck - described being trapped under heavy furniture which had shifted as the boat rolled.
"We couldn't see anything. I didn't know if I was walking on the floor, on the ceiling, on the side," says Hissora. Disoriented, she started looking around for life jackets. Before she could find one, her friend Cristhian Cercos shouted at her to run.
That call may well have saved her life. Their cabin was on the starboard (right) of the boat, the side that hit the sea. Nearly all of the dead or missing had cabins on that side of the boat.
"I could hear the water coming in, but I could not see it," says Hissora. Their cabin door was now on the ceiling - she only escaped because Cristhian pulled her up on the fifth attempt.
Across the hall from Hissora, also in complete darkness, were Sarah and her cabin mate Natalia Sanchez Fuster, a dive guide. They couldn't find the handle to the cabin door. When Sarah managed to turn on the torch on her phone she realised "everything was at 90 degrees - the door was on the floor and all our things were blocking it".
After clearing the doorway, they joined about 10 others heading for an emergency exit towards the bow (front) of the boat.
With the boat on its side, the group had to crawl along the emergency staircase for two floors, past the restaurant and dining room on the main deck. It was hard to find their way and it seemed the contents of the kitchen cupboards had spilled out over the floors.
"We had to climb along door frames and beams to make our way out," says Sarah. "It was quite disorienting in the dark and it was very slippery. There was cooking oil and broken eggs everywhere."
Hissora, just ahead of Sarah, managed to make it to the upper deck. She could hear people screaming behind her but did not turn around. "I was afraid of looking back and seeing all the water coming in," she says.
By this time, the Sea Story was sinking fast. Those who had reached the top deck knew they would have to jump into the water - a 2-3m (7-10ft) drop.
"I was paralysed because Cristhian kept saying to me 'don't jump' because he could see someone was trying to release the life raft," Hissora recalls.
Sarah was behind Hissora and desperate to get out. "There were other guests holding on to the side, blocking the exit," she remembers. "We were shouting at them to move out of the way."
With the water rising fast, Hissora, Sarah and the dozen or so people who had reached the top deck jumped into the water. They knew the danger was not over yet. "If the boat was going down, we needed to get away so it wouldn't pull us down with it," says Sarah.
Natalia, who had also jumped in, swam around the boat - she heard people screaming from inside the cabins and tried to use floating debris to break the windows, but didn't succeed.
Sarah and Natalia were among the few who had grabbed a life jacket before escaping, but Sarah says they were not functioning as they should have.
"We noticed the lights weren't working. Looking back, I don't think there were any batteries in there."
It is just one of several safety failings reported by the people we interviewed.
In total, we have spoken to seven of the survivors who had been staying on the lower deck. They all tell a near-identical story of the moment the boat went over - but not all of them escaped the same way.
Lucianna Galetta was in a cabin towards the back of the lower deck with her partner Christophe Lemmens. They were just moments slower than the others in realising the danger. That delay cost them dearly.
"We started to get up and tried to find the life jackets," says Lucianna. "We opened the door but there was already water in the corridor. I think we panicked as we jumped in and almost drowned."
Unable to reach the exit at the front, Lucianna and Christophe ended up in an air pocket in the engine room at the stern (rear) of the boat, which was still sticking out of the water. They did not understand where they were until they were joined in the tiny space, some time later, by one of the dive instructors, Youssef al-Faramawy.
The three of them would stay there, sitting on fuel tanks, for about 35 hours.
Outside the boat, Sarah, Hissora and the others who had jumped off eventually found the two life rafts, which had deployed after the sinking. As they clambered on board, they saw the boat's captain and a number of other crew members were already there.
"There should be some supplies in here," Sarah remembers one of the other guests saying. All the people we spoke to recall a safety briefing mentioning that the life rafts had food and water in them - but they did not, the BBC were told.
"We found a torch, but again it didn't have any batteries. We didn't have any water or any food," Sarah says. "There were flares, but they had already been used."
Sarah also says of the three blankets on board the raft, one had been taken by the captain for himself, leaving one for the rest of the crew and another for the guests. "We ripped it up and huddled together," says Sarah.
The rafts were met by rescue vessels at about 11:00 on the morning of 25 November, about eight hours after the capsizing. Both they, and the boat, had drifted eastwards.
Back on board the Sea Story, Lucianna heard the rescue helicopter - but her ordeal was far from over.
"At this time we were very happy, but we had to wait 27 hours more," she says.
Despite the boat having been located, the rescue effort was slow to reach them. "We had no communication with the outside, nothing. No-one tried to see if there was someone alive in there," Lucianna says.
She tells me there were moments when darkness and despair overtook her. "I was so ready to die. We didn't think that someone would come."
After several hours trapped in the air pocket, the dive guide, Youssef, wanted to try to swim through the boat, but Lucianna and Christophe persuaded him not to. "Stay with us because they are going to come to get our bodies, so they will find us," Lucianna recalls telling him.
Eventually, after nearly a day and a half stuck in the hull of the Sea Story, a light appeared in the darkness.
A local Egyptian diving instructor, Khattab al-Faramawi, who was Youssef's uncle, had braved the wreck, diving through the submerged corridors looking for people. He took Youssef out first, then, after another hour's delay because of issues with the breathing apparatus, returned to lead Lucianna and her partner to safety. "I hugged him so hard," says Lucianna. "I was very, very happy."
In total, five people from the Sea Story were rescued by divers, including a Swiss man and a Finnish woman who had survived in another air pocket inside their cabin on the lower deck. Four bodies were recovered.
But Lucianna is critical of the fact the Egyptian navy had to rely on volunteers. "We waited 35 hours. I don't understand how there are no divers on the Egyptian military boats."
Lucianna, Christophe and Youssef were taken on board a waiting naval vessel, before returning to shore. They were the last to be rescued. At least 11 people either died or are missing, presumed dead.
Among them are Jenny Cawson and Tarig Sinada, a couple from Devon who were staying on the main deck, on the side of the boat that hit the water. Their bodies have never been found.
"It doesn't feel like it's real," says Andy Williamson, a friend of the couple. "We keep expecting them to walk through the door." A month and a half after the sinking, hopes of that happening have all but vanished.
The couple were experienced divers who always carefully researched the safety record of boats before their trips. They were also switched on to the Sea Story at the last minute, something that may have ultimately cost them dearly.
The BBC spoke to survivors from nearly every cabin on the vessel in which someone got out alive. They all confirm the boat sank between 02:00 and 03:00. However, according to local authorities, a distress signal was not received until about 05:30 - a further factor which may have cost lives.
Five survivors also reported that the heavy furniture on the top deck was unsecured and moved around before the sinking. The woman who had been sleeping on deck believes it all shifting to one side, as the boat started to overturn, further destabilised the Sea Story.
The narrative put forward by Egyptian officials in the immediate aftermath, reported by news agencies around the world, was that a huge wave hit the boat. Multiple survivors' experiences in the water, just minutes after the capsizing, casts doubt on that.
"When we were in the water, the waves weren't so big that we weren't able to swim in them," says Sarah, "so it does leave us wondering why that boat sank."
Those suspicions are supported by data.
Dr Simon Boxall is a leading oceanographer from the University of Southampton. He has analysed the weather from the day which shows the biggest waves were about 1.5m (5ft) - so he says "there is no way a 4m (13ft) wave could have occurred in that region, at that time".
The Egyptian Meteorological Authority had warned of high waves on the Red Sea and advised against maritime activity on 24 and 25 November. But, according to Dr Boxall, "these were over 200km (120 miles) away to the north of where the vessel went down."
He says that leaves only two options, either pilot error or an error in the design of the vessel - or a combination of both.
The UK's Marine Accident Investigation Board (MAIB), which will shortly publish a safety bulletin into the sinking, has recently warned divers of safety issues in the Red Sea after a number of incidents - at least two of which involved the same company, Dive Pro Liveaboard.
The BBC sent all the safety concerns raised in this article to the Egyptian government and the company, Dive Pro Liveaboard, multiple times. We are yet to receive a response from either.
After the disaster, the Egyptian authorities immediately opened an investigation into the sinking. That is yet to report, but for the friends of Jenny and Tarig this is about more than one boat.
"We've unfortunately had to learn of the dangers of diving in Egypt in the most tragic of circumstances," says Andy Williamson. "I don't know how we will ever get over this.
Lucianna wants to understand exactly what went wrong. "We are lucky to be alive," she says. "But there are so many people who didn't come back from this and I want their families to be able to grieve."
On Wednesday, the survivors tell the BBC about what happened to them after they had been rescued - and the questions they now have about the official investigation.
Millions of people are gathering in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state to participate in the Mahakumbh Mela, the world's largest gathering of humanity.
Devout Hindus from all parts of the world have arrived here (and will continue to do so) over the course of six weeks to take a holy dip at Sangam - the confluence of India's most sacred Ganges river with the Yamuna river and the mythical Saraswati.
Hindus believe taking a dip in the sacred waters cleanses people of sins.
Authorities have set up a sprawling tent city spread across 4,000 hectares of open land along the banks of the rivers to accommodate the visitors, who are arriving at the grounds in colourful large processions, singing and dancing along the way.
Photojournalist Ankit Srinivas brings you some sights from the festival:
The towels we dry ourselves with get a lot of use and pick up a lot of microbes along the way. But how long should you wait before throwing them into the laundry?
You have probably rubbed your body with one today already. But just how clean was that towel you dried yourself with? Many of us will pop them into the washing machine once a week, while one study of 100 people found about a third of them did so once a month. A few, according to one survey in the UK, admit to only doing it once a year.
And while those fluffy fibres might not show any signs of dirt, they are a breeding ground for millions of microbes. Studies have shown that towels can quickly become contaminated with bacteria commonly found on human skin, but also with those found in our guts.
Even after washing, our bodies are still covered in microbes and perhaps unsurprisingly when we dry ourselves off, some of these transfer onto our towel. But the microbes living on our towels come from other sources too – airborne fungi and bacteria can settle on towel fibres while they are hanging up. Some of the bacteria comes from the water we have used to launder the towels with in the first place.
In Japan, some households even reuse leftover bathwater for laundering the next day. One study by researchers at the University of Tokushima in Japan found, while this saves water, many of the bacteria found in the used bath water were then transferred to towels and clothing after being laundered.
And for those of us who prefer to leave our towels to dry in the same room as your lavatory, there is some rather disgusting news – every time you flush, you are likely giving any towels nearby a light dusting with bacteria from your toilet, along with specks of your family's bodily waste.
Over time these microbes can start to form biofilms on towels that can even begin changing how our towels look. After two months, even with regular washing, the bacteria living on cotton towel fibres start to dull the appearance of the cloth. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the total amount of bacteria and the species of bacteria depends on the laundry habits in the household. The real question is, how worried should you be about the bacteria living on your towels?
The topic of towel washing might seem trivial, but Elizabeth Scott, a professor of biology and co-director of the Simmons University Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community in Boston, the US, is interested in what it can reveal about the way microbes spread around the home.
"They're not just naturally sitting around on towels," she says. "Anything that causes us harm on a towel is likely to have come from a human."
Indeed, there are as many as 1,000 different species of bacteria living on our skin alongside many other viruses and fungi. But most are actually good for us – helping to keep us safe from infections from other less friendly bacteria, breaking down some of the chemicals we encounter in daily life and playing an important role in the development of our immune systems.
Many of the bacteria that are found living on towels are the same species that we find on our skin, but are also common in the environments we live in. These include species of Staphylococcus bacteria and Escherichia coli, which is commonly found in the human gut, but also Salmonella and Shigella bacteria, which are common causes of foodborne illnesses and diarrhoea.
But some of these bacteria are also opportunistic pathogens – they are innocuous unless they get into a place where they can cause more harm, such as a cut, develop the ability to produce certain toxins or manage to infect people with weakened immune systems.
Our skin is also a natural barrier against infection. It is our first line of defence against bacteria and other pathogens, so transferring bacteria from a towel to our skin shouldn't worry us too much. But there is some evidence that washing, scrubbing and rubbing ourselves dry with a towel can also disrupt the skin's barrier function.
Perhaps the biggest problem occurs when we pick up potentially harmful microbes up on our hands as we dry them off before touching our mouth, nose and eyes. And that can mean the towels we use most frequently for our hands, perhaps deserve more attention. Kitchen towels, which are used on our dishes, hands and surfaces, are also another source of spread for foodborne pathogens.
Gastroenteric infections resulting from Salmonella, Norovirus and E. coli "are all transmissible through towels", according to Scott. Studies have also found that viruses such as Covid-19 can survive on cotton for up to 24 hours, although transmission through touching contaminated surfaces is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
Other viruses that do spread by contact, such as the mpox virus, may be more of a risk and health officials do not recommend sharing towels or linen with people who are infected.
Research has also shown that human papillomaviruses, which are a common cause of warts and verrucae can also be spread through contact with towels shared with other people.
The risk of transmitting infections from reusable hand towels is one reason why hospitals and public bathrooms now tend to use disposable paper towels and air dryers, although the evidence is inconclusive about which of those options is better.
Clearly the longer we use towels, and the longer they stay damp for, the more hospitable the environment for microbes they become, increasing the chance of harmful microbes growing on them.
But thinking about towel hygiene could also help combat one of the major health issues facing the world, according to Scott and her colleagues. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as MRSA, can be transferred by contact with contaminated objects.
More like this:
• How often should you wash your sheets and pillows
• Why spring cleaning won't benefit your health
• Do antibiotics really wipe out your gut bacteria?
Jean-Yves Maillard, professor of pharmaceutical microbiology at Cardiff University, says practices like regular towel washing can help to reduce bacterial infections and in turn reduce the use of antibiotics. "Home hygiene is all to do with prevention, and prevention is better than treatment," says Maillard.
So, how often should we be washing our towels?
Scott suggests laundering towels once a week. However, this recommendation is not a set rule.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because if someone is sick, they've got vomiting and diarrhoea," she says. "They need to have their own towel and those towels need to be laundered on a daily basis. That's what we call targeted hygiene, you deal with the risk as it occurs."
One study in India found that 20% of people who responded were washing their towels as often as twice a week.
Targeted hygiene is a risk management approach to hygiene, being developed by researchers associated with The Global Hygiene Council and The International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene. Whilst hygiene is important to consider at all times, targeted hygiene focuses on the times and the places where these practices are vital.
According to Scott, towels require a hotter (40-60C, 104-140F) and longer wash than most household fabrics, often with the addition of antimicrobial detergents. Detergents can help to prevent bacteria from latching onto fabrics and inactivate some viruses. Of course, frequent washing at high temperatures comes with an environmental cost. (Find out more about how your daily water use affects the planet.)
For washes at lower temperatures, adding enzymes or bleach can help combat microbes on towels. One study in India also found combining a wash with a detergent with a disinfectant while rinsing and drying towels in the Sun was the most effective at reducing the bacterial and fungal load.
Scott refers to home hygiene as a form of altruism, much like vaccination. Each small practice you undertake to protect yourself, you also do to protect the people around you.
"We call it the Swiss cheese model," she says. "We think of all of these components as being slices of hygiene, like slices of Swiss cheese and every slice of hygiene covers up one of those holes and reduces the risk of pathogens being able to move through.
"Towels are a relatively small component, but there are definite risks with towels and it's easy to deal with that."
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Norway is the world leader when it comes to the take up of electric cars, which last year accounted for nine out of 10 new vehicles sold in the country. Can other nations learn from it?
For more than 75 years Oslo-based car dealership Harald A Møller has been importing Volkswagens, but early in 2024 it bid farewell to fossil fuel cars.
Now all the passenger vehicles for sale in its showroom are electric (EV).
"We think it's wrong to advise a customer coming in here today to buy an ICE [internal combustion engine] car, because the future is electric," says chief executive Ulf Tore Hekneby, as he walks around the cars on display. "Long-range, high-charging speed. It's hard to go back."
On the streets of Norway's capital, Oslo, battery-powered cars aren't a novelty, they're the norm. Take a look around and you'll soon notice that almost every other car has an "E" for "electric" on its licence plate.
The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has adopted EVs faster than any other country, and is on the cusp of becoming the first to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel cars.
Last year, the number of electric cars on Norway's roads outnumbered those powered by petrol for the first time. When diesel vehicles are included, electric cars account for almost a third of all on Norwegian roads.
And 88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, up from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out.
By contrast, in the UK electric cars made up only 20% of new car registrations in 2024. Although this was a record high, and up from 16.5% in 2023.
In the US, the figure was just 8% last year, up from 7.6%.
Norway is undoubtedly an EV pioneer, but this electric revolution has been three decades in the making.
"It started already in the early 1990s," says Christina Bu, the secretary general of the Norwegian EV Association, as she took me for a spin around Oslo in an electric minivan.
"Little by little taxing petrol and diesel engine cars more, so they have become a lot more expensive to purchase, whereas electric cars have been exempted from taxes."
The support for electric vehicles was first introduced to help two Norwegian manufacturers of early EVs, the Buddy (previously Kewet) and TH!NK City. While they went out of business, the incentives for greener vehicles remained.
"It's our goal to see that it's always a good and viable choice, to choose zero emission," says Norway's Deputy Transport Minister, Cecilie Knibe Kroglund.
Even though it's a major oil and gas producer, Norway aims for all new cars sold to be "zero emission", starting at some point in 2025. A non-binding goal was set back in 2017, and that milestone now lies within reach.
"We are closing up on the target, and I think that we will reach that goal," adds Kroglund. "I think we have already made the transition for passengers cars."
Key to Norway's success has been long-term and predictable policies, she explains.
Rather than banning combustion engine vehicles, the government has steered consumer choices. In addition to penalising fuel fossil vehicles with higher taxes and registration fees, VAT and import duties were scrapped for low-emission cars.
A string of perks, like free parking, discounted road tolls and access to bus lanes, then followed.
By comparison, the European Union plans to ban sales of new fossil-fuel cars by 2035, and the UK's current government wants to prohibit their sale in 2030.
Petrol and diesel car sales are still permitted in Norway. But few are choosing to buy them.
For many locals, like Ståle Fyen, who bought his first EV 15 months ago, going electric made economic sense.
"With all the incentives we have in Norway, with no taxes on EVs, that was quite important to us money wise," he says while plugging in his car at a charging station in the capital.
"In the cold, the range is maybe 20% shorter, but still, with the expansive charging network we have here in Norway, that isn't a big issue really," Mr Fyen adds. "You just have to change your mindset and charge when you can, not when you need to."
Another driver, Merete Eggesbø, says that back in 2014 she was one of the first people in Norway to own a Tesla. "I really wanted a car that didn't pollute. It gave me a better conscience driving."
At Norwegian petrol stations many fuel pumps have been replaced by fast-charging points, and across Norway there are now more than 27,000 public chargers.
This compares with 73,699 in the UK - a country 12 times bigger in terms of population.
That means that, per 100,000 people, Norway has 447 chargers while the UK has just 89, according to a recent report.
Tesla, VW and Toyota, were Norway's top-selling EV brands last year. Meanwhile, Chinese-owned marques - such as MG, BYD, Polestar and XPeng - now make up a combined 10% of the market, according to the Norwegian Road Federation.
Norway, unlike the US and EU, has not imposed tariffs on Chinese EV imports.
Ms Bu says there's "not really any reason why other countries can not copy Norway". However, she adds that it is "all about doing it in a way that can work in each country or market".
Norwegians aren't more environmentally-minded than people elsewhere, she reckons. "I don't think a green mindset has much to do with it. It has to do with strong policies, and people gradually understanding that driving an electric car is possible."
Yet Norway is also a very wealthy nation, which thanks to its huge oil and gas exports, has a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $1.7tn (£1.3tn). This means it can more easily afford big infrastructure-build projects, and absorb the loss of tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel cars and their fuel.
The country also has an abundance of renewable hydro electricity, which accounts for 88% of its production capacity.
"A third of cars are now electric, and it will pass 50% in a few years," says Kjell Werner Johansen from the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research. "I think the government accepts that a few new petrol or hybrid cars will still be on the market, but I don't know anybody who wants to buy a diesel car these days."
Despite being vilified, threatened and humiliated in public, veteran Cameroonian lawyer Alice Nkom is determined to uphold the rights of homosexual people in her country.
A human rights NGO that she runs, Redhac, was recently suspended by the government and she is due to appear before investigators to answer accusations of money laundering and funding terror groups – which she denies.
The 80-year-old says the authorities are obstructing her work and believes she is being targeted because of her legal advocacy with the LGBT community.
"I will always defend homosexuals because they risk their freedom every day, and they are thrown into prison like dogs," she tells the BBC in a firm tone, speaking in her office in the city of Douala.
"My job is to defend people. I don't see why I would say I'm defending everyone except homosexuals."
Dressed in a black gown, Ms Nkom delivers her stark message in a measured voice that reflects years of thoughtful legal argument.
According to the country's penal code, both men and women found guilty of homosexual sex can be sentenced to up to five years in prison and made to pay a fine. Members of the LGBT community also face being ostracized by their families and wider society.
As a result, Ms Nkom has been viewed as a surrogate parent to some in her country who have been open about their sexuality with their family.
The legal expert has children of her own, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of others look up to her as their protector following her work over more than two decades to defend those accused of homosexuality.
"She's like our father and our mother. She's the mother we find when our families have abandoned us," says one LGBT activist, Sébastien, not his real name.
Committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is included in Cameroon's constitution, Ms Nkom argues that freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation should be seen as a fundamental right that supersedes the penal code.
"You shouldn't jail fundamental rights, you shouldn't repress them – you should protect them," she says.
This is a struggle that has landed Ms Nkom in difficulties.
She says she has been physically threatened several times in the street, and reveals that when she first started out in this area of law, she hired bodyguards to help protect her.
But her journey to become one of Cameroon's most outspoken legal figures began well before that.
In 1969, aged 24, she became the country's first black female lawyer, after studying in both France – the former colonial power - and Cameroon.
She says she was encouraged to pursue her studies by her then boyfriend, who later became her husband.
Her earlier legal work involved representing the less well-off and disadvantaged but it was a chance encounter in 2003 that led her to become involved in the fight to decriminalise homosexuality.
She was at the public prosecutor's office in Douala when she observed a group of young people handcuffed in pairs, who did not have the courage to look up.
"When I checked the court docket, I realised that they were being prosecuted for homosexuality," she says.
'Attempted homosexuality'
This offended her sense of human rights and she was very clear that sexual minorities should be included among those whose rights were protected by the constitution.
"I decided to fight to ensure that this fundamental right of freedom was respected," Ms Nkom adds.
She went on to found the Association for the Defence of Homosexuality (Adefho) in 2003.
Since then she has been involved in dozens of cases. One of the most high-profile in recent years was her defence of transgender celebrity Shakiro and a friend, Patricia, in 2021.
The two were arrested while eating in a restaurant and then charged with "attempted homosexuality".
They were sentenced to five years for contravening the penal code and outraging public decency.
"It's a hammer blow. It's the maximum term outlined in the law. The message is clear: homosexuals don't have a place in Cameroon," Ms Nkom was quoted as saying at the time.
Shakiro, along with Patricia, was later released pending an appeal and has since fled the country.
Since then the situation for LGBT people has not improved. LGBT activist Sébastien, who runs a charity to support families with homosexual children, feels things have got worse recently.
Last year, a song based on the popular mbolé rhythm with a title and lyrics that encouraged people to target and kill homosexuals, was released. It is still being widely shared, and is regularly played in the trendiest places in the country's major cities.
"People attack us because of this song, which glorifies crime," says Sébastien.
LGBT people have to hide their sexual identities but "some people set traps to get close to us and attack us or report us to the police", he says.
Ms Nkom says that when Brenda Biya, the daughter of President Paul Biya, came out in public to say that she was a lesbian last year, she thought it might help to change the law.
Ms Biya – who spends most of her time outside Cameroon – has been quoted as saying she hoped that her openness could alter things at home.
Ms Nkom senses an opportunity. "I'm using the Brenda case as a precedent. Now I have a case on which I can challenge the president," she says.
The lawyer also asked Ms Biya to do more for the cause of the LGBT community in Cameroon.
"Brenda hasn't replied to me yet, since I made the statement in the media, but I know that she will."
For now, though, she will continue her legal work.
She views the latest attempt to restrict her efforts as just another obstacle – certainly not enough to make her stop the battle she has been waging since 2003.
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The hum of sewing machines is a constant in parts of Guangzhou, a thriving port on the Pearl River in southern China.
It rattles through the open windows of factories from morning until late at night, as they finish the t-shirts, shorts, blouses, pants and swimwear that will be shipped to fill wardrobes in more than 150 countries.
This is the sound of Panyu, the neighbourhood known as the "Shein village", a warren of factories that power the world's largest fast fashion retailer.
"If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days," one worker told the BBC.
Most said they only have one day off a month.
The BBC spent several days here: we visited 10 factories, spoke to four owners and more than 20 workers. We also spent time at labour markets and textile suppliers.
We found that the beating heart of this empire is a workforce sitting behind sewing machines for around 75 hours a week in contravention of Chinese labour laws.
These hours are not unusual in Guangzhou, an industrial hub for rural workers in search of a higher income; or in China, which has long been the world's unrivalled factory.
But they add to a growing list of questions about Shein, once a little-known Chinese-founded company that has become a global behemoth in just over five years.
Still privately-owned, it was valued at about £54bn ($66bn) in a fundraising round in 2023. It is now eyeing a potential listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Its meteoric rise, however, has been dogged with controversy about its treatment of workers and allegations of forced labour.
Last year it admitted to finding children working in its factories in China.
The company declined to be interviewed but told the BBC in a statement that "Shein is committed to ensuring the fair and dignified treatment of all workers within our supply chain" and is investing tens of millions of dollars in strengthening governance and compliance.
It added: "We strive to set the highest standards for pay and we require that all supply chain partners adhere to our code of conduct. Furthermore, Shein works with auditors to ensure compliance."
Shein's success lies in volume - the inventory online runs into the hundreds of thousands - and deep discounts: £10 dresses, £6 sweaters, prices that hover below £8 on average.
Revenue has soared, outstripping the likes of H&M, Zara and the UK's Primark. The cut-price sales are driven by places like the Shein village, home to some 5,000 factories, most of them Shein suppliers.
The buildings have been hollowed out to make way for sewing machines, rolls of fabric and bags brimming with cloth scraps. The doors to their basements are always open for the seemingly endless cycle of deliveries and collections.
As the day passes, the shelves fill up with warehouse-bound, clear plastic bags labelled with a now-distinctive five-letter noun.
But even past 22:00, the sewing machines - and the people hunched over them - don't stop as more fabric arrives, in trucks so full that bolts of colour sometimes tumble onto the factory floor.
"We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less."
She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards.
They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it.
This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil.
The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option.
"We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents.
"We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour."
Examining the stitching on the chinos is crucial for making that decision. All around her, workers are calculating how much they will get paid to make each piece of clothing and how many they can make in an hour.
The alleys of Panyu function as labour markets, filling up in the mornings as workers and scooters rush past the breakfast dumpling cart, the cups of steaming soybean milk and the hopeful farmer selling chicken and duck eggs.
Standard working hours appear to be from 08:00 to well past 22:00, the BBC found.
This is consistent with a report from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye, which was based on interviews with 13 textile workers at factories producing clothes for Shein.
They found that a number of staff were working excessive overtime. It noted the basic wage without overtime was 2,400 yuan (£265; $327) - below the 6,512 yuan the Asia Floor Wage Alliance says is needed for a "living wage". But the workers we spoke to managed to earn anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 yuan a month.
"These hours are not unusual, but it's clear that it's illegal and it violates basic human rights," said David Hachfield from the group. "It's an extreme form of exploitation and this needs to be visible."
The average working week should not exceed 44 hours, according to Chinese labour laws, which also state that employers should ensure workers have at least one rest day a week. If an employer wants to extend these hours, it should be for special reasons.
While Shein's headquarters are now in Singapore, there is no denying the majority of its products are made in China.
And Shein's success has drawn the attention of Washington, which is increasingly wary of Chinese firms.
In June, Donald Trump's pick for US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said he had "grave ethics concerns" about Shein's "deep ties to the People's Republic of China": "Slave labour, sweatshops, and trade tricks are the dirty secrets behind Shein's success," he wrote.
Not everyone would agree with Rubio's choice of words to describe the conditions at Shein's suppliers. But rights groups say that the long working hours, which have become a way of life for many in Guangzhou, are unfair and exploitative.
The machines dictate the rhythm of the day.
They pause for lunch and dinner when the workers, metal plates and chopsticks in hand, file into the canteen to buy food. If there is no more space to sit, they stand in the street.
"I've been working in these factories for more than 40 years," said one woman who spent just 20 minutes eating her meal. This was just another day for her.
Inside, the factories we visit are not cramped. There is enough light and industrial-sized fans have been brought in to keep workers cool. Huge posters urge staff to report underage workers - likely a response to finding two cases of child labour in the supply chain last year.
The BBC understands that the company is keeping a closer eye on its suppliers ahead of plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange.
"This is about their reputation," says Sheng Lu, a professor in Fashion and Apparel Studies at the University of Delaware. "If Shein can successfully achieve an IPO then it means they are recognised as a decent company. But if they are to keep the confidence of investors, they have to take some responsibility."
One of the biggest challenges Shein faces is accusations that it sources cotton from China's Xinjiang region.
Once touted as among the world's best fabric, Xinjiang's cotton has fallen out of favour after allegations that it is produced using forced labour by people from the Muslim Uyghur minority - a charge that Beijing has consistently denied.
The only way to get around this criticism is to be more transparent, Prof Sheng says.
"Unless you fully release your factory list, unless you make your supply chain more transparent to the public, then I think it's going to be very challenging for Shein."
A major advantage, he adds, is that Shein's supply chain is in China: "Very few countries have a complete supply chain. China has this - and nobody can compete."
Aspiring rivals like Vietnam and Bangladesh import raw materials from China to make clothes. But Chinese factories rely entirely on local sources for everything, from fabric to zippers and buttons. So it's easy to make a variety of garments, and they are able to do it quickly.
That especially works for Shein whose algorithm determines orders. If shoppers repeatedly click on a certain dress, or spend longer looking at a wool sweater, the firm knows to ask factories to make more - and fast.
For workers in Guangzhou, this can be a challenge.
"Shein has its pros and cons," one factory owner told us. "The good thing is the order is eventually big, but profit is low and it's fixed."
Shein, given its size and influence, is a hard bargainer. So factory owners have to cut costs elsewhere, often resulting in lower staff wages.
"Before Shein, we produced and sold clothes on our own," said an owner of three factories. "We could estimate the cost, decide the price and calculate the profit. Now Shein controls the price, and you have to think about ways to reduce the cost."
When orders peak, however, it's a bonanza. The company ships around one million packages a day on average, according to data from ShipMatrix, a logistics consultancy firm.
"Shein is a pillar of the fashion industry," said Guo Qing E, a Shein supplier.
"I started when Shein started. I witnessed its rise. To be honest, Shein is an awesome company in China. I think it will become stronger, because it pays on time. This is where it is most trustworthy.
"If payment for our goods is due on the 15th, no matter whether it's millions or tens of millions, the money will be paid on time."
Shein, with its gruelling hours and sometimes lower wages, may not be a source of comfort to all its workers. But it is a source of pride for some.
"This is the contribution we Chinese people can make to the world," said a 33- year-old supervisor from Guangdong, who didn't want to give her name.
It's dark outside and workers are filing back into factories after their dinner for the final stretch. She admits the hours are long, but "we get on well with each other. We are like a family".
Hours later, after many workers head home for the night, the lights in several buildings stay on.
Some people work until midnight, one factory owner told us. They want to earn more money, he said.
After all, in London, Chicago, Singapore, Dubai and so many other places, someone is hunting for their next bargain.
Months after mysterious black balls forced the closure of some of Sydney's most famous beaches, small marble-like debris has begun washing up on the city's shores again.
The balls - this time grey or white in colour - have prompted councils to shut nine beaches, including popular Manly and Dee Why, while authorities investigate.
Eight beaches including Bondi were closed for several days in October and a massive clean-up ordered after thousands of black deposits started appearing on the coast.
Testing by authorities determined those balls were most likely the result of a sewage spill.
Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins said the latest balls "could be anything", according to the Guardian Australia.
"We don't know at the moment what it is and that makes it even more concerning," she said.
"There's something that's obviously leaking or dropping... floating out there and being tossed around."
In a post on Facebook on Tuesday, the Northern Beaches Council said they were alerted to the fresh debris by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The agency and the council planned to collect the discoveries for testing and inspect other beaches in the area too.
Anyone who spotted the balls was urged to contact authorities, the council added.
Though widely reported to be "tar balls", the debris in October was later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.
Scientists said they resembled fat, oil, and grease blobs - often called fatbergs - which are commonly formed in sewerage systems.
However Sydney Water reported there were no known issues with waste systems in the city, and authorities still don't know the source of the material, prompting some to express concerns about the safety of the city's beaches.
"The EPA can't explain the source of the human waste causing the fatbergs and it can't assure the public that Sydney's beaches are safe to use," state politician Sue Higginson, from the Greens party, said in a statement in December.
Traffic in New York City has fallen since a congestion charge scheme for vehicles came into effect on 5 January, transport officials say.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said 273,000 fewer cars entered the central business district from Monday to Friday, with traffic falling by 7.5% compared with estimates for January week days without the scheme in place.
The congestion fee - the first of its kind in the US - charges car drivers up to $9 (£7) a day, with varying rates for other vehicles.
The congestion zone covers an area south of Central Park, taking in such well-known sites as the Empire State Building, Times Square and the financial district around Wall Street.
"The early data backs up what New Yorkers have been telling us all week – traffic is down, the streets feel safer, and buses are moving faster," said Janno Lieber, who heads the MTA.
Motorists are also saving time, while local and express buses are moving faster, especially in the morning commute, the MTA posted on X.
The scheme aims to ease New York's notorious traffic problems and raise billions for the public transport network.
Most drivers are charged $9 once per day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours, and $2.25 at other times.
Small trucks and non-commuter buses pay $14.40 to enter Manhattan at peak times, while larger trucks and tourist buses pay a $21.60 fee.
While the charge has been welcomed by many, it has encountered plenty of opposition.
The most high-profile opposition has come from President-elect Donald Trump, a native New Yorker who has vowed to kill the scheme when he returns to office this month.
Last year, New York City was named the world's most-congested urban area for the second year in a row, according to INRIX, a traffic data analysis firm.
Two women have been arrested after climate protestors spray-painted over the grave of Charles Darwin inside Westminster Abbey.
Climate protest group Just Stop Oil (JSO) said two activists used spray chalk paint on the grave of the famous naturalist, who is best known for his theories on evolution.
The Met Police was called after the incident on Monday at 09:30 GMT and said two women were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and remained in police custody.
Westminster Abbey said it was taking "immediate action" to clean the memorial.
Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and Di Bligh, a 77-year-old former chief executive of Reading Council, from Rode, were involved in the action, JSO said.
A Westminster Abbey spokesperson said: "The Abbey's conservators are taking immediate action to clean the memorial and do not anticipate that there will be any permanent damage."
They added it remained open for visiting and worshipping.
Ms Lee told the PA news agency: "We are trying to get the government to act on climate change. They are not doing enough."
'Darwin would be upset'
The other activist, Ms Bligh, told PA: "We've done this because there's no hope for the world, really.
"We've done it on Darwin's grave specifically because he would be turning in that grave because of the sixth mass extinction taking place now."
Ms Lee added: "I believe he would approve because he was a good scientist and he would be following the science, and he would be as upset as us with the government for ignoring the science."
The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed on Friday that last year was the warmest on record globally and the first calendar year that the average temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Pursuing efforts to prevent the world warming more than 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures is one of the key commitments of the global Paris Treaty which countries agreed to in 2015, in a bid to avert the most dangerous impacts of climate change.
The scientists said human-caused climate change was the primary driver for record temperatures, while other factors such as the Pacific Ocean's "El Nino" weather phenomenon, which raises global temperatures, also had an effect.
Analysis from the Met Office, University of East Anglia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science also found 2024 was the hottest on record, and "likely" the first year exceeding 1.5C.
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The chart-topping K-pop band NewJeans may be prevented from signing advertising deals and other contracts, after their record label filed an injunction against them.
The five-piece are currently engaged in a fierce dispute with Ador, the entertainment company that formed their band in 2022.
Last November, the group claimed their contracts were invalid, due to what they alleged was a pattern of bullying, harassment and subterfuge at the company. Ador, which denied the allegations, sued to have their contracts upheld.
The company is now accusing NewJeans of trying to sign independent deals without its approval, and has taken further legal action in Seoul, South Korea.
"This decision was made to prevent confusion and potential harm to third parties, including advertisers," Ador explained in a statement.
The agency also warned that there could be broader repercussions for South Korea's lucrative music industry if NewJeans' actions went unchecked.
"Allowing unilateral terminations of exclusive contracts and independent activities without legal procedures could undermine investment in the entertainment industry and destabilise the K-pop sector," Ador said in its injunction application, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
NewJeans were considered one of the brightest new bands in K-Pop, thanks to a playful blend of 1990s R&B and sugar-coated pop melodies.
In 2023, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world. Last year, they picked up a nomination for best group at the MTV Awards.
But their relationship with Ador soured after its parent company Hybe allegedly forced out their mentor, Min Hee-Jin.
The band issued an ultimatum demanding that Min should be restored. When Hybe refused, the group went public with a number of complaints against the label, including the claim that Hybe had deliberately undermined their careers.
In a press conference last November, the five members - Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein - announced their departure from the company, saying Hybe and Ador had lost the right to represent them as artists.
They subsequently filed court papers seeking a legal separation from the agency, but the case has yet to be heard.
Ador argues that the band's contract, which runs until 2027, should be upheld.
The label has already finalised a schedule for the quintet's next 12 months, which includes releasing a new album and hosting fan meetings, amongst other activities.
However, the band members have continued to assert their independence, creating a new Instagram account under the name "jeanzforfree", where they have been hosting regular live-streams with fans.
The band say they will fight to keep their name, and their career, and will remain "NewJeans at heart" even if they lose that fight.
It is not the first time that a K-pop band has tried to terminate a contract.
The popular groups TVXQ and Fifty Fifty have both taken their labels to court - but the cases have had mixed results, and both bands have seen their line-ups change as a result.
The biggest problem facing NewJeans is that their case against Ador could take two or three years to settle if it goes to trial. During that time, they're unlikely to be able to record or promote new music, unless the projects are created in conjunction with the label.
If the court eventually finds Hybe was at fault, the members will be able to walk away – and may even be able to hold on to the band's name.
But if the decision goes against the band, they may face a financial penalty.
In October, the K-pop news site Koreaboo estimated that the members would have to pay about 300bn South Korean Won (about £170m) to walk away from their contract early.
Greenland wants to work more closely with the US on defence and exploring its mining resources, its prime minister said on Monday.
Mute Egede said his government was looking for ways to work with President-elect Donald Trump, who has in recent weeks shown renewed interest in taking control of the territory – without ruling out using military or economic force to do so.
Also on Monday, Denmark's foreign minister said it was ready to work with Greenland to "continue talks" with Trump "to ensure legitimate American interests" in the Arctic.
Greenland, a largely autonomous Danish territory, lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US.
TikTok users in the US are migrating to a Chinese app called RedNote with the threat of a ban just days away.
The move by users who call themselves "TikTok refugees" has made RedNote the most downloaded app on Apple's US App Store on Monday.
RedNote is a TikTok competitor popular with young people in China, Taiwan and other Mandarin-speaking populations.
It has about 300 million monthly users and looks like a combination of TikTok and Instagram. It allows users, mostly young urban women, to exchange lifestyle tips from dating to fashion.
Supreme Court justices are due to rule on a law that set a 19 January deadline for TikTok to either sell its US operations or face a ban in the country.
TikTok has repeatedly said that it will not sell its US business and its lawyers have warned that a ban will violate free speech protections for the platform's 170 million users in the US.
Meanwhile, RedNote has welcomed its new users with open arms. There are 63,000 posts on the topic "TikTok refugee", where new users are taught how to navigate the app and how to use basic Chinese phrases.
"To our Chinese hosts, thanks for having us - sorry in advance for the chaos," a new US user wrote.
But like TikTok, there have also been reports of censorship on RedNote when it comes to criticism of the Chinese government.
In Taiwan, public officials are restricted from using RedNote due to alleged security risks of Chinese software.
As more US users joined RedNote, some Chinese users have also jokingly referred to themselves as "Chinese spies", a reference to US officials' concerns that TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.
RedNote's Chinese name, Xiaohongshu, translates to Little Red Book, but the app says it is not a reference to Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's book of quotations with the same name.
But security concerns have not deterred users from flocking to RedNote.
Sarah Fotheringham, a 37-year-old school canteen worker in Utah, says the move to RedNote is a way to "snub" the government.
"I'm just a simple person living a simple life," Ms Fotheringham told the BBC in a RedNote message.
"I don't have anything that China doesn't, and if they want my data that bad they can have it."
Marcus Robinson, a fashion designer in Virginia, said he created his RedNote account over the weekend to share his clothing brand and "be ahead of the curve".
Mr Robinson told the BBC he was was only "slightly hesitant" about accepting the terms and conditions of using the app, which were written in Mandarin.
"I wasn't able to actually read them so that was a little concerning to me," he said, "but I took my chance."
While a ban will not make TikTok disappear immediately, it will require app stores to stop offering it - which could kill it over time.
But even if TikTok dodges a ban, it may prove helpless against users moving to alternative platforms.
Some social media users tell the BBC that they find themselves scrolling on RedNote more than TikTok.
"Even if TikTok does stay I will continue to use my platform I've created on RedNote," Tennessee tech worker Sydney Crawley told the BBC.
Ms Crawley said she got over 6,000 followers within 24 hours of creating her RedNote account.
"I will continue to try to build a following there and see what new connections, friendships, or opportunities it brings me."
Ms Fotheringham, the canteen worker, said RedNote "opened my world up to China and its people".
"I am now able to see things I never would have seen," she said. "Regular Chinese people, finding out about their culture, life, school, everything, it has been so much fun."
The community so far has been "super welcoming", said Mr Robinson, the designer.
"I love RedNote so far … I just need to learn how to speak Mandarin!"
The US is moving to impose tough new restrictions on the export of advanced computer chips and other artificial intelligence (AI) technology to dozens of countries - not just the handful it has long identified as adversaries.
Officials say the new rules are intended to make sure the "the world's AI runs on American rails" and keep it out of the hands of "malicious actors" who could use it to threaten the United States.
The Biden administration said 18 allies and partners, including the UK, were exempt from the restrictions.
The announcement, days before President Joe Biden is due to leave office, has drawn fierce criticism from some top US tech companies who warn it will only aid competitors.
"In the wrong hands, powerful AI systems have the potential to exacerbate significant national security risks, including by enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, supporting powerful offensive cyber operations, and aiding human rights abuses, such as mass surveillance," the US Commerce Department said on Monday.
Chip-maker Nvidia - among the companies whose business would be most affected by the plan - said if implemented, it would not "mitigate any threat" but only "weaken America's global competitiveness" and undermine its innovation.
"By attempting to rig market outcomes and stifle competition—the lifeblood of innovation—the Biden Administration's new rule threatens to squander America's hard-won technological advantage," the company said.
The new restrictions face a 120-day comment period before going into effect.
Exports to countries such as China, Russia and Iran already face strict controls.
The new rules set caps for exports of certain technology to most countries around the world and require US companies to get authorisation for sales there.
Washington's closest allies would be exempt from the limits.
Orders under a certain level of computing power also would not require a license or count toward the caps under the plan. Most orders, such as those from universities or medical organisations, fall under that threshold of 1,700 advanced GPUs, the Biden administration said.
The rules also outline a process for foreign governments to sign agreements, in exchange for looser restrictions.
Biden administration officials said they had discussed the regulations with the incoming administration.
But Jonathan Kewley, co-head of the tech group at the Clifford Chance law firm, said he did not think the rules would survive once Trump enters office, noting that one of Trump's key campaign promises was to change the government's approach to AI regulation.
"It is absolutely sure that the Trump administration will wind back a lot of what Biden has put out there," he said. "There's going to be a big play for innovation and growth in the US and a drawback from the approach to AI regulation."
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech policy thinktank, said it thought the US would be better served by a strategy focused on competition, instead of "containment".
"By pressuring other nations to choose between the United States and China, the administration risks alienating key partners and inadvertently strengthening China's position in the global AI ecosystem," vice president Daniel Castro said.
"Confronted with such an ultimatum, many countries may opt for the side offering them uninterrupted access to the AI technologies vital for their economic growth and digital futures".
A small-time Chinese actor had been missing for two days in Thailand when his girlfriend decided to ask the internet for help.
"We have no choice but to borrow the power of the internet to amplify our voices," Wang Xing's girlfriend wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on 5 January.
The plea went viral after it was shared by some of China's biggest celebrities, including singer Lay Zhang and actor Qin Lan.
Wang, 31, had the country's attention - as well as that of his government.
On 7 January, Wang was rescued from a scam centre across the border, in Myanmar - news met with a wave of relief.
But the swift yet mysterious rescue has also led to questions about the fate of those who remain trapped inside the scam centres. The case is a grim reminder of the thriving criminal businesses that still entrap hundreds of thousands of people, forcing them into cybercrime.
Families of Chinese nationals who may be being held in one of these compounds have started a petition urging their government to help them too. The petition document is shared online for anyone to fill in cases of their missing ones. The number of cases has already climbed to more than 600 from the initial 174, and is still increasing.
Wang told the police that there were around 50 Chinese nationals held in the same place as him alone.
"We are desperate to know if the remaining Chinese nationals [who were] with him have been rescued," reads one top-liked comment on Weibo.
"Other people's lives are also lives."
Wang went missing on 3 January in the Thai border city of Mae Sot, which has become a hub for trafficking people into Myanmar.
He had flown to Bangkok for an acting job offered to him on WeChat. The person claimed to represent a major Thai entertainment company, according to Thai police.
The actor later told reporters that he had been on a shoot in Thailand around 2018 and did not suspect this was any different. But he was picked up in a car and taken to Myanmar, where his head was shaved and he was forced to undergo training on how to scam people on phone calls.
His girlfriend wrote on Weibo that she and his brother tried to track him down and get police involved, but "there had been little results": Chinese police had yet to register a case, while the embassy in Thailand had simply advised Wang's family to approach the police in Mae Sot.
But as discussions of Wang's whereabouts grew louder on Chinese social media, authorities began to act. The case was finally registered, and the embassy told the media they had attached great importance to the case.
The next day, Thai and Chinese officials announced that Wang had been rescued.
His first public appearance was alongside Thai police, but he said little, leaving officials to explain what happened.
Details of the rescue itself have been scant. Officials have not even revealed which scam centre he had been in as conflicting versions of the story spread.
One reason could be that withholding more information was part of the deal that led to his release, according to a source who has previously rescued people from scam centres who did not wish to be named.
He told the BBC that these scam centres are keen to avoid attention. That meant releasing Wang was the better option, compared to risking the whole operation because of the attention his disappearance was drawing.
Beijing too wanted to end the discussion about Wang's case. It wants its citizens to believe it has done enough and that scam centres along its border are no longer an issue.
A joint operation by China and ethnic insurgent groups back in 2023 did seek to shut down scam centres in Myanmar's Shan State.
But those on the ground — NGOs and independent rescuers—tell the BBC the scams are still growing, with construction expanding into even more remote regions.
These days, the area along the border with Thailand is the main centre for international scams in Myanmar, taking advantage of partnerships with the various armed groups competing for power there.
New scam compounds have been built south of the town of Myawaddy, close to the Thai border, where the worst cases of forced labour and other abuses are now being reported.
This has put huge pressure on Thailand, whose economy relies heavily on tourism, especially from China.
Wang's case has had some Chinese wondering about how safe it is to travel to Thailand. "It feels like after this Wang Xing incident, there will be fewer people going to South East Asia, including Thailand," reads a popular Weibo post.
His rescue may well be a success for Thai officials and a win for Beijing, but it has not ended the discussion, or the spotlight on scam compounds.
On Thursday, lines from a recent interview of his were trending on Weibo: "actor Wang Xing claims he could not eat much food in Myanmar and did not have time to use the toilet".
His brief disappearance has only exposed how common the danger has become: others in the Chinese film industry have since shared their own accounts of being duped by scammers offering them jobs in Thailand.
Thai police are reported to be now investigating the case of another Chinese model disappeared at Thai-Myanmar border, after he was promised work in Thailand.
The China Federation of Radio and Television Association said in a statement Tuesday that "many actors" have gone abroad on fake promises of film shoots, and as a result suffered "serious damage to their personal and financial security".
"We are very concerned about this," the statement said.
"Please save [Wang] from danger and bring to life the story of No More Bets," Wang's girlfriend urged in her Weibo post - a reference to the protagonists of the 2023 movie being rescued after they were trafficked into scam centres.
Wang - like those in the film - is among a lucky minority.
Hundreds of thousands of victims from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore remain stuck in sprawling scam compounds with little hope of rescue.
But ahead of the Lunar New Year, when throngs of Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand, the Thai government is eager to emphasise that the country is a safe destination. Thai police also insist that no Thais were involved in Wang's trafficking.
Wang, freshly freed from his ordeal, has no worries about returning to Thailand, a police officer told reporters on Wednesday.
In fact, he added, Wang has promised to come back.
Inflation, interest rates and tariffs mean 2025 is shaping up to be an intriguing year for the global economy. One in which growth is expected to remain at a "stable yet underwhelming" 3.2%, according to the International Monetary Fund. So what might that mean for all of us?
Exactly a week before Christmas there was a welcome gift for millions of American borrowers - a third interest rate cut in a row.
However, stock markets fell sharply because the world's most powerful central banker, US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, made clear they shouldn't expect as many further cuts in 2025 as they might have hoped for, as the battle against inflation continues.
"From here, it's a new phase, and we're going to be cautious about further cuts," he said.
In recent years, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have led to sharp price rises around the world, and although prices are still increasing the pace has slowed markedly.
Despite that, November saw inflation push up in the US, eurozone and UK to to 2.7%, 2.2% and 2.6% respectively. It highlights the difficulties many central banks face in the so-called "last mile" of their battle against inflation. Their target is 2%, and it might be easier to achieve if economies are growing.
However, the biggest difficulty for global growth "is uncertainty, and the uncertainty is coming from what may come out of the US under Trump 2.0", says Luis Oganes, who is head of global macro research at investment bank JP Morgan.
Since Donald Trump won November's election he's continued to threaten new tariffs against key US trading partners, China, Canada and Mexico.
"The US is going into a more isolationist policy stance, raising tariffs, trying to provide more effective protection to US manufacturing," says Mr Oganes.
"And even though that is going to support US growth, at least in the short term, certainly it's going to hurt many countries that rely on trade with the US."
New tariffs "could be particularly devastating" for Mexico and Canada, but also be "harmful" to the US, according to Maurice Obstfeld, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, and a previous economic advisor to President Obama.
He cites car manufacturing as an example of an industry that "depends on a supply chain that is spread across the three countries. If you disrupt that supply chain, you have massive disruptions in the auto market".
That has the potential to push up prices, reduce demand for products, and hurt company profits, which could in turn drag down investment levels, he explains.
Mr Obstfeld, who is now with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, adds: "Introducing these types of tariffs into a world that is heavily dependent on trade could be harmful to growth, could throw the world into recession."
The tariffs threats have also played a role in forcing the resignation of Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Even though the majority of what the US and China sell each other is already subject to tariffs from Donald Trump's first term in office, the threat of new tariffs is a key challenge for the world's second-biggest economy in the year ahead.
In his new year address President Xi Jinping acknowledged the "challenges of uncertainties in the external environment", but said the economy was on "an upward trajectory".
Exports of cheap goods from its factories are crucial to China's economy. A drop off in demand because tariffs push prices up would compound the many domestic challenges, including weak consumer spending and business investment, that the government is trying to tackle.
Those efforts are helping, according to the World Bank, which at the end of December increased its forecast for China's growth from 4.1% to 4.5% in 2025.
Beijing has yet to set a growth target for 2025, but thinks it's on course for 5% last year.
"Addressing challenges in the property sector, strengthening social safety nets, and improving local government finances will be essential to unlocking a sustained recovery," according to the World Bank's country director for China, Mara Warwick.
Those domestic struggles mean the Chinese government is "more welcoming" of foreign investment, according to Michael Hart, who is president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
Tensions between the US and China, and tariffs have grown under the Biden presidency, meaning some companies have looked to move production elsewhere.
However, Mr Hart points out that "it took 30 to 40 years for China to emerge as such a strong supplier manufacturer", and whilst "companies have tried to mitigate some of those risks... no one's prepared now to completely replace China."
One industry that is likely to continue to be at the heart of global trade battles is electric vehicles. More than 10 million were made in China last year, and that dominance led the US, Canada and European Union (EU) to impose tariffs on them.
Beijing says they're unfair, and is challenging them at the World Trade Organization.
However, it's the prospect of Donald Trump imposing tariffs that is concerning the EU.
"Restrictions on trade, protectionist measures, are not conducive to growth, and ultimately have an impact on inflation that is largely uncertain," the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, said last month. "[But] in the short term, it's probably net inflationary."
Germany and France are the traditional engines of Europe's economic growth. But their poor performance amid political instability over the past year means that, despite a recent uptick in growth, the eurozone risks losing momentum in the year ahead.
That is, unless consumers spend more and businesses increase their investments.
In the UK higher prices could also come as a result of tax and wage increases, according to one survey.
One barrier to cutting eurozone interest rates is that domestic inflation, which focuses on the prices of items that are less prone to influence from external factors, remains at 4.2%. That's more than double the overall inflation target of 2%, and strong wage pressure has been a barrier getting it down further.
It's been similar in the US according to Sander van 't Noordende, the chief executive of Randstad, the world's biggest recruitment firm.
"In the US, for instance, [wage inflation] is still going to be around 4% in 2024. In some Western European countries, it's even higher than that.
"I think there's two factors there. There's the talent scarcity, but there's also, of course, the inflation and people demanding to get more for the work they do."
Mr van 't Noordende adds that many companies are passing those extra costs on to their customers, which is adding upward pressure to general inflation.
A slowdown in the global jobs market reflects a lack of "dynamism" from companies and economic growth is key to reversing that, he says.
"If the economy is doing well, businesses are growing, they start hiring. People see interesting opportunities, and you just start seeing people moving around".
One person starting a new role in 2025 is Donald Trump, and a raft of economic plans including tax cuts and deregulation could help the US economy to continue to thrive.
Whilst much won't be revealed before he's back in the White House on 20 January, "everything points to continued US exceptionalism at the expense of the rest of the world," says JP Morgan's Mr Oganes.
He's hopeful that inflation and interest rates can continue to come down around the world, but warns that "a lot of it will depend on what are the policies that get deployed, particularly from the US."
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Nell Diamond, CEO of Hill House, shares how her small business skyrocketed to global success with a simple, singular product.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hill House Home's Nap Dress became more than just a piece of clothing – it was a symbol of comfort and versatility for a world in flux. What started as a direct-to-consumer bedding and home business in 2016 had grown into a fashion movement, reflecting how a single dress could adapt to your body over the years and transform depending on the demands of the day.
The company introduced the Nap Dress in 2019, a design that leaned into the idea of smocked fabric from the 1950s and reimagined it with modern, universal appeal. It didn't take long for the dress – now with over 50 designs – to go viral on social media and become common in many closets around the world.
"Our crazy growth happened from 2019 to 2020 – right in the middle of quarantine and while I was pregnant with twins," CEO Nell Diamond tells the BBC. "I could obviously see how much the business was changing internally from the sales volume, but one really pivotal moment for me was working from home, sitting in my bedroom in New York City, and looking out the window to see someone walking down the street wearing one of our dresses.
"Entrepreneurship can feel really lonely and insular, so to realise that people know about your little project is incredibly rewarding. I'll never forget that moment."
Since then, the company has sold over one million Nap Dresses, expanded into categories like outerwear and swimwear, and opened five retail locations across the United States, from New York to Charleston. The brand's reach has also expanded within other retailers, including Shopbop and Saks. Hill House puts its current valuation at approximately $150m (£118m), although the BBC was unable to obtain an independent valuation.
The company has faced challenges, too, including navigating global supply chain disruptions during the pandemic and scaling operations to meet increased demand. But at a time when small businesses struggle to stand out amid economic uncertainty, Hill House's story underscores the importance of adaptability and building strong connections with consumers.
"We've had the biggest year in company history," Diamond said. "The business has continued to grow past even our optimistic plans."
Diamond's love of fashion started early, during her teenage years while attending the American School in London, UK. After graduating from Princeton University, she joined the trading desk of a finance firm, initially entering the same sector of business as her father Bob Diamond, the former CEO of Barclays bank. She quickly realised, however, that her passion lay elsewhere.
"I was always drawn to retail," she says. "I'd steal my friends' equity research papers to learn what companies were doing in the retail space. I realised that this thing which started as a guilty pleasure – loving fashion – turned out to be a viable career opportunity."
Now, as CEO, Diamond oversees every aspect of the business, from growth strategy to creative direction. Below, she talks with the BBC about the company's biggest challenges, its rapid evolution into a lifestyle brand and plans for the future.
Hill House dates back to a startup incubator you joined while in business school at Yale University. How did you turn the idea into a fully fledged business?
I wanted to bring a design-forward point of view to the home category. We started with just home products: bedding, pillows, a little bit of pyjamas and robes. But I really focused on the home and, in particular, the bedroom, drawing off of some of the design elements of my London upbringing – great British brands like [interior decorating firm] Colfax and Fowler and amazing prints that I had seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
There were many businesses launching direct-to-consumer [approaches] and talking about cutting out the middleman. I wanted to do the same thing and … start small and focus on just one or two products. While I was at business school, I spent time on the little parts of starting a business – trademarks, legal documents, hiring my first few contractors and setting up our Instagram account. After graduating, I spent the first couple of years bootstrapping the business and really focusing on meeting our customers. It was a very small team in a co-working space in New York City.
By 2019, everything dramatically changed overnight. We went from low and slow and careful growth to the success of the Nap Dress. Within a few months, our business was majority a fashion business based off the strength of this one product line. We went from five people to 30 people and from one store to now having almost six stores. It really changed the scale of the business. I remember our very first order was for a hundred units and being petrified that we wouldn't actually sell them. To have sold a million of them now is really crazy.
Why do you think this one particular product, the Nap Dress, resonates with so many people?
It's so many different things. We didn't invent smocking, which is what makes our dresses most identifiable. My grandmother was wearing smock dresses in the 1950s. Juicy Couture [the Los Angeles-based clothing brand] popularised smocking and terry cloth in the 2000s. But I think what was so important to us was figuring out a very proprietary type of smocking that could stretch with you. I wore it all throughout my twin pregnancy and then the snap back. It works with your changing body and throughout the day – it feels comfortable but you still look kind of put together.
When we first launched the Nap Dress, we would have somebody email in and say: "Oh, my friend was wearing this dress at a dinner party, or at work or at preschool pickup, and I have to have it." It was exacerbated by social media, but organic social media, which is the important distinction there. Even today, 30% of orders on our site come from word-of-mouth referrals.
What are some challenges you faced in the early days that you had to overcome?
There were – and continues to be – challenges every day. Early on and certainly during Covid, there were constant disruptions in the global supply chain, whether it was that one factory had to shut down or another one had delayed shipping.
In 2021, we expected we'd be able to have all the products here by a certain date for a product drop. There were crazy delays at ports all over due to shipping freight issues. That can affect your entire summer selling, your entire quarter of selling. In this increasingly online, seamless-delivery Amazon-dominated world, it is easy to forget how many human touch points there are and how fragile they can be. We internally would get so anxious and nervous any time one of those human touch points had a blockage.
But when we told our customers what was happening, people loved having that insight into the humanity behind the products they're actually buying. I think it made it feel more personal to them. And that might be one of the many reasons why we have such a loyal customer base – we let them into that side of the business. It's clear that it's not so robotic and transactional.
How do you check that manufacturing partners and suppliers are abiding by the highest standards?
We have manufacturers in 12 countries across nearly all continents. It's all about tracking at every stage of the development process. We take that very seriously. We work with an organisation called Transparency One that helps us track across our supply chain at every stage and audit what our manufacturers are reporting. We've had many of the same manufacturers since day one and developed those human relationships with the people who make our clothes. One of our main manufacturers is the same person who we sent those first hundred unit orders to, and they should feel a tremendous amount of ownership over the growth that we've seen over the past couple years.
You've publicly said before that the business is very reliant on global trading routes and global supply chains. Now given that President-elect Trump has campaigned on raising tariffs for imports, are you concerned about how this might affect costs and global trade more generally?
I can only speak for our own company, but I think that tariffs are certainly something we are thinking about.
How have you been expanding the brand?
We have a concept called Nells at our store in Charleston, South Carolina, inspired by my British upbringing. It's a pick-and-mix candy station, and there's a coffee and fountain soda bar, a nod to the Americana roots of the brand as well. It's never been easier to shop online, so if you're asking customers to come into your store, you should be delivering an experience that makes it worth it.
The home category is still really big for us now. But it just seems small in comparison to how all the fashion is doing. A new category we recently launched is swim – and that's performing really well. We asked what else our customers wanted to see from Hill House, and swim was an early answer.
The fashion world can be notoriously fickle. How can you ensure your products remain relevant across changes in fashion on the street?
We focus on our core customer, so I'm not so worried about what's relevant for anyone except for them. It can be easy in fashion to get caught up in a trend cycle, but our core customer is really focused on cute clothes that make them feel great and carry them through all of their different things that they have to do that day. Within that formula, we can deliver a product that makes them happy and not be so focused on a constant cycle of newness. It's about building pieces that last in their wardrobe.
What advice do you have for smaller businesses hoping to expand and build?
One of the most important pieces of advice I got when I was first starting out was to keep your blinders on. I remember constantly playing the comparison game in the early days and looking at other brands, Instagrams or advertisements or stores, thinking: "We should have done that and we should have done this, and why can't we do that?" That was never productive for me.
I had a real unlock when I started to tune out some of that noise and focus on what we have going on internally and how to make that as good as it possibly could be and can be. I mute a lot of people on Instagram if I'm getting a negative feeling from it. I always talk about putting the mute button on in real life, too, if something's not serving you in that way.
More like this:
• The 'missing middle' of small businesses
• Meet the founder of the slogan-jumper brand celebrities love
• Why TikTok creators are so good at getting people to buy things
Where do you see Hill House in the next few years? Do you think the Nap Dress will always be the centerpiece of the business?
My perception is that the Nap Dress will always be a hero product for us. But the growth right now is coming out of these new products, categories and from the retail channel. It's really exciting because I think that our customers have given us permission to go into not only these other rooms of their home but other activities they're doing with swim and outerwear.
I'm also incredibly bullish on retail. I would love to open more stores. We're very much a one-year-at-a-time brand, so I'd like to start with a couple more. But because we are very customer led, I'll let them tell us [what's next].
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Apple's board has asked its investors to vote against a proposal to end its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.
It comes after a conservative group, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), called on the technology giant to abolish its DEI policies, saying they expose firms to "litigation, reputational and financial risks".
Apple's directors say the NCPPR's proposal is unnecessary because the company has appropriate checks and balances in place.
Other major US firms, including Meta and Amazon, have rolled back DEI programmes ahead of the return to the White House this month of Donald Trump, who has been highly critical of DEI policies.
"The proposal is unnecessary as Apple already has a well-established compliance program," the firm's filing to investors said.
Apple's board also said the DEI rollback plan "inappropriately seeks to micromanage the Company's programs and policies by suggesting a specific means of legal compliance."
NCPPR's proposal is set to be put to a vote by shareholders at Apple's annual general meeting on 25 February.
Conservative groups have threatened to take legal action against major companies over their DEI programmes, saying such policies are at odds with a Supreme Court decision in 2023 against affirmative action at universities.
Last week, Facebook owner Meta became the latest US company to roll back its DEI initiatives, joining a growing list of major firms that includes Amazon, Walmart and McDonald's.
In a memo to staff about the decision - which affects, hiring, supplier and training efforts - Meta cited a "shifting legal and policy landscape".
It also referred to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling.
Meta's boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has been moving to reconcile with Trump since his election in November.
The firm has donated $1m (£820,000) to the President-elect's inauguration fund, hired a Republican as his public affairs chief and announced it is getting rid of fact-checkers on Meta's social media platforms.
Mr Zuckerberg is not alone among top executives making such moves in the face of mounting pressure from conservative groups.
The pound has dropped to its lowest value against the dollar since November 2023 while government borrowing costs have continued to rise.
The pound fell to $1.21 on Monday morning as the recent sell-off continued.
Meanwhile, the rate at which the government can borrow money - known as the yield - rose again, hitting its highest level since 2008 by one measure.
Borrowing costs for many countries are rising across the world, though some have said decisions made in the Budget have made the UK particularly vulnerable.
Governments generally borrow money by selling bonds to big investors, such as pension funds. UK government bonds are known as gilts.
The yield on the 10-year gilt - the interest rate at which the government pays back a decade-long loan to investors - has risen to 4.86%, its highest level for 17 years.
The 30-year gilt rose to 5.42%, its highest level in 27 years.
Government debt costs in Germany, France, Spain and Italy also rose on Monday.
Some experts say investors are reacting to the re-election of former US President Donald Trump and his talk of tariffs.
There is concern this will lead to inflation being more persistent than previously thought, and therefore interest rates will not come down as quickly as expected, both in the US and elsewhere.
Strong US jobs data released on Friday also added to expectations that US rates will stay higher for longer, and this has helped to strengthen the value of the dollar against other currencies.
However, Emma Wall, head of platform investors at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the UK's problems were not purely caused by global issues, arguing that measures announced in the Budget have stoked inflation.
"If you can get inflation under control, you will see interest rates come down in the UK," she added.
At the weekend, Chancellor Rachel Reeves defended her decision to travel to China to improve economic ties with the country at a time when gilt yields were rising.
The Conservatives said she had "fled to China", but Reeves said agreements reached in Beijing would be worth £600m to the UK over the next five years.
Reeves also faced questions over her self-imposed fiscal rules on government debt and spending, which she said on Saturday were "non-negotiable".
Despite her commitment, some have questioned whether she will be able to achieve the targets without making further cuts or tax rises because of how government debt costs have risen.
On Monday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer doubled-down on the fiscal rule commitment. He also defended Reeves after being asked if she would still be chancellor by the next election.
"She has my full confidence. She has the full confidence of the entire party."
Confidence 'bruised'
The government has made growing the UK's economy a key objective, but recent figures indicate the economy saw zero growth between July and September, while it contracted during October.
Businesses have warned that Budget measures, such as the rise in employer National Insurance contributions, together with the higher National Living Wage could lead to job cuts and price rises.
Rupert Soames, chair of the Confederation of British Business (CBI), said the picture was "not good" but insisted that firms and investors were still somewhat upbeat.
"I wouldn't say confidence is gone," he told the BBC's Today programme. "I'd say it's bruised."
However, he said the government was making the situation worse by introducing the Employment Rights Bill, which he said contained "powerful dissuaders to employment".
Unions argue the protections introduced in the bill, such as banning fire and rehire, make employees safer, while the government has said it "represents the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation".
However, Mr Soames said the Bill would lead to job losses. "Businesses will not only not employ, they will let people go," he said.
As part of its push for growth, the government revealed plans on Monday to make the UK the global capital of artificial intelligence through measures such as building a new supercomputer.
Starmer said the technology has "vast potential" for rejuvenating UK public services, but the Conservatives called the plans "uninspiring" and criticised Labour's "economic mismanagement".
UK laws on internet safety are "very uneven" and "unsatisfactory", Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said, following calls from campaigners to tighten the rules.
On Saturday, Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who took her own life at 14 after seeing harmful content online, said the UK was "going backwards" on the issue.
In a letter to the PM, Mr Russell argued that the Online Safety Act, which aims to force tech giants to take more responsibility for their sites' content, needed fixing and said a "duty of care" should be imposed on the firms.
Speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Kyle expressed his "frustration" with the Act, which was passed by the previous Conservative government in 2023.
The Conservative government had originally included in the legislation plans to compel social media companies to remove some "legal-but-harmful" content, such as posts promoting eating disorders.
However the proposal triggered a backlash from critics, including the current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who were concerned it could lead to censorship.
In July 2022, Badenoch, who was not then a minister, said the bill was in "no fit state to become law" adding: "We should not be legislating for hurt feelings."
Another Conservative MP, David Davis, said it risked "the biggest accidental curtailment of free speech in modern history".
The plan was dropped for adult social media users and instead companies were required to give users more control to filter out content they did not want to see. The law still expects companies to protect children from legal-but-harmful content.
Kyle said the section on legal-but-harmful content had been taken out of the bill adding: "So I inherited a landscape where we have a very uneven, unsatisfactory legislative settlement."
He did not commit to making changes to the current legislation but said he was "very open-minded" on the subject.
He also said the act contained some "very good powers" he was using to "assertively" tackle new safety concerns and that in the coming months ministers would get the powers to make sure online platforms were providing age-appropriate content.
Companies that did not comply with the law would face "very strident" sanctions, he said.
Following the interview, a Whitehall source told the BBC the government was not planning to repeal the Online Safety Act, or pass a second act, but to work within what ministers believe are its limitations.
Ministers are not ruling out further legislation but wanted "to be agile and quick" to keep up with fast-moving trends, a source said.
In his letter, Ian Russell argued that "ominous" changes in the tech industry put greater pressure on the government to act.
He said Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X, were "at the leading edge of a wholesale recalibration of the industry".
He accused Zuckerberg of moving away from safety towards a "laissez-faire, anything-goes model" and "back towards the harmful content that Molly was exposed to".
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg said Meta would be getting rid of fact checkers, and instead adopt a system – already introduced by X - of allowing users to add "community notes" to social media posts they deemed to be untrue.
This marked a change from Meta's previous approach, introduced in 2016, whereby third party moderators would check posts on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to be false or misleading.
Content flagged as inaccurate would be moved lower in users' feeds and accompanied by labels offering viewers more information on the subject.
Defending the new system, Zuckerberg said moderators were "too politically biased" and it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression".
The step comes as Meta seeks to improve relations with incoming US President Donald Trump who has previously accused the company of censoring right-wing voices.
Zuckerberg said the change - which only applies in the US - would mean content moderators would "catch less bad stuff" but would also reduce the number of "innocent" posts being removed.
Responding to Russell's criticism, a Meta spokesperson told the BBC there was "no change to how we treat content that encourages suicide, self-injury, and eating disorders" and said the company would "continue to use our automated systems to scan for that high-severity content".
Asked about the change, Kyle said the announcement was "an American statement for American service users" adding: "There is one thing that has not changed and that is the law of this land."
"If you come and operate in this country you abide by the law, and the law says illegal content must be taken down," he said.
Rules in the Online Safety Act, due to come into force later this year, compel social media firms to show that they are removing illegal content - such as child sexual abuse, material inciting violence and posts promoting or facilitating suicide.
The law also says companies have to protect children from harmful material including pornography, material promoting self-harm, bullying and content encouraging dangerous stunts.
Platforms will be expected to adopt "age assurance technologies" to prevent children from seeing harmful content.
The law also requires companies to take action against illegal, state-sponsored disinformation. If their services are likely to be accessed by children they should also take steps to protect users against misinformation.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has defended her decision to travel to China to improve economic ties at a time when soaring government borrowing costs threaten to squeeze UK public finances.
She says she wants a long-term relationship with China that is "squarely in our national interest" and on Saturday said agreements reached in Beijing would be worth £600m to the UK over the next five years.
Her trip has been overshadowed by UK borrowing costs hitting a 16-year high and a fall in the value of the pound, with the Conservatives accusing Reeves of having "fled to China".
Speaking during a visit to UK bike maker Brompton's Beijing store, Reeves insisted she would not alter her economic plans.
Reeves met Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng in Beijing, discussing trade and investment opportunities as part of efforts to grow the UK economy and raise living standards.
Following the talks, the UK Treasury said both countries had agreed to deeper co-operation in trade, financial services, investment and climate issues.
China is the world's second largest economy and the UK's fourth largest single trading partner. According to the Treasury, exports to the country supported more than 455,000 UK jobs in 2020.
Reeves told reporters in Beijing she would "take action" to ensure she met her fiscal rules following a rise in borrowing costs.
She said: "I have been really clear that our fiscal rules are non-negotiable, that we will pay for day-to-day spending through tax receipts and we will get debt down as a share of GDP."
But the market movements create a potential problem for Reeves if she wants to meet her self-imposed rules.
Governments generally spend more than they raise in tax so they borrow money to fill the gap, usually by selling bonds to investors.
But UK borrowing costs have been rising in recent months and this week the cost of borrowing over 10 years hit its highest level since 2008. The pound also dropped on Friday to below $1.22.
The market turbulence also comes as growth in the UK economy has been stagnant and businesses are bracing themselves for tax rises due to come into effect in April.
The Treasury said Reeves' visit to China delivered on a "commitment to explore deeper economic co-operation" between Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and President Xi, made last year.
BBC economics editor Faisal Islam said other European nations such as Spain have encouraged China not just to set up factories but to transfer its advanced battery technology, for example, into Europe.
He said the UK now risks upsetting the new US administration of Donald Trump if it encourages China's role as part of its own green growth strategy.
During Saturday's meeting with the Chinese vice-premier, Reeves discussed Hong Kong and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
She said: "We discussed that there will need to be areas where we disagree and it is important that we can have open and frank exchange on these issues.
"That includes concerns on national and economic security, market access and impacts of subsidies and industrial policy to ensure a level playing field exists."
Tory MP and former security minister Tom Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the timing of Reeves' visit to China was questionable.
"She's going at a time when her Budget has sacked the economy, we've got debt rates going up, and she looks like she's going with a begging bowl, not with a trading deal," he said. "That's a real problem because actually it makes the UK look more vulnerable, and others around the world will see it too."
Tugendhat said Reeves had not made it "clear at all" what she has hoping to gain through her visit.
"We don't use the second most important person in government to do anything other than to fundamentally change a relationship," he said. "Well, she hasn't told us what that change is."
Liberal Democrat deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper urged the chancellor to return to the UK "to urgently address the ongoing crisis in the markets and announce a serious plan for growth".
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the UK had "blown hot and cold" in its relations with China over recent decades, suggesting the Chinese government might be "pretty sceptical" about British policies towards it.
On the chancellor's fiscal rules, Mr Johnson said it would be very difficult for her to abandon them.
He said: "She's really nailed her colours to the mast there and we have seen that the markets are pretty concerned about the UK position. That is partly because we are so dependent on international flows of finance to finance our debt and trade deficit."
In addition to expanding current financial services trade in Shanghai, the government has said talks would look to "bring down barriers" that British businesses face in trying to export or expand to China.
Reeves is joined by Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, Financial Conduct Authority chief executive Nikhil Rathi and other senior representatives from some of Britain's biggest financial services firms.
But the visit also comes after MPs challenged Chinese-founded fashion retailer Shein over its supply chains amid allegations of forced labour and human rights abuses. Shein has denied the claims.
On Tuesday, a senior lawyer representing Shein repeatedly refused to say whether the company sold products containing cotton from the Xinjiang region, an area in which China has been accused of subjecting Uyghur Muslims to forced labour.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, chairman of the China-British Business Council, said the chancellor was right to travel to China.
"She is doing exactly the right thing in the right way with her eyes wide open, stressing national security, stressing our [UK] values, stressing human rights," he said.
He told the Today programme: "A grown-up, confident country engages with serious players around the world, we agree to disagree, we stand up for our values."
He said the government's approach "is very similar to the last government's policy which is to compete, to challenge and to co-operate. That's what we need to do.
"China has 800 million middle-class people who want to buy British products, are interested in British savings and pension products – it's madness not to engage."
An impression - or possibly a fear - that 20-somethings are still hanging about in the family home is based on fact, an influential think-tank has concluded.
The proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds still living with their parents has increased by more than a third in nearly two decades, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The living at home trend has been driven by men, and those in their late 20s, researchers found.
High renting costs and rising house prices were the most significant reasons for the change.
Still filling the nest
In 2006, some 13% of people in the UK aged between 25 and 34 were living with their parents.
By last year, that had increased to 18%, according to the IFS - an independent economic think-tank.
That equates to about 450,000 more young adults still living in the family home - with the increase concentrated on those in their late 20s, researchers found.
Of 25 to 34-year-olds, men were more likely than women to be living at home, at 23% compared with 15%.
The IFS said that this age group had changed over recent decades, so had become less likely to be married and have children. They were also more ethnically diverse, and UK-born young people from Bangladeshi and Indian backgrounds were more likely to live with their parents.
The peak of adult children living at home was during the pandemic, when more than a fifth of 25 to 34-year-olds did so.
Now, in more normal times, parents may hope their grown-up children would fly the nest, but many of the 20-somethings would wish they could afford to do so.
The IFS said finances were a significant sticking point, with rising rents and house prices fuelling the trend.
One 25-year-old who moved back into his parents' home was Zach Murphy, from London, who had previously shared a flat with two friends. He told the BBC about his concerns, as the BBC's new housing tracker showed the challenges facing the government's housebuilding target.
Studying for a masters degree in environmental science, Zach was inspired by the ambition of a better job, but renting on his own was "out of the question, unless you want to live in a shoe box", and buying still feels out of reach.
"It's getting harder to save. It feels like there is no hope getting on the housing ladder in London," he said.
Danny McGuire, 33, lives with his parents in Warrington, Cheshire.
He previously lived away, including some time living abroad, but moved back into the family home during the pandemic.
"It's quite a normal situation really," he told 5 Live Breakfast.
Danny, who works for a local council, said he wanted to live independently but had found himself with an "ever-dwindling" amount of leftover money each month to save for a house. Prices were rising and saving enough for a deposit on his own was difficult, he said.
"Eventually you've got to make a real hard decision of, actually, do I save for longer or do I bite the bullet, move back home and try and save more money consistently?" he said.
Some of his friends had been given money by their parents towards a deposit but Danny said his family was unable to help him financially - instead offering a place to stay so he could save up.
He pays his parents for rent and groceries but is able to save "significant chunks of money each month", and hopes to buy his own house this year.
Savings challenge
The IFS concluded that some young people could make savings by living at home. About 14% had accumulated more than £10,000 in a two-year period, compared with an estimated 10% of young adults in private rented accommodation.
However, this was not true across the board owing to the potential of higher commuting costs, or because some had moved owing to financial difficulties.
"For some, living with parents provides an opportunity to build up savings more quickly than if they were renting – which is an especially valuable advantage in high-cost places like London," said Bee Boileau, research economist at IFS and an author of the report.
"However, others are likely to be living at a parental home due to a bad shock of some kind – such as the end of a relationship or a redundancy – or simply because they cannot afford to live independently."
Housing is one of the biggest issues for people contacting us through Your Voice, Your BBC News.
Meta and Amazon are scaling back their diversity programmes, joining firms across corporate America that are retreating from hiring and training initiatives criticised by conservatives, citing legal and political risks.
The moves come shortly after Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it was ending a fact-checking programme criticised by President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans.
In a memo to staff, Meta said it was also scrapping its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts due to a "shifting legal and policy landscape".
Walmart and McDonalds are among the other firms to have made similar decisions regarding diversity efforts since Trump won re-election.
In its memo, which was first reported by Axios and confirmed by the BBC, Meta cited a Supreme Court ruling concerning race in college admissions, while also noting that the term "DEI" (diversity, equity and inclusion) had become "charged".
The tech giant said it would continue to look for diverse staff, but stop using its current procedure, which seeks to make selections from a pool of diverse candidates.
Amazon said in its internal announcement that it remained "dedicated to delivering inclusive experiences" but was altering its approach to focus on programmes with "proven outcomes".
"As part of this evolution, we've been winding down outdated programs and materials, and we're aiming to complete that by the end of 2024," Candi Castleberry, Amazon's VP of inclusive experiences and technology, wrote in the December note to staff, which was first reported by Bloomberg.
The changes include unifying "employee groups" under one umbrella, she said.
Financial firms JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, also pulled out of groups focused on risks from climate change this week.
The moves are a sign of the acceleration of a retreat that started two years ago, as Republicans ramped up attacks on firms such as BlackRock and Disney, accusing them of "woke" progressive activism and threatening political punishment.
Big brands such as Bud Light and Target also faced backlash and boycotts related to their efforts to appeal to LGBTQ customers.
Many of the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were put in place after the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in 2020 following George Floyd's murder at the hands of police.
Recent court decisions have bolstered critics of the programmes, who said that they were discriminatory.
The Supreme Court in 2023 struck down the right for private universities to consider race in admissions decisions.
Another court of appeals ruling invalidated a Nasdaq policy that would have required companies listed on that stock exchange to have at least one woman, racial minority or LGBTQ person on their board or explain why not.
Meta said it was also ending its efforts to work with suppliers who are "diverse" but will instead focus on small and medium-sized companies.
It also plans to stop offering "equity and inclusion" training and instead offer programmes that "mitigate bias for all, no matter your background".
Meta declined to comment on the memo, news of which was immediately met with both criticism and celebration.
"I'm sitting back and enjoying every second of this," said conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has taken credit for successfully campaigning against the policies at companies such as Ford, John Deere and Harley-Davidson.
LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign said workplace inclusion policies help to attract and retain top staff and had been "directly tied to long-term business growth".
"Those who abandon these commitments are shirking their responsibility to their employees, consumers, and shareholders" RaShawn "Shawnie" Hawkins, the senior director of the HRC Foundation's Workplace Equality Program said.
Meta's move comes just days after the tech giant said it was ending a fact-checking programme criticised by Trump and Republicans and elevated conservatives to key leadership positions.
In a nearly three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said he had always been concerned about being the arbiter of "truth" and was "ill-prepared" when the issue first heated up after the 2016 election.
He said the demands to take down information became unreasonable under the Biden administration. For example, he said the company faced pressure during the pandemic to remove content like statements about vaccine side effects.
That helped to generate a wider political backlash, he said, including his own.
"I feel like I have much greater command now of what I think the policies should be," he said, adding that he felt the US government "should be defending its companies ... not be the tip of the spear attacking".
"When the US does that to its tech industry, it's basically just open season around the rest of the world," he added.
The Biden administration has imposed some of its toughest sanctions yet on Russia, in a move designed to hit Moscow's energy revenue that is fuelling its war in Ukraine.
The measures target more than 200 entities and individuals ranging from traders and officials to insurance companies, as well as hundreds of oil tankers.
In a first since Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine, the UK will join the US in directly sanctioning energy companies Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas.
"Taking on Russian oil companies will drain Russia's war chest – and every ruble we take from Putin's hands helps save Ukrainian lives," said Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Some of the measures announced by the US Treasury on Friday will be put into law, meaning the incoming Trump administration will need to involve Congress if it wants to lift them.
Washington is also moving to severely limit who can legally purchase Russian energy, and going after what it called Moscow's "shadow fleet" of vessels that ship oil around the world.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the actions were "ratcheting up the sanctions risk associated with Russia's oil trade, including shipping and financial facilitation in support of Russia's oil exports."
President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was in "tough shape", adding that "it's really important that he not have any breathing room to continue to do the god-awful things he continues to do."
"It is probable that gas prices [in the United States] could increase as much as three or four cents a gallon," said the president.
But, he added, the measures were likely to "have profound effect on the growth of the Russian economy".
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, thanked the US for what he called its "bipartisan support".
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a price cap on oil has been among the key measures designed to curb Russia's energy exports.
But as Olga Khakova from the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Centre explained, its effectiveness was "diluted" because it was also trying to avoid the volume of Russian oil in the market dropping.
This was due to concerns about the impact reduced supply would have on the global economy.
But experts said the oil market was now in a healthier position.
"US oil production (and exports) are at record levels and rising, and therefore the price impact of taking Russian oil off the market, the objective of today's sanctions, will be attenuated," said Daniel Fried, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.
"The US government has gone after the Russian oil sector in a big way, intending to deal what may turn out to be a body blow," Fried added.
John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, said while the steps were "excellent", their implementation would be critical.
"Which means that it is the Trump administration that will determine if these measures do in fact put pressure on the Russian economy," he said.
US jobs growth unexpectedly surged last month, suggesting the world's largest's economy is not about to give up its claim to be the "envy of the world" anytime soon.
Here are three things we've learned from the latest numbers.
1. The US economy is stronger than expected
For years, there have been rumblings of concern about a potential downturn in the world's largest economy.
It has consistently proved the doubters wrong and last month was no exception.
The job gains in December were much higher than the roughly 160,000 analysts had expected: Employers added 256,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% in November to 4.1%, the Labor Department said.
Overall, 2.2 million jobs were added last year - an average of 186,000 a month.
That marked a slowdown from a year earlier, but is still a pretty healthy figure.
Average hourly pay was up 3.9% last month compared with December 2023. It's a solid gain but not one so strong as to worry analysts that fast wage growth will prompt price increases to suddenly accelerate.
Nathaniel Casey, investment strategist at wealth management firm Evelyn Partners, called it "the goldilocks of labour market releases".
2. There could be fewer interest rate cuts
The US central bank, which is charged with keeping both prices and employment stable, cut interest rates for the first time in more than four years in September, saying it wanted to head off signs of weakness in the jobs market.
It boosted hopes of many would-be borrowers in the US, who have been facing the highest borrowing costs in roughly two decades and were eager to see them come down.
But the strength of this month's data suggests fears about the jobs market may have been premature, removing pressure on the bank to act.
Interest rates on 10 and 30-year government debt in the US jumped after the report, with the latter topping 5%.
Investors had already been paring back bets on cuts this year, worried by signs that the bank's progress on stabilising prices was stalling.
There are also risks policies called for by President-elect Donald Trump, such as sweeping border taxes and migrant deportations, could raise prices or wages, putting pressure on inflation.
Even if inflation data due next week shows inflation - the rate of price increases -cooling, Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said this jobs data means she doesn't expect the Fed "to cut rates any time soon."
3. Higher US borrowing costs mean higher global rates too
The interest rates set by the US central bank have a powerful influence over borrowing costs for many loans - and not only in America.
Borrowing costs globally have increased in recent months, responding to expectations that US interest rates are likely to remain higher for longer.
In the UK, for example, the interest rate, or yield, on 30-year government debt hit the highest level in more than 25 years earlier this week, putting pressure on the government as it tries to work out its spending and borrowing plans.
While the latest US jobs figures might be good news for the US economy and its dollar, Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, warned they would be "punishing news for global bond markets, particularly UK gilts", referring to the name of government bonds, or debt.
"The peak for yields has not yet been reached, suggesting additional stresses that several markets, especially the UK, can ill afford," she said.
Even by the standards of the Reform UK party, it has been an interesting few weeks.
In December, its leader Nigel Farage flew to Florida to meet Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire, where they discussed a possible donation.
On Boxing Day, it announced its membership figures had surpassed those of the Conservatives. There was then a spat with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch over whether those numbers were correct.
Last Sunday in a post on his social media site X, Musk unexpectedly appeared to withdraw support from Farage saying he "doesn't have what it takes" to lead the party.
And on Friday, 10 Reform UK councillors in Derbyshire resigned from the party, in protest at Farage's leadership.
Reform UK members gathering on an icily cold Friday evening at Sandown Racecourse for the party's South East conference weren't disheartened by the possible loss of a rich and influential backer.
"I don't like this Musk chap," says Gloria Jane Martin.
She worked in cabin crew for British Airways until she reached the point where "I never wanted to meet passengers again" and started investing in property and campaigning in politics instead.
"He [Musk] has been dangling the money. I'm worried there would be strings attached, that he would demand some policies.
"I think Reform got away lightly... Nigel has handled it diplomatically. I don't think he can afford to have Musk too close.
"He is destructive, he could destroy Reform."
There are about 850 attendees at Sandown, according to the organisers, who say it was a sold out event.
Among them is Howard Ward from Winchester, who has switched to Reform from the Conservatives.
Like many here he is not bothered about Musk. "Let him talk away," he says.
Kevin Burrell doesn't think Musk is "being serious" and even if he is, it doesn't matter. "We've got Candy... he is going to do wonders."
Nick Candy is the party's new treasurer. He is a property tycoon, the husband of former pop singer Holly Valance and until recently was a donor to the Tories.
Beverley Newman is here with her partner Eve Wilkinson. She agrees that Candy will be important but adds that the party can raise a lot from the membership.
"Musk won't make any difference to his [Farage's] popularity," says Kirshanda from West Sussex. "I thought he handled that beautifully. He wasn't prepared to bend."
Musk hasn't explained his reasoning, but Farage said the pair had a disagreement because Musk wanted Reform to "come out strongly in support" of Tommy Robinson.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.
The former head of the far-right English Defence League admitted in court to breaching an injunction against repeating claims about a Syrian refugee schoolboy after losing a 2021 libel case.
Farage left his former party UKIP in 2018 saying its association with Robinson had brought "scuffles" and "violence" to the party.
He has ruled out Robinson being allowed to join Reform UK.
Party members at the event at Sandown talk seriously about electoral success, and while many express sympathy for Robinson, they understand why he might be politically unpalatable.
"Whatever happens with Tommy, his heart is in the right place but he will never be forgiven by the mainstream media," says Kevin Burrell.
"Much as I admire what he's doing I can understand why Reform don't support him.
"If you end up in a slanging match over that, you will end up with the Tories or Labour."
Jackie Collett says she doesn't know "what is making Nigel dig is heels in" but adds that Robinson is a "loose cannon".
She says she is a realist and acknowledges that Reform might "disappear into the wilderness" but for now she says it is "the only party that gives me hope to go out in the morning".
As the evening progresses, news emerges about the 10 Reform UK councillors in Derbyshire who resigned, arguing the party was being run in an "increasingly autocratic manner" and had "lost its sense of direction" since Farage took over.
Farage later told BBC Newsnight the group were a "rogue branch" of the party who had not "passed vetting".
The group's leader, Councillor Alex Stevenson, who was suspended as a member in December, and who stood for Reform UK in Amber Valley in the general election, did not deny that some of the candidates he put forward for local elections had not passed the party's vetting process.
There is no mention of the resignations at the conference, instead members are invited to cheer two councillor defections from the Conservatives to Reform.
And there is little public sign of discontent with Farage, although one member whispers his unease.
Preferring not to be named, ("I don't want to be thrown out") he says, "Farage doesn't necessarily have what is needed".
"He's quite egotistical. Rupert Lowe would be my preference. He's been hard at work, asking questions in Parliament. Nigel isn't around as much."
On Robinson, he suggests Farage "shouldn't be quite so critical".
Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, isn't a household name but it is one that crops up unprompted throughout the evening.
Graham Croft-Smith expresses a little disappointment that Lowe isn't speaking at the event. "He's a true statesman," he says.
Lowe is not there but some of the party's other big names are, including MP and party founder Richard Tice and Chair Zia Yusuf.
Yusuf begins his speech by welcoming "all you fake Reform members" - a reference to Kemi Badenoch's scepticism over the membership numbers.
London Assembly Member Alex Wilson asks how many in the audience spent Boxing Day watching the party's membership counter tick over.
"Yes!' shouts a woman from the audience.
Last month, a digital tracker on Reform's website showed its membership numbers overtook the 131,680 figure declared by the Conservatives in 2024.
Reform UK was originally called the Brexit Party but these days Brexit only gets a few mentions.
The big themes include opposition to net-zero policies, support for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, the economy and the possible postponement of local elections in May.
More than half of the county councils due to have elections could ask ministers to delay the ballots, following a major shake-up of local government.
Earlier this week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said it would be "ludicrous" to hold elections for councils that were due to be reorganised.
However, the subject has infuriated Reform UK members, many of whom hope the May elections could see the party make electoral gains.
Blogger Liza Martin-Pope says it is why she decided to attend the conference this evening adding: "I'm missing my dancing for this."
She argues that the potential delays amount to "removing access to local democracy for local people."
"These authorities are running scared."
Eve Wilkinson is similarly furious. "It's disgusting, totally undemocratic, absolutely out of order. It incenses me," she says.
Caroline Burford-Pugh, her husband Richard and their friends Charlotte and Matthew Lubbe have come to the event together.
They are new members, new to politics and Caroline says she puts the chances of Farage being prime minister after the next election at 10 out of 10.
The party has prospered because of dissatisfaction with the Conservatives and disappointment with the early signs from Labour, says Luke Tryl from the research group More In Common, with ratings up from around 15 to 20%. But a general election is years away.
Whether the party can go from five MPs in 2024 to government remains to be seen, but whatever happens, it's clear there are party members still enthused by Reform's offer.
The Supreme Court appears poised to uphold a law that bans TikTok in the US over national security concerns unless its China-based parent company sells the platform ahead of a 19 January deadline.
The Court's nine justices heard from lawyers representing TikTok, and content creators that the ban would be a violation of free speech protections for the platform's more than 170 million users in the US.
The US government argued that without a sale, TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.
A decision by the top court has to be made within days. President-elect Donald Trump - who returns to the White House in just over a week - now argues against the ban.
The Trump question
In December, US President-elect Donald Trump urged the court to delay its decision until he returns to the White House to enable him to seek a "political solution" to resolve the issues at hand.
TikTok's lawyer told the court on Friday that, as he saw it, the platform would "go dark" on 19 January without intervention.
Ms Prelogar, arguing for the US justice department, said "nothing permanent" had to happen on that day and there was still time for a sale.
Forcing the app to go dark could be just the "jolt" ByteDance needs to seriously consider a sale, she said.
"It will fundamentally change the landscape with respect to what ByteDance might consider," she said, comparing the situation to "game of chicken" and one in which the US should not "blink first".
After the hearing, legal observers predicted that the Supreme Court's justices appeared to be swayed by the government's concerns.
"Traditionally the Supreme Court has been willing to defer somewhat when national security is at stake," said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias.
"I expect that the justices by a majority will side with the government," he added.
Jacob Hubert, a lawyer and the president of the Liberty Justice Center - which represents BASED Politics, an internet content creator - said it was still difficult to predict how the court would rule.
But he says the ban would violate the freedom of speech of millions of Americans - a point he believes was effectively made by TikTok's lawyers.
"It's not about China's rights, or the Communist Party's rights," he said. "It is about the rights of Americans who use TikTok to, largely, speak with other Americans."
More than a hundred people braved freezing conditions in Washington DC to attend the hearing in person.
Chloe Joy Sexton - one of the TikTok creators named in the suit - said that the platform brought many creators "financial independence", including many mothers.
"A TikTok ban would place these women, myself included, in true financial jeopardy," she told reporters. "It would destroy both my business and the community that means so much to me."
Danielle Ballesteros, a student at UC San Diego, said had been waiting outside the court since 06:30 local time.
"I feel like TikTok doesn't deserve to be banned," she told BBC News.
While admitting to using it "probably too much", she said she believes the app to be an important news source for her generation.
TikTok is already banned from government devices in many countries, including in the UK. It faces more complete bans in some countries, including India.
Last December, a three-judge appeals court decision upheld the law, noting China's record of acting through private companies and saying the measure was justified as "part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed" by the country.
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been asked what checks are in place to vet firms after fast-fashion retailer Shein refused to answer "basic questions" over its supply chain.
Liam Byrne, chair of the Business and Trade Committee, wrote to Dame Julia Hoggett asking if the stock market had tests in place to "authenticate statements" by firms seeking to list, "with particular regard to their safeguards against the use of forced labour in their products".
It comes after MPs branded the evidence of a Shein lawyer "ridiculous" when she refused to say if the company sold products containing cotton from China.
Byrne told Dame Julia that MPs were "profoundly concerned at the lack of candid and open answers".
"The committee would like to draw your attention to the concerning evidence we heard," he said in a letter to the LSE chief executive on Friday.
The BBC understands Shein, founded in China but now headquartered in Singapore, has filed initial paperwork to list in the UK, which could value it at £50bn. It follows the retailers rapid rise to one of the biggest fast fashion firms globally, shipping to customers in 150 countries.
But questions remain over the company's supply chain amid allegations of forced labour and human rights abuses.
During an appearance in front of the Commons' Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday, a senior lawyer representing Shein, Yinan Zhu, repeatedly refused to say whether the company sold products containing cotton from the Xinjiang region - an area in which China has been accused of subjecting Uyghur Muslims to forced labour. Shein has denied the claims.
Ms Zhu declined to answer and asked if she could write to the committee following the hearing.
Her repeated refusal to answer questions about supply chains and a potential UK listing, was met with backlash from the committee of MPs, who accused her of "wilful ignorance".
She told MPs that the Shein does not own any factories or manufacturing facilities, but works with a large network of suppliers, mostly in China, but also in Turkey and Brazil.
She added that the firm complied with "laws and regulations in the countries we operate in".
China has been accused of subjecting members of the Uighur, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority, to forced labour. In December 2020, research seen by the BBC showed that up to half a million people were being forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang, but Beijing has denied any rights abuses.
The allegations have led to some big fashion brands, including H&M, Nike, Burberry and Adidas, removing products using Xinjiang cotton, which has led to a backlash in China, and boycotts of the companies.
In his letter to the LSE, Byrne, a Labour MP, said: "The committee was profoundly concerned at the lack of candid and open answers to some extremely simple, basic questions about the integrity of Shein's supply chain.
"In the light of this I would be grateful if you would let me know what checks, if any, the London Stock Exchange has in place to authenticate statements by firms seeking to list, with particular regard to their safeguards against the use of forced labour in their products."
The LSE told the BBC it would respond to the committee's letter "in due course".
Byrne also wrote to the boss of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Nikhil Rathi, to ask what checks the watchdog itself has in place to ensure UK-listed companies disclose "legal risks". It is understood the FCA sets the listing rules for the London Stock Exchange.
Shein has been contacted for comment following the letters.
US aviation giant Boeing has told BBC News it is donating $1m (£812,600) to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump.
Google and Microsoft have also confirmed they have made similar donations as the firms join a growing list of major American companies contributing to the fund.
The list also includes oil producer Chevron and technology giants Meta, Amazon and Uber.
Trump's inauguration, marking the start of his second term in the White House, is set to take place on 20 January.
"We are pleased to continue Boeing's bipartisan tradition of supporting US Presidential Inaugural Committees," Boeing said.
The company added that it has made similar donations to each of the past three presidential inauguration funds.
Boeing is working to recover from a safety and quality control crisis, as well as dealing with the losses from a strike last year.
The company is also building the next presidential aircraft, known as Air Force One. The two jets are expected to come into service as early as next year.
During his first term as president, Trump forced the plane maker to renegotiate its contract, calling the initial deal too expensive.
Google became the latest big tech firm to donate to the fund, following similar announcements by Meta and Amazon. It also said it will stream the event around the world.
"Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage," said Karan Bhatia, Google's global head of government affairs and public policy.
Car companies Ford, General Motors and Toyota have also donated a $1m each to the inaugural committee.
In the energy industry, Chevron confirmed that it has made a donation to the fund but declined to say how much.
"Chevron has a long tradition of celebrating democracy by supporting the inaugural committees of both parties. We are proud to be doing so again this year," said Bill Turene, Chevron's manager of global media relations.
The Los Angeles wildfires are on track to be among the costliest in US history, with losses already expected to exceed $135bn (£109.7bn).
In a preliminary estimate, private forecaster Accuweather said it expected losses of between $135bn-$150bn as the blazes rip through an area that is home to some of the most expensive property in the US.
The insurance industry is also bracing for a major hit, with analysts from firms such as Morningstar and JP Morgan forecasting insured losses of more than $8bn.
Fire authorities say more than 5,300 structures have been destroyed by the Palisades blaze, while more than 5,000 structures have been destroyed by the Eaton Fire.
With authorities still working to contain the fires, the scope of the losses is still unfolding.
"These fast-moving, wind-driven infernos have created one of the costliest wildfire disasters in modern US history," AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said.
The 2018 fire that broke out in northern California near the town of Paradise currently ranks as the disaster with highest insured costs, at roughly $12.5bn, according to insurance giant Aon.
That blaze, known as the Camp fire, killed 85 people and displaced more than 50,000.
Aon said the high property values in this case mean it is likely to end up as one of the top five costliest wildfires on its list. Including properties that are not insured, the overall losses will be even bigger.
Even after the situation is under control, Mr Porter said the events could have long-term effects on health and tourism.
It also spells trouble for the insurance industry, which was already in crisis.
Homeowners in the US with mortgages are typically required by banks to have property insurance.
But companies have been hiking prices - or cancelling coverage altogether - in the face of increasing risks of natural disaster such as fires, floods and hurricanes.
As companies stop offering coverage, people are turning in surging numbers to home insurance plans offered by state governments, which are typically more expensive while offering less protection.
In California, the number of policies offered through the state's Fair plan has more than doubled since 2020, from about 200,000 to more than 450,000 in September of last year.
Areas hit by the fires rank as some of the places with highest take-up, according to data from the programme, which was already warning of risks to its financial stability.
Denise Rappmund, a senior analyst at Moody's Ratings, said the fires would have "widespread, negative impacts for the state's broader insurance market".
"Increased recovery costs will likely drive up premiums and may reduce property insurance availability," she said, adding that the state was also facing potential long-term damage to property values and strain to public finances.
A bright comet could be visible in skies across the globe over the coming days for the first time in 160,000 years.
Nasa said the future brightness of a comet is "notoriously hard" to predict, but that Comet C/2024 G3 (Atlas) could remain bright enough to be seen by the naked eye.
On Monday, the comet was at perihelion, the point at which it is closest to the Sun, which influences how bright it appears. Experts say it could be visible from Monday night.
While the exact locations for possible visibility are unknown, experts believe the comet, which could shine as bright as Venus, may be best observed from the southern hemisphere.
The comet was spotted last year by Nasa's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System.
Dr Shyam Balaji, researcher in astroparticle physics and cosmology at King's College London, said "current orbital calculations indicate it will pass about 8.3 million miles from the Sun", which classifies it as a "sun-skirting" comet.
The university described the comet as a once-in-160,000-years event.
Dr Balaji said opportunities to spot the comet may occur "in the days around perihelion, depending on local conditions and the comet's behaviour".
"As with all comets, its visibility and brightness can be unpredictable," he added.
Mr Balaji said people who live in the southern hemisphere - where the comet is predicted to be best observed from - should "look toward the eastern horizon before sunrise, [and] after perihelion, try the western horizon after sunset."
But Mr Balaji added that while it is expected to be "quite bright", predictions on comet brightness are "notoriously uncertain", with many ending up fainter than initially predicted.
For the northern hemisphere - including the UK - viewing may be challenging do to the comet's relativity to the Sun.
You can check with BBC Weather online to see if the skies are clear enough for a possible sighting where you are.
Mr Balaji advised people wanting to spot the comet to find a location away from light pollution and use a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.
He warned observers to be cautious around sunrise and sunset, and said to track the comet's position to find where it may appear in the sky.
Meanwhile, astronomers have been following the comet's path.
On Saturday, Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, shared a photograph on social media of the comet taken from the International Space Station.
"It is totally amazing to see a comet from orbit. Atlas C2024-G3 is paying us a visit," he wrote.
Finding protein-rich foods that are good for the climate can be complex. Isabelle Gerretsen digs into the data to understand which food choices can help us curb emissions.
When it comes to reducing our individual carbon emissions, one of the most impactful steps we can take is to eat more sustainably. Global food production is responsible for 35% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. While animal products account for the bulk of our dietary emissions, they provide only 20% of the world's calories.
Animal products, such as dairy, eggs, fish and meat, are known to be good sources of protein, and getting the right amount of protein is essential for our bodies to grow and repair (Read more about how much protein we really need to consume).
For those who want to eat a low-carbon diet that is also nutritious, getting the right level of protein can be challenging. The picture is complicated by the huge range of products available to us, many of which assert that they are "carbon neutral" or "sustainable" without always backing up these claims.
So, what would a protein-rich, low-carbon diet really look like? Just how bad for the climate are meat and dairy? How much more sustainable is it to only eat plant-based proteins, such as tofu, chickpeas and peas? Is it better to cut out cheese or chicken? Which animal-free alternatives have the lowest emissions' output?
BBC Future set out to answer these questions, using data from the largest ever analysis of food systems, compiled by Joseph Poore, a researcher at the University of Oxford, and Thomas Nemecek, who studies the lifecycle of food at Swiss research institute Agroscope.
Meat
According to the analysis, beef generates 49.9kg of CO2 equivalent, or CO2e, per 100g of protein, equivalent to the amount in 2.35 steaks. The proteins with the second-highest greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint are lamb and mutton, which generate 19.9kg of CO2e per 100g.
"There's so much emphasis on beef that people often forget about other types of meat and their impacts," says Anne Bordier, director of sustainable diets at the World Resources Institute.
Cows, sheep and goats are all ruminants, animals with more than one stomach chamber that belch out methane when they digest their food. Although shorter-lived in the atmosphere, methane is a highly potent gas that has a global warming impact 84 times higher than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period.
In addition to livestock's high methane output, greenhouse gases are emitted to produce and transport animal feed and run the livestock farms, says Sophie Marbach, a physicist and researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France who carried out an analysis of the carbon footprint of meat and dairy proteins in 2021.
Beef from a dairy herd has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than meat from a beef herd because you get more food in return for all the resources you invest in the cow (feed, land, water and fertiliser), says Bordier. "[In addition to beef], these cows produce milk, which also tends to be used as feed [for other animals]... So it's more efficient overall," she says.
Dairy cows usually produce high milk yields for about three years, after which they are slaughtered and their meat is used for beef.
Meat from small, non-ruminant animals, such as chicken, turkey, rabbit and duck, has a much lower GHG footprint than beef and lamb. Chicken, for example, has a GHG footprint almost nine times lower than beef's – generating 5.7kg of CO2e per 100g of protein.
That's "quite low", says Sarah Bridle, professor of food, climate and society at the University of York in the UK. "It is really similar to farmed fish and eggs."
Pork's GHG footprint (7.6kg) is about 6.5 times lower than beef's and 1.4 times higher than poultry's (5.7kg).
Dairy
It is cheese, not chicken or pork, that generates the third-highest emissions in agriculture, after lamb and beef.
"There's this consensus that 'being vegetarian is great', but then we sort of forget that cheese is actually pretty carbon intensive," says Marbach, noting that this is due to cows' high methane output and the fact that they require "a lot of inputs for not much output".
The GHG footprint of cheese (10.8kg of CO2e per 100g of protein) is almost twice as high as chicken's and also higher than pork and eggs (4.2kg of CO2e).
The dietary emissions can vary greatly depending on the type of cheese you're eating. Harder cheeses, such as parmesan, are more carbon-intensive than soft cheeses because they are made with more milk, says Bridle. Soft cheeses contain more water – there's 50% more water in cottage cheese than in cheddar, for example, she says.
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The GHG footprint of cow's cheese is similar to that of goat's or sheep's milk cheeses "because they're all ruminants," says Bridle. "But cow's cheese is probably the most efficient because dairy cows produce vast amounts of milk." According to data from the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a dairy cow produced an average of 8,200 litres (1,800 gallons) last year.
Yoghurt, meanwhile, is surprisingly low-carbon, 2.7kg of CO2e per 100g of protein, as not much milk is needed to produce it (much less than in the case of cheese) and there are a number of by-products, such as cream and butter, which means the GHG footprint is distributed across numerous food items,says Marbach.
Plants
Animal products are responsible for 57% of global food-related emissions, compared to plant-based foods which contribute 29% of the total.
The UK's Climate Change Committee (CCC) has recommended a 20% reduction in meat and dairy consumption by 2030, rising to 35% by 2050 for meat, to meet the country's climate goals.
The lowest emissions option would be to adopt a vegan diet and cut out meat and dairy altogether. If the whole world went vegan, global food-related emissions would fall by up to 70% by 2050, according to a study by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford.
A diet rich in peas, pulses and nuts can be incredibly low-carbon. Producing 100g of protein from peas emits just 0.4kg of CO2e. This is almost 90 times less than getting the same amount of protein from beef. Other pulses, such as lentils, have a GHG footprint of 0.8kg of CO2e. Tofu production, meanwhile, generates 2.0kg of CO2e per 100g – these emissions are mostly linked to the clearance of land for soy production, says Bridle.
By crossbreeding wild chickpeas with cultivated varieties, US company Nucicer has created high-protein chickpea powder, which it says also lowers the CO2e of the crop. The powder can be used as gluten-free flour in pasta and baked goods.
By increasing the protein content, Nucicer is able to produce more protein per acre and reduce the overall amount of energy and water needed, says Kathyrn Cook, the company's chief executive and cofounder. "That really helps with the environmental impact of our protein sources," she says. Chickpeas are also highly water-efficient and fix nitrogen from the air into the soil, which is vital for plant growth, she adds.
Fish and seafood
When it comes to fish and seafood, it is more difficult to calculate the GHG footprint. It can vary greatly depending on the species and how it is caught.
Farmed prawns have a much higher footprint (18.2kg of CO2e per 100g) than farmed fish (6.0kg of CO2e). This is because mangrove forests, which store huge amounts of carbon, are often destroyed and converted into prawn farms.
But farmed bivalves, including mussels, oysters, scallops and clams, have a much lower GHG, about six times lower than farmed prawns and roughly 3.5 times lower than farmed fish,says Jessica Gephart, assistant professor in environmental science at the American University in Washington DC.
In 2021, Gephart and her colleagues analysed the environmental impact of seafood across a range of factors, including greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and freshwater use.
Farmed bivalves scored the best across the board. However, bivalves caught in the wild did not perform nearly as well when it came to greenhouse gas emissions – they emit five to 10 times more emissions as their farmed counterparts, says Gephart.
Farmed bivalves don't require animal feed as they filter nutrients from the water and can be harvested without a large amount of energy. Wild bivalves are often caught by dredging – which involves towing large, rigid nets along the seafloor. It's a carbon intensive process which disturbs carbon stored in the sediment and results in the release of CO2, which acidifies the ocean.
One study estimates that seabed dredging produces as much as one billion tonnes of CO2 annually – equivalent to global aviation emissions and greater than those of Germany.
Lab-grown protein
From cellular meat, which uses cells harvested from live animals, to plant-based meat made from soy or pea protein, and cow-free dairy produced using precision fermentation, we now have a huge range of meat and dairy alternatives to choose from if we wish to avoid animal products.
But how do they compare to traditional meat and dairy, when it comes to emissions?
According to a 2020 study by Raychel Santo, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, plant-based meat generates 1.9kg of CO2e per 100g, while cellular meat produces 5.6kg, compared to beef's GHG footprint of 25.6kg. While emissions for cellular meat were significantly lower than traditional meat, they were five to 21 times higher than emissions from plant proteins, such as pulses, tofu and peas, Santo's research found.
A large proportion of cellular meat's footprint comes from the energy required to manufacture the products, says Santo. The cells harvested from animals are grown in bioreactors, which are highly energy intensive.
"Plant-based meat substitutes have smaller GHG footprints than most farmed meats and cell-based meat, but wild tuna (1.2kg), insects (0.9kg), tofu (1.2kg) and less processed pulses (0.4kg) and peas (0.3kg) have the lowest footprints of all protein-rich foods," says Santo.
The footprint of cellular meat is substantially lower than that of beef and lamb, according to research by Hanna Tuomisto, associate professor in sustainable food systems at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
According to Tuomisto's analysis, completely replacing traditional meat with cultured meat would result in a massive 78-98% reduction in GHG emissions, a 99% reduction in land use and 45% reduction in energy use.
Animal-free proteins produced using precision fermentation have a lower emissions output than those in cultured meat, says Tuomisto. Precision fermentation – also known as recombinant protein production – involves inserting specific DNA sequences into non-animal cells, such as bacteria, yeast or other fungi, which allow them to produce proteins that are identical to those found in traditional dairy and meat.
These microorganisms are simpler than the animal cells used in cellular meat, says Tuomisto, which leads to several advantages. They have a faster metabolism and "produce more proteins with less inputs", she says, adding that, unlike cultured meat, they don't require heating as they produce heat themselves while duplicating. This means that their overall GHG emissions are significantly lower.
US company Perfect Day is using this technology to produce animal-free dairy alternatives, including ice cream and milk. The whey that Perfect Day produces has a GHG footprint of 0.3kg of CO2e per 100g of protein, 35 times lower than milk protein (9.5kg of CO2e), says Liza Schillo, the company's director of sustainability and social impact.
According to a life cycle assessment, compared to the total protein in milk, Perfect Day's whey protein is 91-97% lower in GHG emissions, part of which is due to a 29-60% lower energy demand.
"If our animal-free whey protein is used in just 5% of the dairy products on US shelves today, we would save the equivalent of the greenhouse gas emissions from 140,000 roundtrip flights between San Francisco and New York and enough energy to power Washington DC for six years," says Schillo.
There are also companies, such as Solar Foods, that are producing meat substitutes made from bacteria fed on hydrogen. The Finnish company has produced a yellow protein powder from microbes that are fed gases, including CO2, hydrogen and oxygen, which will be used as an additive in foods or as a medium for growing cultured meat.
These gas-fermented proteins are the lowest-carbon meat alternatives "as long as they are using renewable energy", says Tuomisto. Creating hydrogen from water, as Solar Foods does, requires large amounts of electricity. If renewables are used to generate the electricity, the overall GHG emissions of gas-fermented proteins would be very similar to plant-based proteins, she says.
This investigation has revealed that there are many more ways than one to reduce the emissions from your food choices while getting ample quantities of protein. While cutting the amount of animal products in your diet is a powerful way to reduce emissions, there are other swaps that make a difference too.
If one didn't want to give up animal protein entirely, for instance, the next best thing would be to adopt a diet that consists only of eating small animals (chicken, duck, rabbit), eggs and yoghurt, according to Marbach's research.
By sticking to this "low CO2, high-protein diet", a person can reduce their individual carbon footprint by up to 50%, says Marbach. Adopting a vegetarian diet, which contains a lot of dairy products, especially cheese, is not nearly as effective as the "low CO2" option, says Marbach. It will only reduce a person's food GHG footprint by 20%, according to her analysis.
But it is clear that minimising our reliance on animal products will help lower our overall footprint. In fact, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says this is critical if the world is to meet its long-term climate goals and limit global warming to 1.5C.
Despite the overwhelming choice of supermarket products claiming to be sustainable, there are a few choices we can be sure will benefit the climate. By swapping beef and lamb for tofu or chickpeas, or checking how the fish and seafood we eat is caught, we can feel confident that our food choices are really helping curb emissions.
* You can learn about the impact of meat subsitutes have on the planet in this podcast by our colleagues on The Climate Question.
This story was corrected on 13/01/2025 to make it clear that 100g of protein is equivalent to the amount in 2.35 steaks, not four steaks.
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The towels we dry ourselves with get a lot of use and pick up a lot of microbes along the way. But how long should you wait before throwing them into the laundry?
You have probably rubbed your body with one today already. But just how clean was that towel you dried yourself with? Many of us will pop them into the washing machine once a week, while one study of 100 people found about a third of them did so once a month. A few, according to one survey in the UK, admit to only doing it once a year.
And while those fluffy fibres might not show any signs of dirt, they are a breeding ground for millions of microbes. Studies have shown that towels can quickly become contaminated with bacteria commonly found on human skin, but also with those found in our guts.
Even after washing, our bodies are still covered in microbes and perhaps unsurprisingly when we dry ourselves off, some of these transfer onto our towel. But the microbes living on our towels come from other sources too – airborne fungi and bacteria can settle on towel fibres while they are hanging up. Some of the bacteria comes from the water we have used to launder the towels with in the first place.
In Japan, some households even reuse leftover bathwater for laundering the next day. One study by researchers at the University of Tokushima in Japan found, while this saves water, many of the bacteria found in the used bath water were then transferred to towels and clothing after being laundered.
And for those of us who prefer to leave our towels to dry in the same room as your lavatory, there is some rather disgusting news – every time you flush, you are likely giving any towels nearby a light dusting with bacteria from your toilet, along with specks of your family's bodily waste.
Over time these microbes can start to form biofilms on towels that can even begin changing how our towels look. After two months, even with regular washing, the bacteria living on cotton towel fibres start to dull the appearance of the cloth. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the total amount of bacteria and the species of bacteria depends on the laundry habits in the household. The real question is, how worried should you be about the bacteria living on your towels?
The topic of towel washing might seem trivial, but Elizabeth Scott, a professor of biology and co-director of the Simmons University Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community in Boston, the US, is interested in what it can reveal about the way microbes spread around the home.
"They're not just naturally sitting around on towels," she says. "Anything that causes us harm on a towel is likely to have come from a human."
Indeed, there are as many as 1,000 different species of bacteria living on our skin alongside many other viruses and fungi. But most are actually good for us – helping to keep us safe from infections from other less friendly bacteria, breaking down some of the chemicals we encounter in daily life and playing an important role in the development of our immune systems.
Many of the bacteria that are found living on towels are the same species that we find on our skin, but are also common in the environments we live in. These include species of Staphylococcus bacteria and Escherichia coli, which is commonly found in the human gut, but also Salmonella and Shigella bacteria, which are common causes of foodborne illnesses and diarrhoea.
But some of these bacteria are also opportunistic pathogens – they are innocuous unless they get into a place where they can cause more harm, such as a cut, develop the ability to produce certain toxins or manage to infect people with weakened immune systems.
Our skin is also a natural barrier against infection. It is our first line of defence against bacteria and other pathogens, so transferring bacteria from a towel to our skin shouldn't worry us too much. But there is some evidence that washing, scrubbing and rubbing ourselves dry with a towel can also disrupt the skin's barrier function.
Perhaps the biggest problem occurs when we pick up potentially harmful microbes up on our hands as we dry them off before touching our mouth, nose and eyes. And that can mean the towels we use most frequently for our hands, perhaps deserve more attention. Kitchen towels, which are used on our dishes, hands and surfaces, are also another source of spread for foodborne pathogens.
Gastroenteric infections resulting from Salmonella, Norovirus and E. coli "are all transmissible through towels", according to Scott. Studies have also found that viruses such as Covid-19 can survive on cotton for up to 24 hours, although transmission through touching contaminated surfaces is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
Other viruses that do spread by contact, such as the mpox virus, may be more of a risk and health officials do not recommend sharing towels or linen with people who are infected.
Research has also shown that human papillomaviruses, which are a common cause of warts and verrucae can also be spread through contact with towels shared with other people.
The risk of transmitting infections from reusable hand towels is one reason why hospitals and public bathrooms now tend to use disposable paper towels and air dryers, although the evidence is inconclusive about which of those options is better.
Clearly the longer we use towels, and the longer they stay damp for, the more hospitable the environment for microbes they become, increasing the chance of harmful microbes growing on them.
But thinking about towel hygiene could also help combat one of the major health issues facing the world, according to Scott and her colleagues. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as MRSA, can be transferred by contact with contaminated objects.
More like this:
• How often should you wash your sheets and pillows
• Why spring cleaning won't benefit your health
• Do antibiotics really wipe out your gut bacteria?
Jean-Yves Maillard, professor of pharmaceutical microbiology at Cardiff University, says practices like regular towel washing can help to reduce bacterial infections and in turn reduce the use of antibiotics. "Home hygiene is all to do with prevention, and prevention is better than treatment," says Maillard.
So, how often should we be washing our towels?
Scott suggests laundering towels once a week. However, this recommendation is not a set rule.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because if someone is sick, they've got vomiting and diarrhoea," she says. "They need to have their own towel and those towels need to be laundered on a daily basis. That's what we call targeted hygiene, you deal with the risk as it occurs."
One study in India found that 20% of people who responded were washing their towels as often as twice a week.
Targeted hygiene is a risk management approach to hygiene, being developed by researchers associated with The Global Hygiene Council and The International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene. Whilst hygiene is important to consider at all times, targeted hygiene focuses on the times and the places where these practices are vital.
According to Scott, towels require a hotter (40-60C, 104-140F) and longer wash than most household fabrics, often with the addition of antimicrobial detergents. Detergents can help to prevent bacteria from latching onto fabrics and inactivate some viruses. Of course, frequent washing at high temperatures comes with an environmental cost. (Find out more about how your daily water use affects the planet.)
For washes at lower temperatures, adding enzymes or bleach can help combat microbes on towels. One study in India also found combining a wash with a detergent with a disinfectant while rinsing and drying towels in the Sun was the most effective at reducing the bacterial and fungal load.
Scott refers to home hygiene as a form of altruism, much like vaccination. Each small practice you undertake to protect yourself, you also do to protect the people around you.
"We call it the Swiss cheese model," she says. "We think of all of these components as being slices of hygiene, like slices of Swiss cheese and every slice of hygiene covers up one of those holes and reduces the risk of pathogens being able to move through.
"Towels are a relatively small component, but there are definite risks with towels and it's easy to deal with that."
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Artificial intelligence presents a "vast potential" for rejuvenating UK public services, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday.
In a speech setting out the government's plans to use AI across the UK to boost growth and deliver services more efficiently, Sir Keir said the government had a responsibility to make AI "work for working people".
The AI Opportunities Action Plan is backed by leading tech firms, some of which have committed £14bn towards various projects, creating 13,250 jobs, the government said.
But the government faces questions over how much time and money will be needed to make its vision a reality, amid concerns over borrowing costs and the falling value of the pound.
The plan includes proposals for growth zones where development will be focused, and suggests the technology will be used to help tackle issues such as potholes.
While estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) support the claim that AI could increase productivity, it also says the changes may come gradually.
The government tasked AI adviser Matt Clifford with creating a UK action plan for supporting the growth of artificial intelligence and its use in public services.
He came back with 50 recommendations which are now being implemented.
Among these is for the UK to invest in a new supercomputer to boost computing power - marking a change in strategy after the Labour government ditched the previous government's plans for a supercomputer at Edinburgh University.
Sir Keir said AI "will drive incredible change" in the country and "has the potential to transform the lives of working people".
"We're going to make AI work for everyone in our country," he added, saying the "battle for the jobs of tomorrow is happening today".
Sir Keir said the UK would become one of the AI "superpowers" - mirroring former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's drive to boost the UK sector so it could rival that of the US and China.
At the time, many of Sunak's proposals were geared towards mitigating future risks of highly powerful AI systems.
In October 2023, he said AI could enable faster, easier production of chemical and biological weapons, or be used by terrorist groups to spread disinformation.
He added that in a worst-case scenario, society could lose control over AI.
His government's emphasis on "safety" seems largely absent in this new plan - instead focusing on maximising opportunities, growth and innovation.
The pivot away from the previous narrative of caution and safety suggests the government has decided the UK should attempt to compete in the AI arms race, currently lead by major global players including the US and China.
However, building data centres and boosting the nation's computing power will not happen overnight.
This means the government is unlikely to see the end results of this major project ahead of the next general election - when Labour will have to convince voters that it was still the right decision, at a time when public finances remain stretched.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall said the proposals were "ambitious", but necessary to help the UK keep up with the pace of development.
"It's an ambitious plan but there's a lot of upfront investment," she told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.
"It will take some time to see a return on that investment and they've got to be in it for the long-term."
How the AI plan could affect you
* AI will be used by the public sector to enable its workers to spend less time doing admin and more time delivering services.
* Several "AI Growth Zones" around the UK will be created, involving big building projects and new jobs.
* AI will be fed through cameras around the country to inspect roads and spot potholes that need fixing
* Teachers and small business owners were highlighted as two groups that could start using AI for things like faster planning and record-keeping.
* AI is already being used in UK hospitals for important tasks such as diagnosing cancer more quickly and it will continue to be used to support the NHS.
AI 'not perfect'
There are continuing questions over the risks of introducing AI systems that can "hallucinate" or make things up, or discriminate against certain groups of people due to bias.
Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said "we're only at the foothills of this" and AI was a developing technology.
He said a government-developed AI teaching assistant had been used by about 30,000 teachers in England so far.
"It saves teachers about three-and-half hours a week - gives them their Sunday evening back, if you like, in terms of lesson preparation and classroom preparation," he told BBC Breakfast.
McFadden said AI applications used by the health service can detect some cancers earlier which are not detectable by the human eye.
However he acknowledged AI was "not perfect" after Apple faced calls to withdraw a controversial feature that generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.
"We've got to have an eye on safety as well as opportunity," McFadden said.
"The truth is, you can't just opt out of this. Or if you do, you're just going to see it developed elsewhere."
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Grief has long thought to be a human trait, but other animals – from killer whales to crows – also appear to suffer loss when a companion dies.
Last week, a female killer whale was spotted off the coast of Washington State pushing the body of her dead newborn calf. The orca, known as Tahlequah, was observed doing the same thing in 2018 after another of her calves died in infancy. On that occasion, Tahlequah pushed the body of her offspring for 17 days, continually retrieving it and preventing it from sinking – an incredible feat given the fact that killer whales can travel an average of 120km (75 miles) a day.
Whales are not the only species known to carry the bodies of their deceased young. In 2021, Edinburgh Zoo reported that one of their chimpanzees, Lianne, had given birth to a stillborn baby and was refusing to let go, carrying the infant around with her within the zoo enclosure. Other highly intelligent mammals, such as dolphins and monkeys, have also been observed behaving this way.
"It's hard to see this behaviour without thinking of it through the lens of grief, partly because, as humans, if we lose someone we want to cling on to that person in some sense," says Becky Millar, a researcher specialising in the philosophy of cognitive sciences at Cardiff University.
"It seems to be a very literal manifestation of that kind of urge to retain bonds with the dead loved one."
According to Millar, what's notable about these cases is that these animals don't treat the deceased infant in the same way that they would treat a merely immobile, but live infant. This suggests that it's not just a matter of them not understanding that their infant is dead.
"There is some sort of tension where the animal isn't quite able to let go," says Millar. "It's like they're trying to grapple with this new world that they're faced with and trying to come to understand that loss."
There are signs that both humans and animals undergo this readjustment period. For example, Millar points to the fact that animals often search for their companions after their death, while humans also engage in what are called search behaviours following a bereavement, where they scan the environment for any sign of the deceased person.
Sometimes this behaviour can continue long after the death. Famous examples include that of Greyfriars Bobby, a terrier who spent 14 years guarding his owner's grave in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Hachiko, an akita dog that continued to wait for its owner at a train station in Japan long after his death.
There are also anecdotal stories of animals displaying acute distress after the loss of a close companion. There are reports that upon seeing their babies eaten by killer whales, for example, sea lion mothers wail pitifully in apparent anguish.
There are other examples too. In her book How Animals Grieve, anthropologist Barbara King also describes accounts of cats, dogs and rabbits crying and searching for their companions, and horses gathering around the grave of a member of their herd.
In 1999, an elderly female elephant at an Indian zoo reportedly died of grief after a young elephant she had befriended died during childbirth. The elderly elephant, Damini, was seen to shed tears over her friend's body, before she lost all interest in food and eventually starved to death.
In 1972 Jane Goodall, an English primatologist who has studied chimpanzees in the wild for over 60 years, observed one young chimpanzee known as Flint showing signs of what in humans would be called clinical depression when his mother died. He stopped engaging in social interactions with his group, refused to eat, and eventually died a month later.
Even birds grieve, it appears. Austrian zoologist and ethologist Konrad Lorenz once described the response of greylag geese to losing their mate as "roughly identical with those accompanying human grief". The geese hung their heads dejectedly, lost interest in food, and became indifferent to the world around them.
There isn't just anecdotal evidence. Empirical studies also support the theory that some animals, at least, feel emotions akin to grief. Laboratory studies, for instance, show that infant primates faced with the sudden loss of their mother go through phases of grief characterised by wailing and crying, followed by a gradual detachment from the world. They no longer play with others, ignore new and exciting objects, and eventually curl up into a ball.
In another study, it was found that female baboons who had lost a close relative had increased levels of stress hormones, a response that is also seen in humans following a bereavement.
Some animals even appear to display ritualistic behaviours after a death, similarly to how humans would hold a funeral. Elephants are known to visit the remains of family members and strangers alike, touching and stroking their bones, and standing for long periods beside the skeleton in a manner akin to a vigil. Chimpanzees are also known to clean the mouths and bodies of the deceased animal. There's even anecdotal evidence that crows, magpies and ravens gather around the dead of their own, sometimes placing leaves or twigs close to the carcass.
"I was riding my bike with a friend some years ago, and there was a circle of four or five magpies surrounding a dead magpie," says Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"They were surrounding the corpse with their heads down, sort of lightly pecking at it. Then one flew off and brought some twigs and leaves. Another did the same, and then it was almost like a chorus where they stopped, slightly lowered their head, and flew off."
However, whether these behaviours truly count as grief depends largely on how you define the concept – a philosophical question that is hotly debated. In a recent article on the subject, Millar says that unlike sadness, which is usually fleeting, grief tends to be protracted, lasting for months or years. Another important element of grief is that it also seems to encompass many different emotions. "You might feel sadness, but perhaps also other emotions too like anger or even hope," says Millar.
Grief also seems to involve a complex process of coming to recognise your loss and its implications.
"Even if you explicitly know that someone has died, there might be another sense in which the loss hasn't yet been integrated into your world and into your habitual patterns of behaviour and thought," says Millar.
"So you might want to lay out a plate for them on the table, or you might still anticipate the sound of their car coming into the drive at 6pm, or that they'll be sitting on their favourite sofa and so on. In some sense you expect them to be there, even though you know that that person has died."
Some philosophers argue that, while some animals undoubtedly feel distress after losing a companion, true grief requires further cognitive capabilities that animals lack. These include the ability to understand the permanence of death, and a recognition that the individual will not be present for future events and milestones in your life.
However, Millar points out that this definition doesn't just exclude animals, it also excludes children and some adults.
More like this:
• The animals that give each other gifts
• Teaching rats to drive taught scientists about joy
• Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour
"I don't think all human grievers grapple with the nature of mortality, or project themselves to a really distant future as part of their grief. Young children who suffer a bereavement are probably not able to fully comprehend their loss at that stage, but it would seem wrong to say that their grief is lesser."
In her article, Millar defines grief as more about learning in a more practical sense how to live in a radically changed world. She believes that this practical process of adaptation is something that could be open to animals as well, given that it doesn't require highly cognitive, intellectual forms of understanding. Ultimately, Millar believes that many animals are capable of feeling grief.
"I think that other animals can share their lives with one another in quite a rich way and their whole patterns of behaviour can come to hinge upon that other animal," says Millar. So when their companion dies, they too are forced to undergo this kind of protracted process of comprehension and relearning of their world."
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We live in a bustling, crowded world, yet loneliness appears to be on the rise. Why are so many of us feeling isolated and what can we do about it?
There are many kinds of loneliness – everyone feels it differently. But what is it to you?
Perhaps loneliness is a city. On its streets, among the hubbub, the crowds, the chatter and laughter, you remain a stranger – discombobulated, disconnected, in the way.
Maybe it's a relationship turned sour. A marriage or partnership of unheard words and unmet needs. You're there, but never seen.
Or perhaps you feel like Robert Walton, the polar explorer from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who is surrounded by dependable shipmates but really just craves one true friend, "the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine".
It's common knowledge that physical isolation can lead to loneliness – and few things are as painful as the chronic, imposed solitude experienced by many of society's most vulnerable.
But if you've ever experienced situations like those described in the opening sentences of this article, you might also have suspected that other people – counterintuitively – aren't always the antidote to loneliness. They may even be part of the problem. In fact, we can just as easily be lonely in a crowd, in a romantic relationship, among friends.
It is an experience that was recently confirmed by a 2021 study involving 756 people who regularly recorded how they felt using a smartphone app over a two-year period. Feelings of loneliness seemed to increase in overcrowded, densely populated environments – in other words, modern cities. Could it be that our increasingly urban, technology-dominated lifestyles are making us feel less connected to one another? And are there solutions hiding within these findings?
It's certainly important to understand this paradox. We're reportedly living through a "loneliness epidemic" – a global outbreak that knows no boundaries, affects young and old, and can even rewire our brains. The BBC Loneliness Experiment, which sampled 55,000 people around the world in 2018, found that 40% of 16 to 24 year olds feel lonely often or very often. Other studies show that around 10% of adults around the world feel lonely – and in many different ways.
But it comes at a time when we have arguably never had more ways of connecting with others thanks to technology that lets us dial up friends and family on the other side of the globe, chat online with people we have never met, and follow the lives of those we know in social media feeds. Urban populations are also growing rapidly, with 68% of the world's people expected to be living in cities by the middle of this century.
So, in our busy, technology-connected world, why do we still feel lonely, even around others? And is it really another pandemic – something always to be avoided, medicalised, eradicated, stigmatised? Or can we also learn from it?
Loneliness is a fuzzy, complex concept, something we all experience in our own way. Fay Bound Alberti, professor of history at King's College London and author of A Biography of Loneliness, argues that loneliness, rather than being a single state of mind, is actually a "cluster" of emotions, which may include feelings such as grief, anger and jealousy. Her research reveals it is also a relatively recent "invention", with the word only taking on its current meaning around the year 1800 (more on this later).
Nevertheless, loneliness is now generally defined in science as the disconnect between actual and desired social relationships – reflecting the reality that you don't have to be alone to be lonely.
Sam Carr, a psychologist at the University of Bath who researches human relationships, believes the "biggest myth" is that people are always the solution to loneliness.
"People can actually be the cause of it," says Carr, who is also the author of All the Lonely People, an exploration of people's diverse experiences of loneliness. "Everyone's a sort of jigsaw piece and we want to feel like we fit in. And other people often can be the reason we don't feel like we do. Even if they're a friend or partner, perhaps they don't recognise us for who we are. Or they make us feel invisible. Or we have to pretend we're someone else in their company. For a lot of people, this seems to be the essence of their loneliness."
Bound Alberti agrees that physical isolation from others is not necessarily what makes people lonely.
"People think that being lonely means you have to be alone," she says. "But my research shows it's not so much the physical distance from others that makes us feel most lonely, but the emotional distance. The loneliest people are those in relationships that should be fulfilling – but are not. Some of the loneliest times I've experienced have been when I've been surrounded by too many people that I'm not remotely on the same wavelength as."
Carr recently received a letter from America. Its author revealed that she's been married to her husband for half a century. She also revealed that he's always been the source of her loneliness. She'd hoped marriage would be the cure – it ended up the cause.
After all, if one partner prioritises physical connection while the other craves an inquiring, intellectual bond, they may well end up lonely, together.
"It can be about perception – whether you feel like your needs are met," says Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge and author of The Instant Mood Fix. "Some people with a strong connection to just one person don't feel lonely, while others, who are surrounded by many people, but want deeper connections, do."
Feeling lonely is hardwired into our humanity. Some believe it serves an adaptive, evolutionary function that encourages us to take action to promote our short-term survival. Just as hunger tells us to find food, so loneliness, says Remes, "tells us something is wrong with our social environment and that we need to do something about it".
For our prehistoric ancestors, isolation was dangerous. It made them more vulnerable to animals and other hazards – and therefore less likely to survive and pass on their genes. So a sense of loneliness, however it was experienced back then, may have been a neurological mechanism for encouraging them into the safety of the group.
But times change. And so do attitudes to loneliness and solitude. Bound Alberti's research argues that prior to the 19th Century, the language of "loneliness", as we use it today, didn't really exist. Back then, to be "lonely" simply meant to be singular, "one-ly". It was rarely something bad. Being alone enhanced connection to nature or God by stripping out the background noise.
"It was a language of 'oneliness'," says Bound Alberti. "And I love this term – I wish it would come back into fashion. When [the poet] William Wordsworth wrote about wandering 'lonely as a cloud', he was simply talking about being alone. It didn't mean he had the emotional lack we now associate with the word [lonely]."
But societies around the world changed radically over the next two centuries. Bound Alberti argues that as religious and other traditional belief systems weakened, cities grew, communities and families dispersed, so people became more "anonymous" and less connected. The rise of individualism, which has been in some studies, may also have played its part.
"When I look around and see the lack of social care, the lack of connectedness, the lack of an ability to feel like we belong except when we're buying things, which is increasingly the only way we come together in physical spaces, it seems to me that it's not really any surprise that we feel lonely," says Bound Alberti. "The weird thing would be if we didn't."
So, what can we do if we feel lonely, despite being surrounded by people? First, distinguish between passing and chronic loneliness. "If you feel like the symptoms that you are experiencing are stopping you from living your life, from working, from building relationships, if they're distressing, it's worth going to a medical professional and sharing what you're going through," says Remes.
It's also important to distinguish between loneliness that is imposed and that which is chosen, says Bound Alberti. After all, we can all choose to isolate ourselves, but many people face structural circumstances – from age and health issues to poverty and discrimination – that impose isolation upon them. These structural factors need urgent redress at a community and government level, she says.
But a common problem at the personal level is that we're often reluctant to connect with people, particularly strangers – despite the proven benefits. In a 2014 study, researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California Berkeley investigated why.
They began by asking Chicago commuters whether chatting with a stranger would improve their morning journey. Most thought not. But when the researchers split the sample into groups, randomly tasking some with doing just that and others with staying schtum, those who did make conversation enjoyed their commute the most.
The experiment also challenged another of the participants' innate pessimistic biases. Beforehand, just 40% of those travelling by train thought they'd find a willing chatterbox to natter with. In fact, they all did. The findings even prompted some UK rail providers to introduce temporary "chat carriages" in 2019 in an experiment with the BBC, while a bus company placed "conversation starter" cards on its routes.
Indeed, believing we're less likeable than we are is a widespread human trait dubbed the "liking gap". And it really might be holding us back, particularly if we're already lonely.
"The lonelier we get and the more habituated we are to loneliness, the harder it is to reach out," says Bound Alberti. "So, if you're used to being alone and used to feeling rejected, you presume that someone's facial expression is rejecting you or their body language is rejecting you. And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
No-one is advocating hassling someone who'd rather be left alone, but next time you're feeling lonely in a crowd, try – respectfully – striking up a conversation with someone standing nearby. Or even set yourself challenges to talk to someone new each day – research suggests the more you do it, the more your confidence will grow and your fear of rejection will diminish. Even short conversations to say hello or thank you can go some way to make you feel better. (Find out more about the benefits of talking to strangers in this article by Joe Keohane.)
But we should also recognise that beating loneliness isn't just about forming connections. We need to build and nurture meaningful connections.
Remes suggests that volunteering is a powerful way of doing this. "Helping others takes the spotlight off ourselves and what we're going through," she says. "Instead, we're placing our attention onto another individual and thinking about how we can make a difference to them. It helps us to feel connected, which lowers levels of loneliness."
Touch is also important. The amount of physical contact people desire varies greatly between individuals. But there is a link between loneliness and a lack of touch – and even a quick touch on the shoulder can lead to enhanced feelings of social connection. Indeed, a 2020 study found that participants who received brief physical contact felt significantly less neglected, especially if they were single.
But being with people isn't the only way to feel connected. Time with pets can also create a sense of belonging as can getting out and enjoying nature.
Indeed, the 2021 study – that found people who lived in overcrowded urban areas were more likely to feel lonely – also found that the sense of loneliness decreased with perceived social inclusivity and contact with nature. In fact, those who were exposed to nature were 28% less likely to experience loneliness.
"The reason that contact with nature is helpful is that it increases our attachment to a place. It makes us feel like we belong," says Remes. Indeed, it seems that this sense of connection, belonging and inclusion is the real antidote to loneliness. (Read more about how spending time in nature can make you feel less lonely in this article by Julia Hotz.)
We should remember that some relationships can also leave us feeling lonely. Whether it's with a friend or romantic partner, we can experience loneliness in a relationship when we feel unseen, unheard or like we have to wear a mask or be someone we're not in another person's company. If this is you, allow time for communication. Tell your friend or partner what you need and give them the space to share their priorities in return. Perhaps the relationship is toxic, in which case you should consider leaving it. But you may also have built walls or developed diverging interests and needs over time, obstacles that can be overcome.
Whenever we experience feelings of loneliness, it's always worth asking what those feelings are trying to tell us. But Remes also suggests that we should be wary of the answers we give ourselves. When we're lonely, we may well ask, 'why?'. But our answers can have significant consequences. If we answer the question, "Maybe I’m lonely because I haven't reached out to people as much as I should have", for example, then that can be motivating. The answer contains a manageable solution – I need to reach out more – which can spur you into action.
But if you answer the question, "I am lonely because I'm unlikable" or "I'm unlucky", then the solution – I need to be more likeable or lucky – will feel abstract and further from your reach. "The key is to see the situation as being within, rather than beyond, your control," says Remes.
And despite talk of loneliness being an "epidemic", and the stigma that's often attached to it, remember it's not always bad. Whether we feel isolated in a crowd, a relationship or at the ends of the Earth, loneliness is part of who we are.
"If you go through a whole human life, the things you feel connected to often end," says Carr. "That might be a marriage, or a job or a bereavement. Most of those things eventually end for one reason or another – they're kind of transient. And what most humans have to do is reinvent themselves after that and reconnect with something else. But that doesn't happen overnight.
"There's a period, a sort of a desert, you've got to cross to become a new you. And it's inevitable that it's going to be quite lonely crossing that desert. But we should appreciate that as a part of the existential reality of being human rather than some indication that we're broken or need fixing."
As the world gets ever busier, finding better ways of connecting with others may be something we could all benefit from. But we also shouldn't be too critical of ourselves when we do feel lonely. Don't forget it's a natural, diverse and sometimes helpful phenomenon that we should listen to, not simply stigmatise.
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Hot "hairdryer" winds that whip down mountainsides play a role in devastating heatwaves and wildfires – and they may become more of a problem with climate change.
It's a word that, in German, also means "hairdryer". And that's just what it's like. A hot, dry wind that sweeps down a mountainside, baking everything in its path. It is powerful enough to raise air temperatures by many degrees. This is the strange, and sometimes dangerous, weather event known as Föhn.
These winds – sometimes known as Santa Ana winds in California – often crop up during heatwaves, where they can push temperatures up to unbearable levels in local, literal, hotspots. In the right conditions they can also fan flames into raging wildfires.
In January 2025, a powerful Santa Ana windstorm with gusts forecast to reach up to 100mph (160km/h) swept over southern California. The winds, which the National Weather Service described as "life threatening", fanned flames that started in the mountainsides to the west of Los Angeles into a fast-moving wildfire that spread through already dry vegetation to engulf the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood near Santa Monica, forcing at least 30,000 residents to evacuate.
In August 2023 in Taiwan, Föhn winds were associated with 39C (102F) heat in the southeast of the country. The same kind of wind also potentially exacerbated the intense heatwave in France and some speculate that it helped to generate the tinder-dry conditions that supercharged devastating wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, which have killed at least 106 people.
The Föhn effect can occur in much colder places, too, even Antarctica, where it can contribute to the rapid collapse of ice shelves. And, in 2018, it was blamed for forcing a significant volume of ice away from the coast of Greenland.
The weird potency of Föhn winds might not stop there. There is a long-standing folk belief that they can cause negative psychological effects, such as depression and suicidal thoughts. While there is limited hard evidence for that, it's fair to say that Föhn winds are not to be taken lightly. Science, thankfully, can help us understand them – and the risks they pose.
"Usually, you need some sort of mountain or a range of hills for the Föhn effect to happen," says Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society. A moist wind will rise up one side of a mountain to reach cooler air, where moisture then condenses out to form clouds or rain near or at the peak, she explains: "That releases energy out into the atmosphere," causing air temperatures to rise.
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The wind then pushes on down the other, leeward side of the mountain where cloudless conditions allow the sun to heat it up even further. Air temperatures might rise by 10C (18F) or more. One record from 1972 in the US even suggests that a Föhn wind event in Loma, Montana, pushed the local temperature up from -48C (-54F) to 9C (49F) – a rise of 57C (103F) in just 24 hours. A similar phenomenon saw temperatures in Cut Bank, Montana, rise by 29C (52F) in just one hour in January 2020.
More commonly, Föhn winds can lead to temperature differences of several degrees. One 30-year study in the Southern Appalachian Mountains found they elevated temperatures by at least 3C (5F) compared to nearby locations not affected by the winds. And an event on 2 January 1999 saw a narrow band of warm air move through the Great Tennessee Valley, on the northwest side of the Smoky Mountains, that was 10C (18F) warmer than the surrounding areas.
The term Föhn comes from the Alpine region of Europe but the same effect has been given different names elsewhere in the world. In parts of the US, such as in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska, they are known as Chinook winds, while in California people use the term Santa Ana to refer to the same phenomenon.
In Argentina, the Föhn effect is known as Zonda, while in South Africa it is Bergwind. Spanish people in Valencia call it Ponentà. And in the UK the Föhn wind that occurs in the Pennines in northern England is known locally as the Helm Wind. All of them can be classified as downslope windstorms.
The phenomenon is likely to become all the more significant in the coming years, says Jim Overland, an Arctic meteorologist at the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since we expect to see longer, more frequent and more intense heatwaves due to climate change.
"Once you have global warming and you have the normal variability like Föhn winds contributing, it all acts together and gives you the heatwave you've never seen before," he says.
On 8 August 2023, a terrifying wildfire, described as a "fire hurricane" by the Hawaiian governor, swept through the popular seaside town of Lahaina in Maui. A combination of factors influenced the eruption of the fire, including warm temperatures, low humidity, dry grasses in the area and strong winds from a nearby hurricane. However, a downslope windstorm, or Föhn effect, was perhaps also partly to blame, according to some expert observers.
Föhn winds might indeed have been at work here, says Craig Clements, director of the Wild Fire Interdisciplinary Research Centre at San José State University, in California, though he notes the Lahaina fires were shaped largely by powerful winds all over the area at the time.
The Föhn effect often crops up in association with serious wildfires, says Clements. He mentions examples in California and Greece. And it has been linked to forest fires in the southern Cape of South Africa, such as the deadly Knysna fires of 2017. They have also been found to cause erratic wildfire behaviour around the Canadian Rockies, where they can drive trigger "explosive" uphill blazes and at times drive flames downhill.
"One thing that people don't realise is it can dry the fuel," says Clements, referring specifically to grasses. "The fuels can go from [having] a dew on them to being critically dry in an hour." This is particularly problematic because fires can spread so quickly in grasses.
The rapid influence of Föhn winds on the environment is noticeable in other places, such as on snowy mountain ranges where the onset of the phenomenon can rapidly melt snow and ice. Some people call the winds "snow-eaters" in recognition of this, says Clements.
There is ongoing research into whether Föhn winds have psychological effects on human beings, to see whether there is any truth in the old folk beliefs from the Alps. One study in 2020 analysed data on nearly 72,000 mental health-related hospitalisations across a 35-year period in Bern, Switzerland and found that Föhn winds were associated with a 5% increased risk of such hospitalisations. Clements, though, suggests that it is difficult to prove with certainty that the winds really were the cause of patterns like this as other confounding factors could play a role.
Either way, clearly, they can have strong effects on the weather and fires in certain places, and it's important to be aware of the risks they pose, says Bentley.
"There's nothing you can do to stop the wind," she says – but it's important to be prepared if the effect can occur in your own part of the world, especially if there is a risk of dangerously high temperatures or deadly wildfires.
* This article was originally published on 23 August 2023 but was updated on 8 January 2025 to include details of the Santa Ana windstorm and wildfires in Los Angeles.
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Many people struggle to do the recommended amount of exercise each week. But research suggests even a small amount has powerful effects.
There's no question that exercise is good for the heart. Regular exercise lowers blood pressure and cholesterol and reduces the chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
But sometimes it can be hard to find the time (and motivation) to exercise. So, what's the least amount of exercise you can get away with doing while still seeing these benefits? That answer depends on how fit you are to begin with.
Here's some good news: the lower your starting point is in terms of fitness, the less you have to do to see a benefit.
So, if you're someone who's completely sedentary, then only a small amount of exercise is needed to see a reduction in cardiac risk. From a starting point of virtually zero exercise, an hour or two a week of leisurely cycling or brisk walking might be all you need to reduce your risk of death from cardiovascular disease by as much as 20%.
But as you get fitter and increase the amount you exercise, the cardiovascular health gains diminish and eventually plateau. This is sometimes referred to as a J-shaped curve.
A sedentary person who goes from doing nothing to exercising a couple of hours a week will see the greatest reductions in cardiovascular risk during this period. If they increase the amount they exercise to four hours a week, there would be additional – albeit smaller – reductions in risk (around 10%). But the benefits to cardiovascular health appear to max out after four to six hours a week – with no additional gains beyond this point for everyone.
However, one study in which sedentary people were trained to complete an endurance event, such as a marathon, found that once participants reached seven to nine hours a week of training, they saw noticeable changes in their heart's structure.
Training at this level gives the same reductions in cardiovascular risk as training four to six hours a week. But participants had an increase in their amount of heart muscle, as well as dilation of their cardiac chambers. The heart is like any other muscle: if trained enough, it will get bigger. These changes occurred as early as three months after starting.
So, while the additional hours of exercise don't provide further benefit in terms of reducing cardiovascular disease risk, these changes in the heart's structure will mean improvements in fitness – and hopefully, running a faster marathon.
These sorts of changes were previously only thought possible in elite athletes – but this study is proof that if we're willing to commit, we can not only get the cardiovascular benefits but also develop the heart of an athlete.
After you start doing an hour or two of exercise a week to improve your heart health, something incredible and unexpected might happen. You might actually enjoy it. Four hours a week is the sweet spot that gives the greatest reduction in cardiovascular risk – but if you enjoy training or find a sport you love, you shouldn't let this stop you doing more.
Up the intensity
The idea of going from never exercising to working out four hours a week can be daunting – especially if you don't have much spare time. This is where the intensity of your workouts is important.
If you want the biggest bang for your buck in terms of reducing cardiovascular risk, you need to break a sweat. High-intensity interval training (Hiit) is one time-efficient way of maximising your returns from exercise. It's typically a 20-minute workout comprising short, 30 to 60-second bursts of intense exercise followed by a brief rest in between.
Despite how short these workouts are, their intensity means that after several weeks of Hiit, you'll probably see many benefits – including reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol. However, most Hiit studies have been too small to measure if there's an effect on overall cardiovascular risk.
A word of caution is needed if you have cardiovascular disease. There are several conditions – such as cardiomyopathy (genetic heart muscle disease), ischemic heart disease (narrowing of heart arteries) and myocarditis (heart inflammation, usually viral) – where strenuous exercise is advised against. People with these health conditions should stick to low or moderate-intensity exercise. This will still be beneficial for your heart, while not putting you at risk of harm.
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If finding time to exercise in the week is a challenge and you're only able to work out at weekends, rest assured this is still beneficial. One retrospective study of over 37,000 people found those who did their week's worth of physical activity over just one of two days had the same reduction in cardiovascular disease risk as those who did activity spread throughout the week.
So, for a self-professed lazy person who wants to improve their cardiovascular health, the message is simple: even a small amount of any type of exercise can make a big difference.
* Peter Swoboda is an associate professor cardiology at the University of Leeds
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Friendships can bring some surprising benefits to our health. Here's how you can make new friends and strengthen the ones you've got already.
Health, exercise and diet reliably sit at the top of most people's New Year's resolutions – but for 2025, some may consider prioritising another goal: better relations with other people.
Boosting the strength and quality of our social ties can have a huge impact on our emotional and mental health. As one of our writers, David Robson, notes, our friendships can "influence everything from our immune system's strength to our chances of dying from heart disease", and can even help us lead a longer life. Close bonds with spouses and dear friends, but also friendly relations with acquaintances, colleagues and neighbours are all beneficial, suggesting it's worth trying to find common ground even in these polarised times. And in the midst of an apparent loneliness epidemic, it could be the medicine we all need.
Here is our four-day guide to help you jump-start your social life in 2025 – or to simply feel more connected with the world. After all, many types of relationships can bring us joy, opening us up to the world around us by connecting with nature, connecting with animals, and importantly, connecting with ourselves.
Day 1: What are your friendship goals and expectations?
When our writer Molly Gorman interviewed friendship researcher Grace Vieth about break-ups between friends, she learned that there's one thing many of us could do to improve our networks: get better at dealing with conflict. As Vieth says: "I think that a lot of people have a mindset that they're willing to work through conflict in romantic relationships". But when it comes to friendship, we may just expect things to "be easy and bring a lot of joy, fun and laughter", Vieth explains – leading us to mistakenly think that if there's conflict, the friendship itself is flawed.
It could be a good idea to take some time to think about what friendship means to you – and what you expect from yourself and others in a friendship. Molly's piece has lots of research-backed information on handling the ups and downs of being friends – and, should it come to it, dealing with and learning from the end of a friendship and its aftermath. (Read her full article here.)
Encouragingly, making friends is in fact something that can be learned and mastered over time – in fact, later life can be a golden age for friendship, as research suggests we become better at getting along with others. "People over time gain social skills," says Katherine Fiori, a professor of psychology at Adelphi University, New York. You could read our piece on how our friendship strategies change over our lifetime, and consider if your own social goals fit your current needs – or if it could be worth modifying them.
Day 2: Share happiness
Having reflected on your friendship expectations and goals, do you think that you're a good, supportive friend to others? If you're not sure, here are some research-backed tips to boost your own friendship skills.
One powerful trait among supportive friends is "confelicity", from the Latin word for "shared happiness". It simply means taking the time to really express joy at other people's good news, as well as sharing your own positive feelings with them. If you'd like to bring more sparkle to your friendships in 2025, finding opportunities for confelicity could be a good first step. Is there someone who recently shared good news with you – but your immediate reaction could perhaps have been more enthusiastic? You could still send them a message saying that you were really pleased to hear about their success or mention it next time you meet. (Read our full piece on being a supportive – and not toxic – friend.)
Another way to add warmth to your connections could be to repair past wrongs, by saying sorry. As our tech specialist Thomas Germain found out, robots are actually surprisingly good at coming up with effective apologies – while many humans struggle with that. But we humans may have one advantage: we can show in many ways that while imperfect, our apologies come from the heart. As Judy Eaton, a psychology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, told Thomas: "Apologies aren't just about saying the right words, it's about bringing in the physiological responses of what researchers call 'psychic pain'. If you're truly remorseful, it hurts. If that pain doesn't come through in the apology, people can detect that it's not a real manifestation of vulnerability." (And if you're not sure how to say sorry without making things worse, read Thomas' full article on apologising effectively).
Day 3: Connect over shared interests
For people who struggle in social situations, connecting with others over shared interests can be a way to bond without having to put yourself at the centre of the interaction. Since friends strongly shape our habits and values, meeting new people over a shared hobby could also potentially tick off two New Year’s resolutions in one go: making new friends, and cultivating a new hobby.
Bonding with other students in a language class, for example, helps people persevere with the class and eventually master the language, according to experts on successful language-learning. (If you're worried that you're too old to learn a new language, read this article – you're not, and in fact, older learners have certain advantages over younger learners.)
Exercise can be another activity with a double benefit – meeting people and staying fit. Team sports in particular are associated with improved social and mental health. This applies to people of all ages and abilities, including those with disabilities. Last year, we took the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris as an opportunity to report on a vast range of fitness-related topics, from how to run faster, to staying safe and healthy as an athlete with disability. The overarching message: exercise can be a great social activity, it's great for mental and physical health, and we should probably all do more of it.
Learning an instrument is another activity that's fun and can benefit the brain, and open up opportunities to connect with others. So, on day three, how about picking a new activity, or reviving an old one, and making a plan for how to pursue it over the course of the year?
Shared rituals are another way to strengthen relationships, researchers have found – and even tiny ones, such as clinking your cutlery together before you eat or a special greeting, can make connections more durable and satisfying. (Read the full story on the power of rituals here).
Day 4: Connect with nature
On day four, it could be time to turn towards nature. Blue spaces such as lakes, rivers and oceans, and specially designated Dark Sky sites that have low levels of light pollution, can all boost our wellbeing. Time spent in nature has even been found to help people make social connections, providing a tonic for loneliness, as writer Julia Hotz revealed in her article. And we can return the favour, by helping the plants and animals around us.
Sometimes, all it takes is a flick of a switch: turning skyscrapers and residential homes dark can save the lives of billions of birds as they migrate through our cities. It could also allow you to experience the wonder of night's sky for yourself. Experiencing awe and wonder at the Universe around us can help to bring people closer together, encouraging more altruistic behaviour and reducing self-centric attitudes, as David Robson explains in this elegant article about the power of events like a solar eclipse.
As migration ecologist Andrew Farnsworth told our reporter Riley Farrell: "We need to keep our connection to nature through our eyes, ears, nose", opening our senses to the awe-inspiring behaviour of birds and other creatures. (Read the full story on the Lights Out campaign in US cities, and its surprisingly powerful impact – as well the connections it has created between bird fans in many cities.)
Our correspondent Katherine Latham experienced this kind of helping-hand connection on a tiny but thrilling scale, when she built a minuscule garden pond – and a frog moved in. (At the other end of the scale, a family with a castle in England rewilded an entire ancient estate, and previously extinct storks have made their home there.) Even in dark, cold January, there are many ways to help animals – bird feeders have pros and cons, but a simple alternative can be to grow wildlife-friendly plants.
For some, connecting with nature can be profoundly transformative, and heal deep wounds. Tiana Williams, a member of the Yurok Nation, told our correspondent Lucy Sherriff about a very special wildlife connection that brought joy to her tribe: bringing back the condor, which the Yurok Tribe considers a sacred animal. As Williams says, for her young daughter, "condors have been part of her whole life. One of her favourite games growing up was pretending she was a baby condor and I was condor mum. So, it's just part of her story… The condor is not only here in reality, but they're here in our hearts again."
Such a deep ancestral connection with a sacred animal is an especially precious bond, and part of many indigenous traditions. But all people and all communities can benefit from cultivating closer ties with nature – by enjoying the marvels our planet has to offer.
Whether it's reaching out to an old friend, starting a sociable new hobby, or simply observing the world around you and noticing opportunities to connect with it, we hope your year will be filled with the joy of good company. And if you're up for a few more wellbeing steps, here's our guide to improving other parts of life, one day at a time.
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The 24-hour darkness during the winter near the Poles can disrupt sleep – this is how the people who live there cope.
Imagine not seeing the Sun for weeks or even months. It's dark, the air has a freezing sharp bite and everything is covered with thick snow.
But even in the midst of the polar night, it isn't pitch black. At times the rays of the Sun filter weakly through the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating twilight shades of blue, pink and purple.
There's also light from the Moon and the stars. The northern lights make a frequent appearance and the snow reflects all artificial light, creating a "snowglow" that makes everything look brighter.
It is a stunningly beautiful time of year for those living in the Arctic. For locals, the polar night is part of life, and many thrive, embracing the season. Some even say they sleep better than they do at other times of the year.
"Polar night is too short," says Esther Berelowitsch, 42, who lives in Inari, Finland, where the polar night lasts for six weeks. "I'd love if it lasted for two months. Nature shows itself even when there's no sunlight... I go to bed earlier and sleep better. I don't want spring to come."
Yet research shows that others become sad and sluggish when winter starts – deprived of the sunlight, their mood drops and depression can set in.
Sleep in the Arctic can be a unique challenge. The midnight sun during the summer months can play havoc with the human circadian rhythm, the natural clock that governs many of our bodily functions. The almost perpetual darkness of the polar night can also delay the normal sleep/wake cycle, especially in those who spend a lot of time indoors. Insomnia can be a particular problem for some people in the winter months.
But people who live and work in Arctic have also learned to cope with the challenges that the dramatic change in the seasons can mean for their sleep. There is certainly some evidence that local people are better acclimatised to the sleeping problems they might encounter during the polar night than those visiting from lower latitudes. So, what can the rest of us learn from Arctic residents about our own sleep?
Think positive
In the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Russia, Canada and Alaska, the Sun remains below the horizon for much of the winter. For how long exactly depends on the location: in Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland, right on the Arctic Circle, polar night lasts for only two days during winter solstice. In Tromsø, the largest town in northern Norway, 350km (217 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, it's about six weeks, from late November to mid-January. At the far end of the spectrum, servicemen live in darkness for almost four months a year at a Canadian military facility at Alert, in Nunavut, the world's northernmost permanently inhabited place, roughly 1,776 km (1,101 miles) north of the Arctic Circle – and just 817km (508 mi) from the North Pole.
With so little daylight, combined with the cold weather, the long winter months can affect people's mood. Perhaps the most well-known effect of the dark, cold winter months is seasonal affective disorder (Sad) – a significant slump in mood thought to be caused by a lack of sunlight during the shorter winter days. Symptoms include low energy, overeating and oversleeping, and appear in the autumn or winter, followed by spontaneous remission in the spring or summer. Disrupted sleep is also a hallmark of Sad. (Read more about how the dark days of January shape your mood, intelligence and sex drive.)
In Europe, Sad is estimated to affect some 2-8% of the population – approximately 8-14 million people, although rates vary country to country. It is also thought to afflict millions of people in the US, with rates ranging from about 1% in the south of the country to nearly 10% of the population in the north.
The same effects of latitude can be seen in countries with territory within Arctic circle. Communities living in the north of Greenland, for example, suffer far higher incidence of Sad than those in the south. Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic also experience elevated rates compared to those further south – twice those in Ontario for example, and four times the rates found in southern parts of the US.
But the research is far from conclusive. Other studies have cast doubt on the idea that symptoms of depression are linked to seasonal changes in daylight or to latitude. One study of nearly 9,000 people in Tromsø found no seasonal differences in mental distress reported by the people taking part. Other studies, though, have found there is a strong seasonal relationship between elevated feelings of depression as well as what time people went to sleep and got up in the morning.
How you think about the winter months may be an important factor here.
A study of 238 people in Norway found that having a positive mindset about the winter can transform the way people experience polar night.
"Cold and darkness affects all of us," says one of the study's authors, Kari Leibowitz, a psychologist who researches people's wellbeing in the winter. "What makes a difference is how we respond to them emotionally and behaviourally."
The study found that people who look forward to enjoying the opportunities that winter brings, such as skiing and cozy nights spent with loved ones in front of a fire, reported better winter wellbeing.
Another study in northern Norway found that indigenous Sámi people were less likely to suffer from insomnia or rely upon medication to help them sleep compared to the non- Sámi population. The researchers found the Sámi tended to have a more relaxed attitude towards sleep, with even children being left to self-regulate their own sleep rather than sticking to regular bedtimes.
It is well known that depression, stress, anxiety and emotional conflict can all play a significant role in insomnia. But how you think about your sleep can also have a very real effect on how rested you feel after a night in bed too. In other words, the mood you are in when you wake can influence how you feel you slept the night before and how tired you will feel through the day. (Find out more about how the right mindset can improve your sleep in this article by Amanda Ruggeri.)
For Michèle Noach, an artist who shares her time between the UK and Vadsø, a town in the far north-east of Norway close to the Russian border, the polar night induces a feeling of coziness where she just wants to curl up and snooze.
But Leibowitz thinks something else might be going on too.
"Those with a negative mindset are fighting against winter," says Leibowitz. "For example they put on big lights to push away the darkness. But that just makes things worse: they create a contrast that makes the outside world even darker – and overlighting may also disrupt their sleep."
Turn down the lights
The amount of light we are exposed to during the day plays an important role in setting our circadian rhythm, helping to regulate the amount of melatonin our bodies produce. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the brain from the evening onwards, preparing our body for sleep and so playing a crucial role in regulating our sleep-wake cycles.
The almost perpetual winter darkness in the Arctic can play havoc with melatonin production, with some studies showing a large spike in melatonin at the peak of the polar night in mid-January. Melatonin levels then decrease as the sunlight begins to return at the end of the month. This would be fine, except for those working on a set daily schedule that requires them to be at work or up and about at a certain time. During the periods of highest melatonin production, participants in a study by researchers at the University of Tromsø reported feeling much more tired in the mornings than they did in the summer months.
Artificial lighting, however, cannot fully replicate the levels of sunlight needed to maintain stable sleep patterns.
But research on soldiers in the Canadian Arctic suggests that it is possible to realign someone's melatonin production with their sleep pattern using a specialised light visor fitted with LEDs emitting a bluish green light at a wavelength of 505nanometres (nm). The military personnel who used the device reported an improvement in the quality of their sleep and mood over an 11-day period. Using lamps enriched with blue-light has also been found to be beneficial for people overwintering at Antarctic bases.
Håkan Långstedt, an engineer based in Helsinki, Finland, and managing director of lighting design company SAAS Instruments, recommends soft lighting during the polar night.
"If you have a lot of darkness, you don't need a lot of light to compensate," he says. "You only need low-level lighting."
Crucially, he says, it is best to gradually reduce the amount of light as it gets closer to bed time. "It's not something cut with a knife: it gradually goes from light to something darker." Certainly, research has shown that gradually reducing the amount of blue light we are exposed to up to two hours before bed can help to prepare us for sleep. Dimming the lights before we want to go to sleep can also help to shift when our bodies begin producing melatonin.
Leibowitz, who suffers from a sleep disorder herself, also recommends using soft lighting and natural light, such as candlelight and a fire, in the hours before going to bed to improve the quality of sleep.
"Low-level lighting stimulates the production of melatonin: the hormone that makes you sleepy," she says. "Going to the sauna or taking a hot bath has the same effect: the body temperature drops after you get out, which also triggers the release of melatonin."
Start an exercise habit
Physical exercise also has an important effect on our circadian rhythm and seems to be particularly good for our sleep if we do it in the morning.
Jumping on an exercise bike shortly after waking and again in the afternoon, but doing so 20 minutes earlier each day, can help to shift our sleeping schedule, for example. A two hour bout of intense physical exercise during our usual night-time hours can also be a dramatic way of shifting our sleep pattern – although that wouldn't really be recommended unless you are trying to adjust to night shifts or a new time zone.
And there is some evidence from a study of students in Alta in northern Norway that adopting a regular exercise regime – such as a regular training session for a team sport or a spell on a treadmill – reduces the amount of melatonin produced in the afternoon, meaning you are less likely to feel sleepy at this point in the day.
Esther Berelowitsch, who moved to Inari in northern Lapland from Paris eight years ago to learn Sámi languages, spends two hours a day walking or skiing outside the house during the polar night.
"It's important to be outdoors when we have a little light," she says. "I only stay indoors when it's -40C (-40F) or colder. Otherwise I go out for a walk or go skiing."
But while cold weather workouts may help to burn more calories, most research on physical activity in the open air and sleep tends to have been done at lower latitudes where exposure to sunlight goes hand-in-hand. This makes it tricky to unravel whether being in the open air during the polar night would bring additional benefits or not.
Keep a consistent pattern if you work fixed hours
"What we see is that the sleep-wake cycle is delayed in winter," says Arne Lowden, an associate professor who studies sleep and stress at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. "People go to bed later and if they have to wake up at a certain hour because they have to go to work, their sleep will be cut short," he says.
Lowden and his colleagues conducted a sleep study involving office workers in Kiruna in northern Sweden where the polar night lasts for 28 days. He found that they went to sleep 39 minutes later in the winter than in the summer, and they got 12 minutes less sleep per week in the winter.
"Cold temperatures and fewer daylight hours disrupt the circadian rhythm, that is, our body clock," Lowden says. "Our bodies operate a 24-hour cycle in which to perform their functions. Almost all our organs are organised in cycles, in a way that one time of the day they're active, and another time they're recuperating and restoring cells."
Certainly, exercising in the morning rather than the evening during the Arctic's dark month of January has been shown to have a beneficial effect on the heart's circadian rhythm, as well as overall sleep quality.
"If your circadian rhythm is disrupted, you'll be sleepy during the day," says Lowden. "If it's badly disrupted, you'll wake up at totally the wrong time and you won't be able to hold a job."
There is also evidence that humans may actually need more sleep during the winter than we do in the summer.
Researchers in Germany analysed sleep recordings of 188 people with disturbed sleep patterns and found that they experienced seasonal variations in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – the stage of sleep when we dream. In December their REM sleep was 30 minutes longer than in June. (Find out more about how the seasons change our sleep in this article by Isabelle Gerretsen.)
Some evidence gathered by fitness trackers seems to support this idea. Based on data from 45,000 users of the Oura Ring, a wearable sleep and activity tracker, sleep duration was found to increase by 3%, or about 10 minutes, in the winter.
"We've seen a change in users' resting heart rates as well: they increase by 3% from summer to winter," says Heli Koskimäki, head of future physiology at Finland-based technology company Oura Health. He confirmed that most of the users were in the Nordic countries, Canada and the US, but was unable to say how many lived in places that experienced the polar night.
Koskimäki says users who follow a daily schedule according to their chronotype seem to sleep better. Put simply, this means getting up early in the morning and going to bed early in the evening if you're an early bird, and getting up and going to bed later if you're a night owl.
Modern society tends to favour morning types, says Koskimäki. "If you're more of an evening type, there's a danger that you'll sacrifice some of your sleep to meet society's demands. If you can't follow your own chronotype, try to be at least as consistent as possible with your sleep schedule: you'll sleep better and feel better for it."
Taken together, these findings suggest that sticking to the exact same daily schedule throughout the year may not be the best idea.
"If you have flexibility in your private life and in your job, you're better off if you adapt your schedules to the seasons and give yourself more time to sleep in the winter than the summer," says Leibowitz.
Slow down and enjoy good company
Berelowitsch, who loves the polar night, says it gives her an opportunity to slow down and engage in quiet pursuits.
"I've noticed that in my free time I do everything slower – I walk slow, eat slow, sleep slow," she says. "When it's too cold to go out, I remember my handicraft projects and my guitar. But I also enjoy socialising on dark winter evenings."
Maintaining social contacts and attending events is well-known to benefit mental health. And there is some evidence that social interactions can help with regulating our emotions and so improve our sleep, particularly if we surround ourselves with supportive relationships.
"Polar night is a time for gathering with family and friends," agrees Lowden.
Noach says there have been times when she has sat with friends at the fireplace for nine hours, unaware of the passing time. Polar night also gives Noach a unique opportunity to absorb herself in art. "For two months, everything's happening in the dark," she says. "I find that I'm very creative then. I'm mining myself.
"In the Arctic they say during polar night you have to switch your internal lights on," she adds. "So you have to draw on very deep resources in yourself. There are people who find it difficult and depressing. But the majority up here get a real kick out if it."
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Why not try these science-backed tips to get more happiness in your life?
Some people are born to be happier than others. But whether you're the kind of person who sings in the shower and dances in the rain, or of a more dour inclination, contentment isn't just something that happens to us. We can all change our habits to coax more of it into our lives.
So, here are our top tips for a happier 2025.
Embrace friendship as we age
Friendship benefits people across all ages, but in later life, it can become an especially important source of happiness. While older people typically shrink their social networks to prioritise spending time with those who know them well, research shows that it's a good idea to remain open to new friendships, as they give us slightly different benefits to our relationships with family, which can be based on obligation. As friendships are voluntary, non-obligatory relationships that can begin or end at any time, they tend to be more fun and less tense or fraught.
Although older adults may face a number of hurdles which can make meeting new people difficult, in some ways, it should be easier for us to make friends: our personalities mature, we gain more social skills, our outlook becomes more joy-oriented and we tend to become more agreeable. And the effort of maintaining quality friendships as we age is worth it, as the advantages stretch beyond just psychological wellbeing – it also improves our cognitive functioning and physical health. In fact, research consistently suggests that friendships are as important as family ties in predicting wellbeing in adulthood and old age.
And if you are the sort of person who finds making friends difficult – sharing an awe-striking moment, such as the total solar eclipse that passed across North America last year, is one way to help make you feel closer to the people around you while also inspiring some positive emotions along the way.
Read more about why later life can be a golden age for friendship here.
Practice "confelicity"
Compassion is a well-known foundation of true friendship. Derived from the Latin for "shared pain", this empathy helps us form strong connections when our friends need help. But there's an opposite state that is relatively unknown and equally important – "confelicity", as David Robson wrote for the BBC.
Meaning "shared happiness", it's an undervalued facet of good relationships and could be just as important as compassion for maintaining friendships, multiple studies suggest.
Enthusiastically supporting a friend's good news – and asking questions about it – is a basis of being a good friend. Respond too passively – or actively underplay your friend's success – and you run the risk of damaging the relationship.
Read more from the BBC about how to avoid being a toxic friend.
Do some volunteering
It's almost a cliché to say that doing something for someone else makes you feel better than rewarding yourself, but the more learned about altruism, the more it seems to ring true.
In fact, studies have found that volunteering can even help with series conditions like chronic pain and depression. A 2002 study, for example, found peer volunteers assigned to help others struggling with chronic pain saw their pain intensity scores drop while they were volunteering. Other studies have shown that looking after animals can improve our health and taking care of houseplants can help us thrive, especially in old age.
Some healthcare providers are now even prescribing volunteering as one particularly effective form of "social prescribing": prescriptions which connect people to community resources and activities. Sending people to everything from art classes to cycling groups to groups, and helping them with food and heating bills, are all increasingly proven to be valid health interventions which could also reduce pressure on health services.
Read more about the unexpected benefits of prescribing purpose and why volunteering seems to be so good for us, in this book extract we published from writer Julia Hotz.
Connect with your ancestors
There is another way the past could help you in the present. Research suggests that engaging with our ancestry can have profound psychological benefits. Family stories about overcoming adversity, for example, can be empowering when passed down to new generation.
Susan M Moore, an emeritus professor of psychology at Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne has found that people who know more about their family history have higher levels of satisfaction and wellbeing. Engaging in the task of researching your family tree can lead to feeling more in control of their lives, alongside a deeper understanding of your place in the world.
It can also give you an affirming sense of perspective and gratitude – knowing your life today has been made possible by the struggles and fortitude of your predecessors on behalf of those who come after them.
Read more in Katherine Wang's story of her grandfather's battle against adversity in China and how it led her to learn more about the healing power of exploring her family history.
Write a list
Counting your blessings is an age-old piece of advice, but it underpins a simple but well-evidenced intervention. It turns out that writing a list of three good things that have happened to us can help to boost our mood. Whether that is a life-changing event like passing an important exam or having a baby, or something seemingly inconsequential, like bumping into an old friend, or enjoying some beautiful early evening light while out for a walk – there is a growing body of research that suggests it can improve our wellbeing.
Read more from Claudia Hammond about how this simple exercise can help you through tough times.
Look forward to fun activities
There's nothing quite like a scenic drive – the wind in your hair, some tunes on the stereo, the freedom of the open road ahead. Well, now rats can enjoy a slice of this vehicular heaven, after researchers at the University of Richmond, Virginia, taught their furry, wriggly-nosed subjects to drive small Perspex automobiles in the laboratory.
The rats mastered this new skill quickly, and were soon jumping into the cars enthusiastically, in preparation for their next trip. Eventually the researchers noticed some rats doing excited little jumps as though they were enjoying the anticipation of pleasure.
This led to a whole new avenue of research. Could the expectation of fun be as rewarding as the activity itself? In another experiment, the scientists trained some rats to wait for rewards – while others were given them immediately. Later, they assessed the rats for optimism and found that those who had been trained to wait for rewards were more optimistic.
The researchers speculated that this could work for humans too – by routinely anticipating pleasurable activities or events we could reprogram our brains to be more optimistic.
Read more in this article by Kelly Lambert, a professor of behavioural neuroscience who led the rat driving experiment.
Do nothing
If you have made it this far down the list, this one might come as something of a surprise. But research suggests that worrying too much about being happy can actually be a block to feeling it.
Experiments that primed people to desire greater happiness – perhaps by reading about how happy they can be – before watching an uplifting film ended up feeling more disappointed than elated. The theory is that by raising their expectations, reading and worrying about the importance of happiness can actually leave people feeling deflated.
You might have experienced this yourself during a big event or party you have been looking forward to that doesn't quite live up to those expectations.
Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has also shown that the desire and pursuit of happiness can also increase feelings of loneliness and disconnection. She recommends adopting a more stoic attitude and being more accepting of life's ups and downs.
Read more about why trying less to find happiness may make you happier in these articles by David Robson and Nat Rutherford.
Don't drink too much caffeine
During the cold, dark winter days, a cup of coffee might give your brain and body a much-needed boost. Consuming caffeine can make us feel alert as it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream where it outcompetes adenosine, a chemical that makes us feel tired.
Research shows that there are many health benefits associated with consuming caffeine, including a decreased risk of several forms of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as improved physical performance and protection against depression.
But timing is key when it comes to caffeine as it can take a while to kick in and a long time to wear off. Scientists recommend having your last caffeine dose eight hours and 48 minutes before you go to bed. We also shouldn't consume too much caffeine – no more than 400mg or around two to three cups of coffee, depending on the strength – to avoid disrupted sleep, headaches, nausea and anxiety.
Read more about what happens if you take too much caffeine in this article by Jessica Brown.
... and a bonus from our newsletter: what I learned from six steps to calm
by Melissa Hogenboom
This year I've covered many science-backed ways to improve our health and wellbeing, but I must admit, like many of us, I don't always act on the advice I am featuring. After completing a six-week mindfulness course I stopped practicing mindfulness once the course was complete, despite learning that even five minutes a day has numerous benefits such as improving attention and reducing stress, anxiety and depression.
However, this summer, whilst researching and writing six science-backed steps to feel calmer, it quickly became apparent that even if we are feeling relatively calm and stress-free, we can all benefit from many of the anti-anxiety exercises featured – and I did find myself using the mindfulness skills I had learned when my mind was too active at night.
Often we only look for interventions once we are already feeling stressed or burnt out – or if anxiety hits it can feel overwhelming to seek an intervention, but it's clear that there are ways to help prevent ourselves getting to that state in the first place. Whilst mindfulness is not for me every day, having it in my toolkit is certainly reassuring should I ever need it.
Out of the six steps featured, the one that I continue to come back to, is the benefits of nature. It's well known how beneficial the outdoors can be for our mental health, but even when we're stuck at home, studies have shown that enjoying nature virtually still has a remarkable positive effect. Nature has a positive effect on the mind and body, but it can be overlooked as a simple method to remain calm, which is why I found that conjuring up nature virtually to be such a powerful tool.
If we hear recording of wildlife for instance, it can have a calming effect. Other research has found that virtual reality access to a marine environment improved participants' moods. The same goes for looking at nature scenes on a computer or phone screen. And while virtual nature shouldn't replace the real thing, it's reassuring that giving our mind a regular break virtually can do wonders.
Read more from the Six Steps to Calm newsletter, by signing up here.
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This is the fifth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments.
The difficulty of getting an appointment with a GP is a familiar gripe in the UK.
Even when an appointment is secured, the rising workload faced by doctors means those meetings can be shorter than either the doctor or patient would like.
But Dr Deepali Misra-Sharp, a GP partner in Birmingham, has found that AI has alleviated a chunk of the administration from her job, meaning she can focus more on patients.
Dr Mirsa-Sharp started using Heidi Health, a free AI-assisted medical transcription tool that listens and transcribes patient appointments, about four months ago and says it has made a big difference.
“Usually when I’m with a patient, I am writing things down and it takes away from the consultation,” she says. “This now means I can spend my entire time locking eyes with the patient and actively listening. It makes for a more quality consultation.”
She says the tech reduces her workflow, saving her “two to three minutes per consultation, if not more”. She reels off other benefits: “It reduces the risk of errors and omissions in my medical note taking."
With a workforce in decline while the number of patients continues to grow, GPs face immense pressure.
A single full-time GP is now responsible for 2,273 patients, up 17% since September 2015, according to the British Medical Association (BMA).
Could AI be the solution to help GP’s cut back on administrative tasks and alleviate burnout?
Some research suggests it could. A 2019 report prepared by Health Education England estimated a minimal saving of one minute per patient from new technologies such as AI, equating to 5.7 million hours of GP time.
Meanwhile, research by Oxford University in 2020, found that 44% of all administrative work in General Practice can now be either mostly or completely automated, freeing up time to spend with patients.
One company working on that is Denmark's Corti, which has developed AI that can listen to healthcare consultations, either over the phone or in person, and suggest follow-up questions, prompts, treatment options, as well as automating note taking.
Corti says its technology processes about 150,000 patient interactions per day across hospitals, GP surgeries and healthcare institutions across Europe and the US, totalling about 100 million encounters per year.
“The idea is the physician can spend more time with a patient,” says Lars Maaløe, co-founder and chief technology officer at Corti. He says the technology can suggest questions based on previous conversations it has heard in other healthcare situations.
“The AI has access to related conversations and then it might think, well, in 10,000 similar conversations, most questions asked X and that has not been asked,” says Mr Maaløe.
“I imagine GPs have one consultation after another and so have little time to consult with colleagues. It’s giving that colleague advice.”
He also says it can look at the historical data of a patient. “It could ask, for example, did you remember to ask if the patient is still suffering from pain in the right knee?”
But do patients want technology listening to and recording their conversations?
Mr Maaløe says “the data is not leaving system”. He does say it is good practice to inform the patient, though.
“If the patient contests it, the doctor cannot record. We see few examples of that as the patient can see better documentation.”
Dr Misra-Sharp says she lets patients know she has a listening device to help her take notes. “I haven’t had anyone have a problem with that yet, but if they did, I wouldn’t do it.”
Meanwhile, currently, 1,400 GP practices across England are using the C the Signs, a platform which uses AI to analyse patients’ medical records and check different signs, symptoms and risk factors of cancer, and recommend what action should be taken.
“It can capture symptoms, such as cough, cold, bloating, and essentially in a minute it can see if there’s any relevant information from their medical history,” says C the Signs chief executive and co-founder Dr Bea Bakshi, who is also a GP.
The AI is trained on published medical research papers.
“For example, it might say the patient is at risk of pancreatic cancer and would benefit from a pancreatic scan, and then the doctor will decide to refer to those pathways,” says Dr Bakshi. “It won’t diagnose, but it can facilitate.”
She says they have conducted more than 400,000 cancer risk assessments in a real-world setting, detecting more than 30,000 patients with cancer across more than 50 different cancer types.
An AI report published by the BMA this year found that “AI should be expected to transform, rather than replace, healthcare jobs by automating routine tasks and improving efficiency”.
In a statement, Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of General Practice Committee UK at the BMA, said: "We recognise that AI has the potential to transform NHS care completely - but if not enacted safely, it could also cause considerable harm. AI is subject to bias and error, can potentially compromise patient privacy and is still very much a work-in-progress.
"Whilst AI can be used to enhance and supplement what a GP can offer as another tool in their arsenal, it's not a silver bullet. We cannot wait on the promise of AI tomorrow, to deliver the much-needed productivity, consistency and safety improvements needed today.”
Alison Dennis, partner and co-head of law firm Taylor Wessing's international life sciences team, warns that GPs need to tread carefully when using AI.
"There is the very high risk of generative AI tools not providing full and complete, or correct diagnoses or treatment pathways, and even giving wrong diagnoses or treatment pathways i.e. producing hallucinations or basing outputs on clinically incorrect training data,” says Ms Dennis.
“AI tools that have been trained on reliable data sets and then fully validated for clinical use – which will almost certainly be a specific clinical use, are more suitable in clinical practice.”
She says specialist medical products must be regulated and receive some form of official accreditation.
“The NHS would also want to ensure that all data that is inputted into the tool is retained securely within the NHS system infrastructure, and is not absorbed for further use by the provider of the tool as training data without the appropriate GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] safeguards in place."
For now, for GPs like Misra-Sharp, it has transformed their work. “It has made me go back to enjoying my consultations again instead of feeling time pressured.”
A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub planned for Merseyside is set to create 1,000 jobs over the next three years, the government said.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he wanted to make the UK one of the world's AI "super powers" as a way of boosting economic growth and improving public services.
Global IT company Kyndryl announced it was going to create the new tech hub in the Liverpool City Region.
Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram welcomed the investment, saying it would be "hugely beneficial" to the area.
'International investment'
In a speech setting out the government's AI ambitions, Starmer spoke of its "vast potential" for rejuvenating public services.
The government said its AI Opportunities Action Plan was backed by leading tech firms, some of which have committed £14bn towards various projects including growth zones, creating 13,250 jobs.
Mr Rotheram told BBC Radio Merseyside: "I went over last year to speak to [Kyndryl] face-to-face in New York.
"To have that come to fruition so quickly is hugely beneficial to the workforce in the Liverpool City Region."
He said attracting the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider was "testament to what we can achieve when local ambition is matched by national support to help attract international investment".
The Labour mayor said the Liverpool City Region was "leading the way in the UK's AI revolution".
He added: "As a region with a proud history of innovation we're ready to seize the opportunities that AI and digital technology can bring; not just to boost our economy but to improve lives, develop skills, tackle inequality, and ensure no-one is left behind."
The BBC has asked the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for more details about Merseyside's AI hub plans.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has unveiled plans for the development of the UK's artificial intelligence (AI) industry, vowing to make Britain "one of the great AI superpowers".
A raft of proposals include new AI "growth zones", where the construction of key infrastructure such as data centres will be prioritised, and the development of a new supercomputer to boost the UK's computing power.
But experts have highlighted serious challenges for the government, including the huge amounts of funding AI infrastructure projects and tricky questions about data security.
Industry will cost huge amounts to develop
While business leaders who spoke to the BBC have been broadly positive about the prime minister's announcement, the level of investment required to stimulate the kind of activity being suggested in Monday's action plan will be enormous.
AI needs powerful data centres to work, but Google warned in a report in September that the UK faced being "left behind" if it didn't expand its network of such facilities.
Sir Keir has now pledged to speed up planning permission for new centres and to "remove the blockages" that hold companies back from building them.
But Dr Stephanie Hare, an AI expert said the current minimal economic growth and the spiralling cost of borrowing made it hard to see how these new centres would be funded.
She also questioned how their energy needs would be met, warning the UK's energy grid was not "fit for purpose" if it is to meet the ambitious aspirations set out on Monday.
The prime minister did announce a new AI Energy Council to work on "innovative energy solutions" - including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), small nuclear generators that allow a lot of power to go to remote areas - to power the industry.
Most SMR designs though aren't yet approved in the UK.
Sana Khareghani, a former head of the government's Office for Artificial Intelligence, does say there could be benefits to the wider economy. She told the BBC Radio 4's World at One programme that the UK's leadership in the renewable energy industry could help drive AI growth.
"Continuing this clean energy leadership into the AI revolution would really give the UK a fantastic advantage," she said.
But there are significant challenges too.
Sir Keir has also announced funding for a new UK supercomputer to help drive AI development. Bur Dr Hare noted that any such project would require major funding, noting that "the UK does not have supercomputer that features among the top 50 machines globally".
The government shelved funding plans for a new exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University shortly after it won office last summer.
Meanwhile if the government wants to see more homegrown AI companies come to the forefront of the industry, the amounts of money involved will skyrocket.
Challenging global power players like Open AI and Google Deepmind - a UK company purchased by the Silicon Valley giant in 2014 - will require eye-watering amounts of capital investment.
Data privacy
Throughout his speech, the prime minister emphasised the potential benefits of integrating AI into the National Health Service (NHS) and its potential to shift healthcare from a reactive model to a more preventative one, helping save the NHS money in the long-term.
He said a new national data library would collect anonymised health data.
But it's still not clear what kind of information will be collected - with Sir Keir saying simply that it was "important that we keep control of that data".
Dr Hare told the BBC that where data is concerned the "questions that we need to know are all in the detail".
"Which companies are going to have access to that [data], including foreign companies," she said. "Are you going to be able to opt out, what's the cyber security protections that are in place?"
How will the UK balance growth with regulation
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On-board manufacturing for spacecraft is one small step closer with the development of new 3D printing technology in zero gravity.
Dr Gilles Bailet, from the University of Glasgow's James Watt School of Engineering, has been awarded a patent for a system to carry out construction on-demand during a space flight.
He hopes the technology - which has been tested on a zero-gravity research aeroplane - could make space exploration more sustainable and reduce space debris.
Dr Bailet said his invention, using granular materials, could support plans to manufacture in space novel equipment not possible on Earth.
"As the cost of sending things into space is decreasing, we are seeing more and more things sent into space and this is not sustainable," Dr Bailet said.
"Our idea is to be able to manufacture things directly in space using 3D printing and in doing so we open the door to recycling in space and to have a full circular economy."
The International Space Station (ISS) was sent its first 3D printer in 2014 and research on manufacturing parts away from the Earth's gravitational pull has continued since, both here and in orbit.
Dr Bailet's prototype 3D printer uses a granular material instead of the filaments used on Earth.
Despite the challenges of microgravity and the vacuum of space, the materials can be drawn from a feedstock tank and delivered to the printer's nozzle faster than other methods.
It was tested in November as part the 85th European Space Agency parabolic flight campaign with Novespace in Bordeaux, France.
The team took its test kit on three flights, giving them more than 90 brief periods of weightlessness at the apex of rollercoaster-like sharp ascents followed by rapid descents.
"Seeing the technology actually working perfectly as I designed it was really breathtaking, a lot of emotions," he said, referring to the tests on the zero gravity aircraft - known as the vomit-comet for its rollercoaster-type flight that provides 22 seconds of microgravity every time it lurches over a peak.
"Now we know that our technology is working in a space environment and we'll be able to do the first demonstration in space in the next milestone of our technology development."
Dr Bailet and his colleagues are also exploring methods of embedding electronics into the materials as part of the printing process.
"Currently, everything that goes into Earth's orbit is built on the surface and sent into space on rockets," Dr Bailet said.
"They have tightly limited mass and volumes and can shake themselves to pieces during launch when mechanical constraints are breached, destroying expensive cargo in the process."
He added that products made on Earth can be "less robust in the vacuum of space", and 3D printing has only been successfully done in the pressurised modules of the ISS so far.
While Dr Bailet's project is currently working on building parts to enhance spacecraft, such as radiators and antennae, it is hoped that equipment could eventually be built in space.
These could include solar reflectors to generate zero-carbon power for transmission back to Earth, improved communication antennae, or drug research stations that can create purer, more effective pharmaceuticals.
"Crystals grown in space are often larger and more well-ordered than those made on Earth, so orbital chemical factories could produce new or improved drugs for delivery back to the surface," he added.
Dr Bailet and his team are now looking for funding to help support the first in-space demonstration of their technology.
Filming the BBC's landmark series Asia took its crew on a four-year-long odyssey from the open ocean to the "roof of the world".
From frozen mountains to parched deserts, and lush tropical rainforest to vast grassland steppes – Asia is Earth's largest continent and home to an incredible array of environments.
Perhaps because of that sheer size and variety, until last year the BBC had never devoted a wildlife series entirely to it. The vastness, the crowded megacities and the extreme diversity of environments makes it harder to encapsule in a handful of episodes.
The Natural History Unit's landmark series Asia took four years to make. "Many parts of Asia are extremely remote, largely unknown, or frequently off-limits," producer Matthew Wright says. "Its wildlife is less well-studied than that of Africa and the Americas, so we had fewer leads to go on when we started our research.”
"We started by scouring scientific papers, books, websites and social media looking for stories. We spoke to colleagues, conservationists and tour guides too. Once running orders were drawn up, we spent two years and over 2,500 days filming," said Wright.
The team captured everything from reef sharks hunting bright Moorish idol fish in the Pacific Ocean to the world's largest goats living amid spectacular scenery in Pakistan. They tracked elephants through dense tea plantations in India and spied on huge monitor lizards living in the heart of one of Asia's biggest cities, Bangkok.
Here, we look at some of the behind-the-scenes images captured by the Asia crew during the series' epic production.
The crew had to work out how to film reef sharks chasing after Moorish idols, a brightly coloured fish species, in the Pacific Ocean. The sharks are fast moving and too dangerous to film at close quarters when in hunting mode.
What's more, the Moorish idols themselves were fast swimmers, clocking some 10mph (16km/h). Researcher Seth Daood says the team created a retractable pole that could be dipped into the water when needed and pulled up when the boat had to increase speed to catch up with the hunt.
Using the pole alongside drones and other camera crew swimming close to the boat, the team captured an hour of footage as the sharks reduced the shoal of hundreds of fish to almost nothing.
The Asia team travelled to Qinghai province, in the west of China, to shoot the enigmatic fox on highland meadows nearly 4.5km (14,800ft) high. The crew needed three days to acclimatise to the altitude and head out to find a female fox that had been filmed by the team before.
The fox had learned not to see the team as a threat, says researcher Joshua Chen. "There were times when we were sitting on the grass, and she came around, and steadied herself into her sleeping position. She slept with her back to us, leaving us with the sense that she trusted us completely," he says.
The fox had given birth to a litter of cubs and spent much of the time hunting pika, small rodents, on the pasture. She used a variety of techniques, including using the bodies of lumbering yaks as cover, and the crew witnessed many successful hunts.
In another high-up pocket of the Asian continent, the team returned time and time again to capture not hunting wildlife but a meteorological oddity.
The Khareef is a monsoon rain system that visits the Dhofar Mountains in Oman. Moist air blown in from the sea becomes trapped by the peaks and forms fog; the fog sheds water droplets onto the surrounding slopes, resulting in massive plant growth. Drones were an invaluable tool in capturing this elemental moment.
High in the Indian Himalayas, the village of Kibber has been the site of a remarkable upturn in an alpine predator's fortunes.
Over the past 15 years, conversationists have had a plan: raise the number of the indigenous blue sheep, and the endangered snow leopards will be less inclined to attack local villagers' livestock. The survival of these little-seen big cats, evolved to hunt on precipitous slopes, is now a cause of celebration for locals who once feared them.
In the third episode of the series, The Frozen North, the production team travelled to the vast frozen expanses of Asia's barely populated northern regions. Here, wildlife exists in bitterly cold temperatures for much of the year.
One place the team ventured to was far-eastern Siberia. The region, which constitutes a great deal of Russia east of the Ural Mountains, is home to some of the world's largest land-based predators, including the Siberian tiger and East Siberian brown bears.
In the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, where huge volcanoes dominate the landscape, the team filmed bears preparing for their winter hibernation. The bears fatten up for their long winter sleep by gorging on salmon which mass in lakes formed from the craters made by volcanic eruptions long ago.
Not all of the wildlife in this expanse of ice and snow is so large, however. Some small birds remain as winter descends. The long-tailed tit has learned to feed on the sugar-rich sap which oozes from trees after deer have fed on its bark. The sap can be a life-saver for birds who would otherwise find slim pickings in the snow-covered wilderness.
In the fourth episode, Tangled Worlds, the series looked at some of the life found in Asia's forests and jungles. Here, some of the crew take a break on a fallen tree while filming elusive rhinoceros in the jungles of Nepal.
The greater one-horned rhinoceros, also known as the Indian rhinoceros, is the second-largest species of rhino in the world and can be found in forests of Nepal and India but once ranged across the entire Indian subcontinent. Shrinking habitat amid rising human populations and poaching have caused numbers to crash; recent protection, however, has bolstered numbers.
In the forests of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, cameraman Will Foster-Grundy filmed forest elephants at close quarters. The elephants, much smaller than the Asian and African species, range across the rainforest-covered island, though numbers have dwindled to fewer than 1,500 individuals.
Filming in hot, humid locations in impenetrable jungle are reliable challenges for film crews in such conditions, but the Asia team had another: gut-wrenching smells. The titan arum, for instance, is the largest unbranched flowering plant on Earth, found in jungles in Sumatra in Indonesia. The large flower blooms for only a short time, so the plant makes itself as attractive as possible to insects – its scent has been likened to the odour of rotting meat.
The titan arum does more than just smell bad in an effort to attract pollinators; the red colour of the flower and its texture also mimics the appearance of meat. When blooming, the plant's spadix – a fleshy stem in the middle of the flower – heats up until it is as hot as a human body.
In the Indian city of Bhopal, the team captured on film tigers that coexist with the bustling city's human population. Bhopal is something of a success story, with the highest tiger acceptance rate of any city in India. Tigers keep to themselves during the day, resting in caves and forested areas, mostly coming out at night.
The team had to set up cameras across the city in order to film the Bhopal tigers, including at the water holes where the tigers would drink every evening. Cameras and lights had to be reinstalled after curious cubs and langur monkeys knocked them down. This angle gave the team a fish's eye view of a thirsty tiger.
During filming for the fifth episode, called Crowded Continent, the team looked at how the continent's wildlife has had to adapt to Asia's enormous human population. Taiwanese capital Taipei, cameraman Oliver Mueller filmed rhino beetles duelling on a tree trunk.
The close filming gave the series a beetle's-eye view of the struggles between competing males, who battle for mating rights – the loser gets flung off the trunk and has to seek a mate elsewhere.
Even some of Asia's biggest cities – like the Thai capital Bangkok – play host to exotic wildlife. One of Asia's biggest reptiles, the menacing monitor lizard, has adapted to the sprawling mega-city's waterways and lakes.
Filming the giant lizards in Bangkok was a tall task. "The nature of this shoot was incredibly dynamic – there was no sitting and waiting, instead the crew took more of a hunting and gathering approach," says Seth Daood. "With a walkie-talkie communications system, the whole team knew at any moment they could receive a call to relocate within the park. We used three trolleys to help us move all our heavy gear around as quickly as possible."
Spotters radioed the locations of active lizards, but the film crew had to contend with frequent rainstorms and even lightning strikes that made recording too dangerous. But their patience was rewarded with more than six hours of footage – including a monitor catching a giant catfish.
Perhaps the most viral moment of the entire show concerned the brazen behaviour of enterprising elephants on the island of Sri Lanka.
The elephants, including a huge 40-year-old male called Raja, had learned that the buses that ply the road are a low-effort source of snacks. Unlike more aggressive younger elephants, the quiet Raja has learned that a gentle approach earns more rewards, says researcher Daood.
Raja would block the bus's path and – very politely – shake the passengers down for a treat (like melons or coconuts), poking his trunk through the open door or windows. Sated, he'd then allow the bus to be on its way.
Raja's genteel robberies, however, point to a common issue for much of Asia's wildlife. Increasing pressure from rising human populations mean wild habitats are shrinking every year. Only 30% of Sri Lanka's elephants, for instance, live in protected or unpopulated areas.
You can see more stories and clips from the Asia series here.
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The father of Molly Russell, the teenager who took her own life after seeing harmful content online, has personally appealed to the prime minister to tighten rules that protect children and has warned the UK is "going backwards" on internet safety.
Ian Russell, who backed the previous government bringing in new requirements for tech firms in the Online Safety Act, calls the way the regulator Ofcom is implementing the rules a "disaster".
In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer on Saturday, seen by the BBC, Mr Russell says there is "widespread dismay" among bereaved families who have fought for tougher protections, and that more young people have lost their lives because of "dither and delay".
And he warns that without tougher actions, "the streams of life-sucking content seen by children will soon become torrents: a digital disaster driven by the actions of tech firms, and being left unchallenged by a failing regulatory model".
"This preventable harm would be happening on your watch," he writes to Sir Keir.
The Online Safety Act, introduced last year, is designed to force tech firms to take more responsibility for the content on their platforms and protect children from some legal-but-harmful material. Ofcom decides the specific guidelines that companies must follow.
Safety campaigners believe there are significant loopholes in Ofcom's code on illegal content, including a lack of specific rules on live streaming or content that promotes suicide and self-harm. And the new codes of practice, which are still being worked on, won't apply to private messaging.
An Ofcom spokesperson said: "We recognise the profound pain caused by harmful content online, and our deepest sympathies remain with Ian Russell and all those who have suffered unimaginable loss." They said the voices of victims "will continue to be at the heart of our work".
The spokesperson added that tech firms are required to assess the risks of illegal harms on their platforms by 16 March, and after that companies would need measures to reduce the risk of illegal content appearing and to remove it quickly when it appears.
"In the coming months, as our enforcement powers commence, platforms will face further obligations to protect children from harmful content, even where it is not illegal," they said.
In his letter, Mr Russell also says Elon Musk, who is the boss of X, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are part of a "wholesale recalibration" of the online world, moving away from safety towards a "laissez-faire, anything-goes model".
"In this bonfire of digital ethics and online safety features, all of us will lose, but our children lose the most," he writes.
And in an exclusive interview, Mr Russell told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that Meta's platforms, Facebook and Instagram, were turning "back towards the harmful content that Molly was exposed to and therefore more children will be exposed to in the future".
"And by turning the platforms backwards away from safety, Mark Zuckerberg has changed the game fundamentally and shown that the platforms aren't really here to play safe, they're here to make money," he said. Zuckerberg announced this week that Meta was abandoning the use of independent fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram.
A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that there was "no change to how we treat content that encourages suicide, self-injury, and eating disorders" and that the company would "continue to use our automated systems to scan for that high-severity content".
"We want young people to have safe and age-appropriate experiences on our apps - this has not changed," they said.
Mr Russell called on the government to both bolster the Online Safety Act and to introduce extra legislation designed to tackle what he describes as "the reckless behaviours of social media leadership".
He also said that he thought there was "no real movement" within government. "The online safety push has stagnated," he said. "In fact, we're probably heading backwards because the tech platforms have changed the way they're playing the game."
He said he was sure Sir Keir "is a father who protects his children from online dangers as much as any individual can".
"But as a prime minister, he needs to really back online safety and move forward so that the UK is the safest place in the world to be online," he added.
A No 10 spokesperson said Sir Keir was thankful for Mr Russell's letter: "Ian Russell, alongside many other families and parents, has shown immense bravery through the most tragic of circumstances to campaign for children's online safety. We are grateful for all their contributions and will continue to work with them to get this right.
"This government is committed to ensuring online safety for children. Social media platforms must step up to their responsibilities and take robust action to protect children from seeing harmful content on their sites."
Mr Russell's daughter Molly took her own life in November 2017 after being exposed to a stream of dark, depressing content on Pinterest and Instagram. He has been campaigning for online safety measures since his daughter's death.
You can read his letter in full at the bottom of this story.
Ian Russell's voice hard for Starmer to ignore
No one watching or listening to Mr Russell over the years could deny his passion for change or his deep knowledge of the dark world that Molly was caught up in. Along with other bereaved parents we have met in the past couple of years - including Esther Ghey, Judy Thomas, and Mariano Janin - he has told his family's story with huge dignity, and for a simple reason: he doesn't want anyone else to go through the pain.
He's become a prominent campaigner on an issue that is important to millions of parents and young people around the country. His voice is hard for the government to ignore.
But creating and then imposing rules on the online world is difficult for politicians for many reasons.
The Online Safety Act weathered many controversies and took years to put together. On one side were campaigners concerned about providing protection, on the other, fierce lobbying from the tech companies against straying into censorship or invading people's privacy.
Ofcom was picked to police the rules and could theoretically be incredibly tough, threatening fines of millions of pounds or even prison for those companies that break them. But the new codes of practice are not yet fully in force.
But campaigners like Mr Russell believe it's already obvious the rules fall short. The Internet Watch Foundation boss, Derek Ray-Hill, also told us: "Unless Ofcom is more ambitious in its interpretation of the Act, so many of the things the legislation makes possible will remain frustratingly out of reach."
* If you have been affected by the issues raised in this article, help and support is available via BBC Action Line.
The letter in full
Dear Prime Minister,
Six months ago, you were elected on a platform that promised an end to short-term sticking plaster solutions. I am writing to you as a bereaved father and online safety campaigner because it is evident that urgent action is required to protect young people from the horrors they are routinely exposed to online.
It's now over seven years since the death of my youngest daughter Molly. More than ever before, I am convinced that strong and effective online safety regulation is the most powerful tool available to prevent the loss of ever more young lives at the hands of social media platforms whose indifference to children's safety is fundamentally baked into their commercial strategies, business models and products.
However, in recent months it has become clear that progress towards online safety has stalled – and we are now going backwards. Regulation as it is currently designed is failing to deliver the protection that children and parents need, want and deserve. No one can credibly claim that Ofcom's implementation of the Online Safety Act is anything other than a disaster – a view not only shared widely by civil society but also increasingly privately shared across many parts of your Government.
Ofcom's choices when implementing the Act have starkly highlighted intrinsic structural weaknesses with the legislative framework. We not only have a regulator which has fundamentally failed to grasp the urgency and scale of its mission, but a regulatory model that inherently and significantly constrains its ability to reduce preventable harms.
While I understand that this is legislation you inherited and did not design, the reality is that unless you now commit to act decisively to fix the Online Safety Act, the streams of life-sucking content seen by children will soon become torrents: a digital disaster driven by the actions of tech firms, and being left unchallenged by a failing regulatory model. This preventable harm would be happening on your watch.
At the same time as the UK's overdue regulation is falling badly short, the very industry being regulated is ominously changing. The Online Safety Act was developed around a premise that large tech firms would increasingly accept their responsibilities, and we would see safer social networks develop over time.
However, this is a time when platforms readily say they will now 'catch less of the bad stuff'; allow underdeveloped AI to generate and spread disinformation; and promote targeted and polarising content leading to isolation and despair. We have now entered a different era, and we will need a different regulatory approach that can address it.
Put simply, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are at the leading edge of a wholesale recalibration of the industry. We should be in absolutely no doubt that when Zuckerberg speaks about a 'cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech', he is signalling a profound strategic shift away from fundamental safety measures towards a laissez-faire, anything goes model. In this bonfire of digital ethics and online safety features, all of us will lose, but our children lose the most.
It's on that basis that I now encourage you to act swiftly and decisively to address this coming flood of preventable harm. In the immediate term, that means strengthening the existing framework. Beyond that, it means committing to substantially strengthened regulatory model – with primary legislation being introduced as soon as possible to enact its provisions.
It is not just a new Online Safety Act that is required, but a wholesale re-imagining of the framework to ensure it is capable of responding to the threats of today and beyond. A new framework must be fundamentally oriented towards tackling the reckless behaviours of social media leadership – a goal which can best be achieved through establishing an overarching Duty of Care supported by a robust set of conduct-based rules to enforce it.
A bolstered OSA must have harm reduction at its core. That means having a clear harm reduction duty on Ofcom, transparency and safety-by-design as integral components of the regulatory regime, and a regulatory design that puts victims at its core – a major failure of the current regime, where the asymmetry between the interests of victims and industry has if anything been substantially reinforced. The voices of those with lived experience must be heard clearly if big tech's powerful players are not to shout them down in this debate.
Crucially, this must also mean an extension of the Duty of Candour to extend to tech firms. This vital measure stands to correct the historic injustices faced by so many victims, and the power of this measure to address the cultural issues driving harms in the tech sector – and the asymmetry between industry and victims which perpetuates further harm – would be considerable.
Too many parents have lost hope that governments will deliver the online safety reform they urgently need. Among bereaved families, there is widespread dismay that successive governments have chosen to dither and delay when the consequences of inaction has been further lost lives.
As Prime Minister and as a father, I implore you to act. You now have a profound opportunity, but also a great responsibility, to act clearly and decisively and to show to millions of parents across this country that meaningful change is on the way. It is time to decisively protect children and young adults from the perils of our online world.
Yours Sincerely,
Ian Russell,
Chair of Molly Rose Foundation, and Molly's dad
A Nasa astronaut has given a talk to children near his near his former university, describing it as an "incredible experience".
Cdr Jack Hathaway, a past student of Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, began working for the US space agency in 2022 but is still waiting for his first mission.
During a visit to the UK, he gave a talk to about 180 Year 5 pupils at nearby Holywell School.
Blake, nine, said it was "absolutely awesome" to meet an astronaut and he would "never wash this hand again" after shaking Cdr Hathaway's hand.
He said he wanted to be an astronaut himself and had "ten billion" designs at home of space rockets he had drawn.
"It would be awesome to explore a land that has never been explored before" and "create civilisations there", he added.
Cdr Hathaway has more than 2,500 hours' flying experience as a pilot with the US Navy and studied for a Master of Science degree in flight dynamics at Cranfield in 2014.
He said he had a "really great experience" that was "critical" for his future career".
He has now completed two years of initial astronaut training and said he felt "pretty close" to a space mission and "confident" he would get the opportunity.
Cdr Hathaway gave a talk for pupils aged nine and 10 in a special assembly.
He then met a small group of students who had won a competition to design a space camp.
Head teacher Mike Simpson said it was an "amazing opportunity" and that meeting a "real, live" astronaut had inspired the students.
Cdr Hathaway has been given a distinguished aerospace alumni award by his former university.
Prof Mark Westwood, head of centre for aeronautics, said it was "incredible to see the achievements that people go on to do".
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Fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani, known for his shock ad campaigns for Italian clothing brand Benetton, has died aged 82, his family has confirmed.
The brand's former art director revealed least year he had amyloidosis, a rare incurable condition that affects the body's vital organs and nerves.
"It is with great sorrow that we announce the news that today, 13 January 2025, our beloved Oliviero has embarked on his next journey," Toscani's wife Kirsti said in a post on Instagram.
Toscani was admitted to hospital on Friday in Cecina, near his Tuscan country home, in a serious condition.
In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last year he said he had unintentionally lost 40kg (88lb) in weight.
"I don't know how long I have left to live, but I'm not interested in living like this anyway," he added.
His work drew attention to social themes, such as the Aids pandemic, racism, war and the death penalty.
Paying tribute to his work, Benetton released a photograph he had taken for the brand in 1989.
"In order to explain certain things, words simply don't suffice. You taught us that," a spokesperson said on Monday.
"Farewell Oliviero. Keep on dreaming."
Born on 28 February 1942 in Milan, Toscani was the son of a well-known Corriere photographer and attended art school in Zurich.
Throughout his career, he worked for leading fashion magazines including Vogue and GQ and helped to launch the career of model Monica Bellucci.
He photographed cultural icons such as Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Federico Fellini.
But it was during his tenure as director at Benetton, a position he held for 18 years, that saw him achieve world recognition.
His use of models of all races became the label's calling card and popularised the "United Colours of Benetton" logo - but his provocative photos stoked controversy.
Images of the blood-drenched clothes of a soldier killed in Bosnia were featured on Benetton billboards around the world.
His graphic use of a photo depicting David Kirby, a man dying of Aids, also prompted a boycott of the brand.
Three identical human hearts labelled black, white and yellow hinted at the racism in fashion, while another of his adverts - featuring a priest and nun kissing - were eventually banned.
He parted company with the brand in 2000 following disputes over his last campaign, which featured images of death row prisoners, captioned "sentenced to death".
He has said that his campaigns, which touched on subjects such as human rights, religion and racism, were designed to raise awareness of certain issues.
"I exploit clothing to raise social issues," Toscani told Reuters in an interview at the time, as debate erupted over whether the campaign had gone too far.
"Traditional advertising says if you buy a certain product, you will be beautiful, sexually powerful, successful. All that doesn't really exist," he said.
In 2007, his photo of French model Isabelle Caro for a fashion label's anti-anorexia campaign made headlines.
Her gaunt face and emaciated body, ravaged by the eating disorder, was featured on billboards and in newspapers during Milan fashion week. The campaign coincided with the rise in concern about the use of excessively thin models on the catwalk.
The image, shot for fashion house Nolita, was banned in several countries including Italy, but provoked fierce debate online after going viral.
Toscani resumed working for Benetton in 2017, but three years later, the group cut ties with him after he played down the significance of the Morandi Bridge disaster which killed 43 people.
He is survived by his wife and three children Rocco, Lola and Ali.
The Duchess of Sussex's new Netflix show has been postponed until March due to the Los Angeles wildfires, the streaming giant has announced.
The lifestyle series, which was filmed in southern California, had been due to premiere on Wednesday.
Netflix said it had offered its "full support" to Meghan's request to delay the release.
Wildfires have raged through the California city since Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes.
In a statement, Netflix described the upcoming programme as a "heartfelt tribute to the beauty of southern California", adding that it was moving the premier of With Love, Meghan over the "ongoing devastation" caused by the fires.
"I'm thankful to my partners at Netflix for supporting me in delaying the launch, as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California," the duchess said.
The programme filmed in the southern California town of Montecito - where Meghan and her husband Prince Harry live - will now air on 4 March, Netflix said.
The wildfires have not yet spread to the coastal enclave, which is located around 160km (99 miles) north-west of Los Angeles.
However its fire risk rating is considered high by the Montecito Fire Department.
With Love, Meghan includes eight 30-minute episodes featuring appearances from celebrities such as actress Mindy Kaling and former Suits star Abigail Spencer.
In the trailer released earlier this month, Meghan garnishes a cake with raspberries and harvests honey in California, where she lives with her husband Prince Harry and two children.
On Friday, Prince Harry and Meghan were seen hugging residents in the devastated area of Pasadena in the wake of the worst wildfires LA has ever seen.
Have you been waiting for a chance to see Molly-Mae "as never before"?
If so, you're in luck, as she's starring in a new TV series which comes out on Friday.
But that's not all this week has in store.
Some familiar singles will be aiming for a second shot at love in the Love Island villa, and One Direction's film returns to cinemas in tribute to Liam Payne.
Elsewhere, Pope Francis will be taking on controversial topics in his new autobiography, and the late Mac Miller's album Balloonerism will drop at last.
Read on for all of this week's biggest releases...
One Direction shot to the top of the UK and Ireland box office charts with their documentary in 2013.
Now, more than a decade later, One Direction: This Is Us is being re-released in some cinemas on Tuesday in tribute to former bandmate Liam Payne, who died last year.
Announcing the news, Odeon said it would be donating all ticket profits from the screenings to mental health awareness charities. Other cinemas around the world have also announced screenings of the film.
Fans of the boyband were quick to praise the move.
"Liam's deserved more than tributes, he's irreplaceable. But you're doing a good thing," wrote one X user.
"This will mean a lot to fans," wrote another, with a heart emoji.
The film, directed by Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock, features both behind-the-scenes moments and concert footage of the group - which also included Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.
Given the turnout at vigils for Liam Payne around the world after the singer's death, you can expect a similar response from fans here.
For fans, or Directioners as they are known, Liam's death felt like the end of an integral part of their childhood. My colleague Bonnie - a former fangirl herself - wrote about that here.
There's been a lot of debate recently about whether you should sing in cinemas, in the wake of Wicked and Moana 2... but I imagine that won't hold back fans heading to see this film.
Finally, Pope Francis's Hope is out on Tuesday. It's the first autobiography to be published by a Pope.
He originally intended for the memoir to appear only after his death, but according to his publisher Penguin, "the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope" moved him to release it early.
Penguin also promises it will deal with "some of the most controversial questions of our times", on topics including the Middle East, migration, the position of women and sexuality.
So you can expect plenty of reaction once the book is out.
With her sultry drawl and feline charisma, the singer and actor oozed sophistication. But Eartha Kitt, who was born on 17 January 1927, had the toughest of childhoods. In History looks at how she transcended her troubled beginnings to become a star of stage and screen – and the first black Catwoman.
Celebrated by Orson Welles as the "most exciting woman in the world", and smeared by the CIA as a "sadistic nymphomaniac", Eartha Kitt had an extraordinary life and career. After joining Katherine Dunham's pioneering African-American dance company, she was on Broadway by the age of 19, and went on to become a cabaret sensation in London and Paris. Her smouldering 1950s performances of songs such as Santa Baby, Just an Old-Fashioned Girl and I Want to be Evil have never been bettered. In 1967, she wowed mainstream television audiences as Catwoman in the third series of the camp classic Batman. Later, she won a new generation of fans as the villain Yzma in Disney's 2000 cartoon The Emperor's New Groove. She died on Christmas Day in 2008, aged 81.
Born Eartha Mae Keith on a South Carolina cotton plantation on 17 January 1927, she had a start in life that could hardly have been more difficult. She never knew her father, and her mother left her to be raised by various relatives. Speaking on BBC Wales' Late Call in 1971, she said: "I remember at times when we didn't have anything to eat for what seemed like an insurmountable amount of time. We had to rely on the forest and whatever we could dig out of the ground, such as weeds or a grass I remember that had a kind of onion growing at the bottom of it. And when we could find things like that to eat then we were alright."
Describing her childhood self as an "urchin", she said: "I'm very glad that she will always be a part of me because she helps me do what she knows I have to do out there on that stage."
Despite being such a confident and poised performer, raw emotion was never far from the surface when Kitt was interviewed, as shown when Ronnie Williams, the host of Late Call, read her one of her quotes: "You said, 'My mother gave me away at the age of five, and if my mother gives me away, she doesn't want me. So why should anybody want me?'" Kitt replied that because of this abandonment, she had always lived with the feeling "that the most important person in the world didn't want you". She added: "I think there are many explanations I can make for my mother giving me away and I think that, even though I have tried to explain within myself as to why she gave me away, it's still very difficult for me to accept it."
Decades later, Kitt's beloved daughter Kitt Shapiro revealed that the singer died without knowing the identity of her white father. She told the Observer in 2013 that her mother wept when she finally saw her birth certificate, only to discover that the man's name had been blanked out by officials to protect his reputation in the segregated American South.
Because of her mixed heritage, Kitt told Williams on Late Call that she was not accepted by the black community. She said: "They don't understand that I don't think of myself in terms of being a black person. I think of myself as being a person who belongs to everybody, but I think one should always feel this way. I think that, as long as you are feeling in terms of belonging only to one race, one nationality, one religion, that you have to be prejudiced… I am an illegitimate child, and at the same time I was not of completely black parentage. My father was supposedly a Caucasian, and my grandparents are Cherokee Indians. My mother was half black and all of this, and therefore my blood is of yours and of anybody's and therefore I've always thought of myself as this, and to be prejudiced against any of the other bloods is rather silly to me."
According to Kitt, her travels had convinced her that financial inequality was at the root of so much prejudice around the world: "When we are able to recognise that no matter what colour or religion you belong to, that you are capable of gaining as much as the next person can, no matter what race or religion he belongs to, I think the situation would be much healthier."
What Lady Bird heard
The singer and actor was being interviewed on BBC Wales to promote her week-long residency at the Double Diamond Club in Caerphilly, a scenic town near Cardiff. While the popular venue did in its time host big stars such as Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, it was still a long way from Broadway.
In the US at that time, Kitt was cancelled. Her career had faltered following a White House luncheon in 1968 to discuss the causes of juvenile delinquency with Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B Johnson. As protests against the Vietnam War raged across the US, Kitt's diagnosis of the problem's causes upset the genteel audience. She told the First Lady: "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."
In response, the CIA compiled a dossier on her. The New York Times revealed in 1975 that this extensive report contained "second‐hand gossip about the entertainer but no evidence of any foreign intelligence connections". Asked in later years about the notorious "nymphomaniac" claim reported to be contained in the document, Kitt was supremely dismissive: "What has that got to do with the CIA if I was?"
While her career back home was in the doldrums, she spent time in Britain touring provincial clubs. During one such residency at the distinctly unglamorous Batley Variety Club in West Yorkshire, a BBC reporter asked her how such a sophisticated celebrity could feel an affinity with local people there. She replied: "I wasn't born in such a different world. I came out of extreme poverty. I have acquired things, yes. The things have not acquired me."
It wasn't until 1978, ten years after that White House incident, that Kitt made her triumphant Broadway return in the musical Timbuktu!. She remained a frequent visitor to Britain, often making outrageous appearances on television talk shows. Again, her vulnerability was never too far from the surface. In one spectacular 1989 BBC appearance, she began by resting her feet flirtatiously on the lap of host Terry Wogan. Just a few minutes later, she was confessing that her public persona was nothing like her private self.
She said: "Mr Wogan, you know something? I'm not an extrovert. I can tease as 'Eartha Kitt', but as Eartha Mae? Forget it. I'm hiding behind the bushes, behind the chairs, behind everything I could possibly find to hide behind, because I've never had that kind of security within Eartha Mae that makes me feel that she will ever be accepted."
More like this:
• How a child star saved a Hollywood studio
• Nina Simone on how fury fuelled her songs
• Toni Morrison on her mission to please black fans
Kitt's abiding loves were her fans and her daughter. Having been abandoned by her own mother, Kitt insisted on bringing her daughter with her all over the world. Her marriage to businessman Bill McDonald in 1960 lasted less than four years, and she never remarried. Asked by Wogan if she had been reluctant to let her guard down, she said: "A man has always wanted to lay me down, but he never wanted to pick me up."
She said that it was the love she received from adoring crowds that "makes me feel that I really am a worthwhile person". However, she also explained: "When I go back to the dressing room, I take off the makeup and I'm not 'Eartha Kitt' anymore, I'm Eartha Mae again."
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A Complete Unknown
What's it about? A biopic of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, focusing on his early career as he was making his name in 1960s New York.
Who's in it? Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, alongside Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 17 January.
Read more: Critics praise Chalamet's portrayal of Bob Dylan
A Different Man
What's it about? An aspiring actor with a disfiguring facial condition has a radical medical procedure, drastically transforming his appearance. But he gradually starts to regret his decision as he grapples with a sense of lost identity.
Who's in it? Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson.
Where can I see it? It was released in UK cinemas on 4 October and is available to buy digitally.
A Real Pain
Alien: Romulus
What's it about? Space colonisers come face-to-face with a terrifying life form while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station.
Who's in it? Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux.
Where can I see it? It's available to buy digitally and on DVD now, and on Disney+ from 15 January.
All We Imagine As Light
Anora
The Apprentice
Babygirl
What's it about? A high-powered CEO risks her career and family when she begins an affair with a younger intern.
Who's in it? Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde and Antonio Banderas.
Where can I see it? It was released in UK cinemas on 10 January.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
What's it about? Set more than three decades after the original Beetlejuice, Lydia Deetz is now a mother struggling to keep her family together when Betelgeuse returns to haunt her.
Who's in it? Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe.
Where can I see it? It's available to buy and rent digitally.
Better Man
Bird
Blitz
The Brutalist
What's it about? A Hungarian architect tries to build a new life for himself and his wife in post-war America, but their plans are changed by a wealthy client.
Who's in it? Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas on 24 January 2025.
Challengers
Conclave
Deadpool & Wolverine
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Flow
What's it about? A cat fleeing its home after a devastating flood finds refuge on a boat populated by various animals, and must team up with them despite their differences in order to survive.
Who's in it? There are no big-name actors as the film is dialogue-free (although the animals bark, meow and squawk).
Where can I see it? In cinemas from 1 March.
The Girl with the Needle
What's it about? After a young factory worker becomes pregnant, she meets a charismatic woman who runs an underground adoption agency.
Who's in it? Vic Carmen Sonne, Trine Dyrholm, Besir Zeciri.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas and on Mubi soon.
Gladiator II
Hard Truths
Heretic
What's it about? Two female Mormon missionaries knock on the door of a man who initially appears friendly but is not what he seems, leading to a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Who's in it? Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East.
Where can I see it? It was released in UK cinemas on 1 November and is now available to buy and rent digitally.
His Three Daughters
What's it about? Three sisters with very different personalities come together in New York to care for their sick father.
Who's in it? Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne.
Where can I see it? On Netflix.
Hit Man
What's it about? A fake hit man who actually works for the police is used to catch potential criminals who try to enlist him as a contract killer.
Who's in it? Glen Powell, Adria Arjona and Austin Amelio.
Where can I see it? On Netflix.
I’m Still Here
Inside Out 2
The Last Showgirl
What's it about? A seasoned showgirl must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run.
Who's in it? Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 28 February.
Lee
Maria
Memoir of a Snail
What's it about? In 1970s Australia, a lonely woman dictates her life story to her favourite pet snail.
Who's in it? The voices of Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Eric Bana.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 14 February.
Moana 2
What's it about? Moana reunites with Maui to find the lost island of Motufetu and break its curse.
Who's in it? The voices of Auliʻi Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas now.
Nickel Boys
Nightbitch
Nosferatu
The Piano Lesson
Queer
The Room Next Door
Saturday Night
What's it about? Set in 1975, the cast and crew of US variety show Saturday Night Live gear up for their first episode.
Who's in it? Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 31 January.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
September 5
What's it about? The 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis told from the perspective of an ABC Sports crew, incorporating real-life footage from their coverage.
Who's in it? Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Ben Chaplin.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 24 January.
Sing Sing
The Substance
Twisters
What's it about? A sequel to Twister, a group of young tornado chasers test a groundbreaking new tracking system.
Who's in it? Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos.
Where can I see it? It's available to buy and rent on digital platforms.
Vermiglio
What's it about? In a mountainous village of post-war Italy, a taciturn Sicilian soldier hides out after deserting the army.
Who's in it? Giuseppe De Domenico and Tommaso Ragno.
Where can I see it? In UK cinemas from 17 January.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Wicked
The Wild Robot
What's it about? An animated robot named Roz adapts to its new surroundings after being shipwrecked on a deserted island, and develops a parental bond with an orphaned gosling.
Who's in it? The voices of Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal and Bill Nighy.
Where can I see it? It was released in UK cinemas on 18 October and is available to buy and rent digitally.
A man who has collected cash registers for the past 40 years believes he has the largest haul in the UK.
Andrew Rae, 53, from Spilsby in Lincolnshire, has 185 vintage and electronic tills, three of which appeared in season two of Marvel Studios' hit TV series Loki.
Mr Rae's fascination with cash registers began when he was 14 and he admitted his house had become a shrine to the machines, which range from ornate vintage brass models to modern electronic ones.
He said although his hobby was unconventional it was a "really important part of social history".
Mr Rae recalled his excitement when he received a call from the production company behind Loki, which was in need of an old register and asked if he could help.
"I said I've got one or two," he smiled. "She said can you send over some pictures?"
One of Mr Rae's devices was used in an episode based in a 1980s McDonald's restaurant.
He believes his collection can be just as useful as a prop agency, as he can offer clients a choice to show to producers and directors.
"We have got three or four of exactly the same register," he explained.
Mr Rae's hobby began when he wrote to the director of Notts & Derby Cash Registers and asked for one of their devices.
"I was very cheeky as a child," he said.
That request has since evolved into a lifetime of collecting.
His home, which he shares with his partner, Martin, 53, reflects his passion.
His conservatory, lined with shelves, has also become consumed by his collection, which spills out into his garage.
"There's lots of history behind every single one and sometimes the things you find inside the tills are just as exciting as the tills themselves," he added.
Mr Rae said although the tills were used to store money, he rarely finds cash inside them and said he was more likely to find scraps or paper and letters written to the shopkeepers.
The ultimate goal is for his collection to become part of something even bigger.
He said: "It would be ideal if one day I could find a museum that would be willing to take them and look after them."
Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
The family of drag icon The Vivienne said they "brought the sparkle to life" and will be missed "for eternity" during an emotional vigil in Liverpool on Sunday night.
Hundreds gathered on the steps of St George's Hall to pay their respects to the TV star, also known as James Lee Williams, who died last week aged 32.
The landmark was lit up in green to honour The Vivienne's role in Wizard of Oz and crowds swayed with their phone torches shining to a moving rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
The Vivienne was catapulted to fame after winning the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK in 2019.
"As a family we are completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of love for James, The Vivienne," the family said in a statement read by The Vivienne's friend Bobby Musker.
The family paid tribute to a "son, brother, uncle and true icon".
"From an early age it was evident he was destined for the stage... he was determined to pave his own way in this world," they said.
"The road was not easy but the dream never, ever changed and James would always tell us that they would make it happen and they did."
The family said they were "so unbelievably proud of everything they achieved".
"We will miss you for an eternity and for an eternity we will all love you," they said.
Shortly before the statement was read, The Vivienne's young niece Isabella took the microphone.
"Thank you for being here to celebrate my uncle," she said to the crowd. "I love you Uncle James."
Crowds heard performances from Joey & the Hot Tub Boys, who sang Heart of Stone by Cher and Heroes by David Bowie, and speeches from a host of friends and colleagues.
Danny Beard, winner of RuPaul's Drag Race UK series four, called The Vivienne a "truly larger than life" character who could "never be confined by the ordinary".
They described them as a "shining beacon of light for the LGBT community".
"The performances weren't just acts, they were celebrations of life," they said.
"They taught us it was OK to live out loud."
The vigil was organised with the help of Sahir House, Liverpool's oldest LGBTQ+ charity. The Vivienne was an ambassador of the charity.
The Vivienne's publicist and friend Simon Jones told the BBC: "I will remember The Vivienne as being a really kind-hearted, lovely person as well as being the most amazing talent.
"What I loved the most about The Vivienne was that she made me laugh the whole time.
"There is literally no one who has made me laugh as much as Viv, whether that was at a show where she was reading the audience... or when we were going for lunch or dinner or hanging out.
"There was always a quick one-liner and something a bit savage.
"She was always hilarious and I'm really going to miss that. She brought so much love and warmth into my life."
Presenter Holly Willoughby paid tribute to drag queen The Vivienne after an opening performance by the professional skaters on ITV series Dancing On Ice on Saturday night.
The programme started with a display of lifts and jumps from the figure skaters, who were dressed in pink, blue and yellow.
After Willoughby welcomed viewers to the new series, she added: "Before we move on, like us, many of you will have been saddened by the tragic news of The Vivienne's passing last weekend.
"Now they were a huge part of our show, making it all the way to the final in 2023.
"They'll be very sorely missed and our thoughts are with The Vivienne's loved ones at this time. So sad."
After winning the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, The Vivienne became the only contestant from the UK series to compete in the American series when they took part in All Stars 7 in 2022.
They went on to become a household name through appearances on other TV shows including Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Dancing on Ice and Emmerdale.
The Vivienne's death led to an outpouring of grief from the LGBTQ+ community and beyond.
On Friday, DragCon UK, a convention for fans of Drag Race, was attended by most of the show's contestants.
Host RuPaul Charles paid tribute to The Vivienne during the opening ceremony of the event, saying he wanted to focus on "love".
He said: "We are going to remember our dear The Vivienne, with love, life, and that's what she was all about.
"She would love for you to live your lives and to be free and to have a lot of fun and to spread it around, isn't that right?"
Other high profile names to pay tribute included Drag Race judge Michelle Visage and singer and actor Arianna Grande.
The Vivienne was raised in Colwyn Bay on the north coast of Wales.
They attended private school Rydal Penrhos but dropped out aged 16 to move to Liverpool and become a make-up artist.
They later went on to live and perform in Gran Canaria. A vigil was held on the Spanish island at the same time as the Liverpool event.
Former Little Mix star Jesy Nelson has announced her pregnancy.
The singer, 33, posted a photo on Instagram with the caption: "She's eating for 3 now," and two baby emojis.
She was pictured alongside musician Zion Foster, who has his hand on her bump.
While the singer didn't officially say she was expecting twins, fans on social media were quick to assume that's what she meant.
"Having twins is such a dream!," one wrote on her Instagram post.
"Twins are adorable and troublesome," said another.
Nelson left Little Mix in December 2020, saying she needed to protect her mental health.
She later explained online abuse had left her at "breaking point".
Since leaving the band, Nelson has been releasing music as a solo artist, including the single, Boyz, featuring Nicki Minaj, in 2021.
Little Mix formed on The X Factor in 2011.
The girl group comprised Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall and Nelson.
They went on to record multiple UK top 10 albums and five number one singles.
In 2021, they announced they would be taking a break after their 2022 tour but insisted they were not splitting up permanently.
"It's been 10 amazing years, a wonderful non-stop adventure, and we feel the time is right to take a break so we can recharge and work on some other projects," the group posted on social media at the time.
The Wanted singer Max George has revealed he wrote his will from a hospital bed before having surgery for a heart condition.
"I thought I was going to die," the 36-year-old told The Sun.
He said he was so convinced he wouldn't make it that he took out his phone and started spelling out what to do with his assets.
George, from Manchester, had the operation before Christmas during which he was fitted with a pacemaker to keep his heart beating regularly.
He was released from hospital on 23 December.
Previously, he said he had been diagnosed with "a 2:1 block in my heart", where the heart beats more slowly or with an abnormal rhythm because of a problem with the electrical pulses.
'The best Christmas present'
George, who has been keeping his fans posted on social media throughout, called his new pacemaker his "little friend" in an Instagram post in December.
He added that it was "the best Christmas present I could've ever wished for".
He said the pacemaker's position underneath his tattoo tribute to Tom Parker made him "sure it's being looked after".
George rose to fame in the early 2010s, with bandmates Siva Kaneswaran, Nathan Sykes, Jay McGuiness and Parker.
The Wanted announced a break in 2014 - and in 2022, George and Kaneswaran relaunched as a duo.
George also appeared in Strictly Come Dancing in 2020 where he first met his now-partner, Smith.
His bandmate Parker died from brain cancer, aged 33, in March 2022.
The coming year sees the return of Superman, Avatar and Bridget Jones, along with new films from Bong Joon-ho, Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler.
Elio
Pixar has ticked off toys, fish, monsters, cars, superheroes, elves and emotions. Now cinema's smartest animation studio has made a cartoon about aliens: Elio. Its hero is a shy young boy who is obsessed by outer space, so he is delighted to be beamed up to the Communiverse, the intergalactic home of intelligent lifeforms from all over the universe. The only snag is that these intelligent lifeforms have mistaken him for the supreme leader of planet Earth. Elio might not be able to match the success of Pixar's last film, Inside Out 2, which was the highest grossing film of 2024, but it's certainly promising, not least because its co-director, Domee Shi, made the glorious Turning Red. And it might make a stellar double bill with another of 2025's cartoons, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, which has Daffy Duck and Porky Pig saving the world from an alien invasion. (NB)
Releases June 2025
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Twenty-four years after Bridget Jones' Diary, Renée Zellweger returns in the fourth film in the series as middle-aged Bridget, with a different life but the same qualities that made her popular in the first place. She's still an adorable bumbler in life. In the romcom, based on Helen Fielding's 2013 novel, Bridget is now a widow, after the death of Mark (Colin Firth in the earlier films), and is the mother of two small children. Single again in a new world of dating apps, she looks horrified when a co-worker says, "I've set you up on Tinder", And once more she is torn between two appealing men: Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a teacher at her children's school, and a 29-year-old called Roxster (Leo Woodall). Hugh Grant returns as Daniel – Uncle Daniel to Bridget's children – along with Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones as her parents and Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips as her loyal best friends, Jude and Shazz. (CJ)
Releases on 13 February on Peacock in the US and 14 February in UK cinemas
Sinners
Michael B Jordan and director Ryan Coogler have formed an exciting collaboration that goes back 12 years, from Fruitvale Station through Black Panther and Creed. Their fifth film together is a socially conscious horror story written by Coogler. A bulked-up Jordan plays twins, Elijah and Elias, in a period piece set in the 1930s. When one of the troubled twins returns to his hometown in the South to start over, he only finds more trouble, which includes Jim Crow-era violence, as well as snakes and supernatural evil. "I ain't never seen no demons, no ghosts, no magic – till now," Jordan says in voiceover in the creepy, enticing trailer. Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku also star in the film, which was shot in New Orleans by the great cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). Coogler hasn't made a weak film so far, and Sinners should continue that streak. (CJ)
Releases 18 April 2025 in the US and UK
F1
F1 stars Brad Pitt as a 1990s car-racing champion who comes out of retirement to mentor a rookie, played by Damson Idris. One selling point is that the film was shot at real racing circuits, and features numerous real Formula One drivers. But another intriguing aspect is who it doesn't feature. F1 reunites several key members of the Top Gun: Maverick team, including director Joseph Kosinski, screenwriter Ehren Kruger, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and composer Hans Zimmer. In other words, Tom Cruise is just about the only one of the team who is missing. And considering that Cruise starred in Days of Thunder, a car-racing drama produced by Bruckheimer, F1 does raise a fascinating question: why didn't Cruise star in this, too, and call it Days of Thunder 2? (NB)
Releases June 2025
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell star in this romantic fantasy directed by Kogonada (After Yang and Pachinko) and written by Seth Reiss (co-writer of The Menu). The journey they take is an actual road trip as well as a metaphor. Farrell plays David, who is en route to a wedding, driving a 1996 car that has a magical GPS, when he meets Sarah (Robbie). The strangers go off together, guided by the car's sixth sense, and discover they have a mysterious connection. Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith and Phoebe Waller-Bridge also star. You really have to go with the premise on this because it sounds absurd, but I wouldn't underestimate the brilliant Kogonada's ability to make it work. When the production was announced, Tom Rothman, the chairman of Sony Pictures, said: "We believe the audience is desperate for originality." In the current film landscape, that amounts to welcome counterprogramming. (CJ)
Releases 9 May
The Running Man
The Running Man is a novel written by Stephen King, using the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which was published in 1982. Set in a far-fetched alternate reality in which the US of the year 2025 is a totalitarian dystopia, the novel features a scrawny family man who is so desperate for money that he signs up for a dangerous television game show: he has to survive for 30 days while being chased around the world by the TV network's trained killers. The novel was the basis of a daft 1987 action film, starring an extremely unscrawny Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is remembered mainly for the sub-James Bond puns he uses when he kills someone, such as "He had to split!" And: "He was a real pain in the neck!" But now Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Last Night in Soho) has directed and co-written a darker, more faithful adaptation of King's novel, starring Glen Powell with Katy O'Brian, Josh Brolin and Michael Cera. It's sure to be closer to Squid Game than it is to the Arnie film, but whether Wright can resist a bad pun or two remains to be seen. (NB)
Releases November 2025
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Avatar: Fire and Ash is due to come out a mere three years after Avatar: The Way of Water, which is no time at all by the standards of its director, James Cameron: there were 13 years between the first two Avatar films, and 12 years separating Avatar and Titanic before that. Still, it's not as if Cameron has to rush to pay the bills. His last three films – Titanic and the first two Avatar instalments – are three of the four highest grossing films ever released (Avengers: Endgame is the other). Will Avatar: Fire and Ash join them in box-office history? Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña are back as blue-skinned Na'vi on the moon of Pandora – and this time they're up against a tribe of Na'vi baddies, the "Ash people", who live in a volcano. If you fancy seeing more CGI-heavy sci-fi sequels in 2024, there's also a third Tron film, Tron: Ares, in October, and Jurassic World Rebirth, starring Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, in July. (NB)
Releases December 2025
28 Years Later
The masterful zombie-apocalypse movie 28 Days Later (2002) quickly became a classic, with a little-known Cillian Murphy as a survivor in a world decimated by a virus that caused rage and turned people into the walking dead. That film is more resonant and horrifying than ever in our own post-pandemic world, and this follow up might land as a nightmare come true. As with the original, Danny Boyle is directing and Alex Garland wrote the screenplay. Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as a man who leaves an island of survivors and ventures to the mainland, not the smartest move. Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes also feature. When the trailer dropped, it became the second most watched horror trailer of all time and created a surge of speculation that a skeletal creature was the zombified version of Murphy's character. The idea was soon debunked, but the frenzy is a sign of how eagerly viewers are waiting for the film, the first in a projected new trilogy. (CJ)
Releases 20 June in the US and UK
Mickey 17
Bong Joon-ho directed Parasite, the international hit which became the first film not in the English language to win the Oscar for best picture. But that came out back in 2019, so we've had a long wait for the Korean director's follow-up. A year ago, in fact, Mickey 17 was on the BBC's list of films to watch in 2024, but its release date was pushed back, so we've had to put it on the list again. Still, the surprisingly wacky trailer has only made Mickey 17 more tantalising. As we said last year, Bong has made a science-fiction thriller about a man called Mickey (Robert Pattinson) who volunteers to be an "expendable", that is, a labourer on a deep-space mission who is cloned every time he is killed. Adapted from a novel by Edward Ashton, the plot thickens when more than one Mickey is allowed to live at the same time. (NB)
Releases March 2025
Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson film
Almost everything about the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson is veiled in secrecy except the fact of its existence, but that alone is good reason to look forward to it. We know he is daring and varied in his work, most recently with the delicately crafted drama Phantom Thread (2017) and the offbeat romantic comedy Licorice Pizza (2021). Given that range, it would be foolish to guess what the new film might be, but we know it will be shown in Imax, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Alana Haim. The secrecy hasn't stopped a swirl of rumours, of course, the most common being that the film is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1990 politically tinged novel Vineland. Who knows about that, but there is intriguing photographic evidence of Leo and PT together on the shoot. (CJ)
Releases 8 August in the US and UK
Wake Up Dead Man
Daniel Craig may have made his last ever Bond film, but he seems happy to keep playing Benoit Blanc, the puzzle-solving sleuth with the dapper dress sense and the extravagant Southern accent. The third in the deliciously devious Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man is once again written and directed by Rian Johnson, and once again named after a pop song (by U2 in this case). It also boasts a typically star-studded cast of potential killers and victims, including Josh Brolin, Thomas Haden Church, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott and Cailee Spaeny. Will Hugh Grant return as Benoit’s partner, as spotted for a moment in Glass Onion? That's one of the many things we don't know about Wake Up Dead Man, but if it matches Johnson and Craig's first two satirical murder mysteries, it should be one of the year’s most entertaining films. (NB)
Releases in 2025
The Bride
Maggie Gyllenhaal proved that she has a true director's vision with her first film, The Lost Daughter (2021), an eloquent adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novel. She makes an even bolder move with an imaginative take on The Bride of Frankenstein, set in 1930s Chicago. Christian Bale plays the monster who needs an appropriately patched-together mate, and Jessie Buckley is the Bride. There is an echo of the 1935 classic in her look. Elsa Lanchester had an electric streak of white hair in the original movie, and Buckley has a platinum blonde period style. But this Bride also sets off a social movement, which only hints at how original Gyllenhaal's film will be. "There are big dance numbers," Peter Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal's husband, told The Hollywood Reporter. "The Bride is punk and it's fast." He's in the cast, along with Annette Bening and Penelope Cruz. And if things don't work out with this husband, maybe The Bride can get together with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein monster, also coming this year. They're from different time periods, but what's a little time travel between Frankensteins? (CJ)
Releases 26 September 2025 in the US and UK
Roofman
This off-kilter true crime story and romance from Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) sounds like a romp. Channing Tatum stars as the real-life Jeffrey Manchester, who robbed a series of McDonald's by cutting holes in the roof. The film focuses on his time after he escaped from prison for those crimes, and in an even less likely turn hid out in toy stores, living on baby food and candy and riding a bicycle at night for exercise. Kirsten Dunst plays Leigh, a single mother who falls for Jeffrey without knowing about his past. Her character is based on the real-life Leigh Wainscott, who even after the revelation said the roofman was "funny, romantic, the most sensitive man I've ever met", a description that calls for just the kind of goofy charm Tatum can bring. Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield and Ben Mendelsohn also star in this you-couldn't-make-it-up tale. (CJ)
Releases 3 October 2025
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Could The Final Reckoning be the final Mission: Impossible film? The action-espionage series began back in 1996, and its star, Tom Cruise, is now 62, so it might be time for him to stop running through cities and hanging onto the side of planes in mid-air. On the other hand, maybe that subtitle is just a snappier alternative to its wordy working title, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two. The previous film in the series, Dead Reckoning Part One, was a box-office disappointment in 2023, so Cruise and his writer-director, Christopher McQuarrie, may prefer audiences to think of this one as a stand-alone blockbuster rather than the second half of an ongoing story. Either way, Ethan Hunt and his gang (played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell) will be racing around the world, dodging explosions and assassins, in their attempt to foil a dastardly AI known as the Entity. (NB)
Releases May 2025
Wicked: For Good
Wicked has made over half-a-billion dollars at the box office, so there's no doubt about the ready audience for this film. Formerly known as Wicked Part 2, its new title is taken from a duet sung by Elphaba and Glinda in the musical's second half, which follows a time jump between the two parts. Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba is now firmly the Wicked Witch of the West and Ariana Grande's Galinda now Glinda the Good Witch. The other familiar characters return, including Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, the centre of a love triangle with Glinda and Elphaba, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, now Governor of Munchkinland, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. Stephen Schwartz, who composed the Broadway show, has added new songs for part two, which will also include the origin stories of the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion. But a gazillion impatient fans probably knew that already. For Good arrives a year after part one, and as Bowen Yang, who plays Glinda's friend Pfanee, has said, "Everyone's like, 'This is the longest intermission ever.'" (CJ)
Releases 21 November 2025 in the US and UK
The Ballad of a Small Player
After Conclave, one of the best of 2024, and the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Edward Berger has become a director whose films leap onto any list of the year's most promising. He has put together another terrific cast for this drama, starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton. Farrell plays a high-rolling gambler with debts who flees and hides out in Macau. He is also a con man, who pretends to be an aristocrat called Lord Doyle. The story, based on a 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, takes place in the glitzy fake opulence of Macau's casinos, where Doyle meets a woman who might help save him. Berger told Deadline, "If Conclave is a really well-constructed chess game, very architectural, this embraces chaos and opera." He was curious, he said, about "the external pomp and circumstances of Colin Farrell in Macau, China, thrown into the last days of capitalism, in a way". Adding authenticity, the film was shot in Macau and Hong Kong. (CJ)
Releases in 2025
Love Hurts
The return of Ke Huy Quan is one of Hollywood's most heartening comeback stories. As a child actor, he co-starred in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, but he became disillusioned with that side of the business, and he pivoted to stunt work. Almost 20 years later, Quan had another go at acting, and he went on to win an Oscar for his performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Now he is starring in a film of his own. In Love Hurts, he plays a mild-mannered estate agent, Marvin Gable, who keeps his criminal past a secret. When his gangster brother (Daniel Wu) sends a pair of goons to his house, Marvin has no choice but to show off his martial arts skills once again. It isn't the most original plot ever, but Love Hurts does look fun. Besides, it co-stars Ariana DeBose, who won the best supporting actor Oscar in 2022 for West Side Story, making it one of the only action comedies to have two Oscar winners in the central roles. (NB)
Releases February 2025
Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro was making great elevated horror films before anyone called them that, going back to Cronos in 1993. In Frankenstein, he brings his distinctive vision to the ultimate horror story, Mary Shelley's enduring Gothic tale of Dr Victor Frankenstein's scientific ambition, his monster's humanity and the quest for immortality. Oscar Isaac plays Frankenstein, who has a mad, demonic look in his eyes, and Jacob Elordi is the monster. The film's period look is true to Shelley's 1818 novel with nods to the lab in the classic 1931 Frankenstein movie. The project has been simmering in various incarnations since 2008 and in Del Toro's mind for much longer. "Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it," he said in 2016. In a world full of Frankenstein movies, there's none I'd rather see than del Toro's. (CJ)
Releases in 2025
The Fantastic Four
Marvel's superhero films never quite regained their momentum after Avengers: Endgame came out in 2019. In 2023, the studio suffered two outright flops, The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. And in 2024, the only Marvel film was Deadpool & Wolverine – and that one made a point of using characters from other studios, rather than from Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. But Marvel is hoping to bounce back with three potential blockbusters in 2025. In February, there's Captain America: Brave New World, with Anthony Mackie as the new Captain America and Harrison Ford as the Red Hulk. In May, there's Thunderbolts, which teams up various supporting characters and anti-heroes, including Florence Pugh's Yelena and Sebastian Stan's Bucky. But Marvel's most feverishly anticipated offering is The Fantastic Four: First Steps, with Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. This retro-futuristic sci-fi caper is set in the 1960s, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's original comic was launched, so it should look different from any other Marvel film. Anyway, it can only be an improvement on the last Fantastic Four film, from 2015, which was one of the greatest debacles in the history of superhero cinema. (NB)
Releases July 2025
Superman
Both of Hollywood's major superhero film studios are relaunching in 2025. Marvel is having a soft reboot, in that its stories will focus on a new group of characters, but will be set in the same fictional universe as all of its previous films. But DC is wiping the slate clean, which means that Henry Cavill's Superman, Ben Affleck's Batman, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman and the rest will be nowhere to be seen. That's probably for the best. James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad) is overseeing the new DC Universe, which suggests that it might have a bit more light and humour than the last few DC efforts. Gunn has also directed the first film set in this new universe: Superman. David Corenswet (Twisters) is the latest actor to play the Man of Steel, Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvellous Mrs Maisel) is playing Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult is the evil Lex Luthor. The trailer also promises that we'll see several other DC superheroes – not to mention Krypto the Superdog. (NB)
Releases July 2025
Materialists
Celine Song's first film, the Oscar-nominated Past Lives (2023), was a nuanced drama about a New York woman who reconnects with the boy she knew as a child in Korea years before, as the lure of the past intrudes on her happily married life in the present. Christine Vachon, who has produced both Song films, predicted, "She's going to be the kind of director who doesn't make the same movie twice". Sure enough, she moves into lighter, romcom territory with Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a matchmaker who has to deal with her own romantic dilemma. Should she go for the perfect match she would have set up for herself or the ex she thought she had left behind? Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal also star, so she probably can't go far wrong, but the premise reflects a timely question: does the heart speak louder than the algorithm? (CJ)
Releases in 2025
Golden
If you've seen Piece by Piece, the Pharrell Williams documentary which was made using Lego animation, you'll know that the multi-talented music superstar has fond memories of growing up in the Atlantis Apartments in Virginia Beach, Virginia, not far from Missy Elliott and Timbaland. Now he is producing a whole film that revolves around those apartments, a coming-of-age musical set in the summer of 1977. The director is Michel Gondry, the eccentric French genius who made The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the cast includes Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid), Da'Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers), Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary), Janelle Monáe and Missy Elliott herself. More importantly, the songs are by Pharrell, together with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman, La La Land), so Golden should have one of 2025's best soundtrack albums, if nothing else. (NB)
Releases May 2025
Snow White
This will be a big year for live-action remakes of cartoons. In May, Disney is releasing Lilo & Stitch, and in May, Universal / DreamWorks is releasing How to Train Your Dragon – although we can assume that Stitch and the dragons are CGI rather than live-action per se. But the remake which is making all the headlines is Disney's Snow White, a new version of the studio's very first animated feature film, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It has created controversy on social media for all sorts of reasons, including the ethnicity and the politics of its stars, and a screenplay (co-written by Greta Gerwig) which reimagines Snow White (Rachel Zegler) as a rebel leader who foments a revolution against her wicked stepmother (Gal Gadot). Let's hope that all of this controversy doesn't dwarf the film itself. (NB)
Releases March 2025
Untitled Noah Baumbach
Just trust him. Noah Baumbach, the writer and director of Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale, knows what he's doing, even if Netflix isn't ready to say much about what that is yet, not even offering up a title. It is a comedy written with Emily Mortimer (The Pursuit of Love) and has a cast of people you wouldn't necessarily think belong in the same film, which is probably the point. George Clooney stars in his first film with Baumbach, along with Adam Sandler, who was a central character in the director's The Meyerowitz Stories. The sterling lineup of actors includes Laura Dern, who won an Oscar for Marriage Story, as well as Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Jim Broadbent, Eve Hewson, Patrick Wilson, Alba Rohrwacher and Greta Gerwig (Baumbach's wife, frequent collaborator and co-writer on Barbie). The cast is as sprawling as the locations where the film was shot, in various cities in the US, the UK and Italy. (CJ)
Releases in 2025
Mother Mary
David Lowery is known for such experimental supernatural dramas as A Ghost Story, which showed life after death from the perspective of a ghost, and The Green Knight, a weird and wonderful Arthurian saga. But even he is perplexed by his latest film. "It is so wild," the writer-director has said. "It is a movie I am sure will provoke a lot of strong feelings, in every possible direction. It feels very true to who I am, and very close to me, but it is also consistently surprising me in ways that I did not anticipate." What Lowery can confirm is that Mother Mary is an "epic melodrama" about the relationship between a pop star, played by Anne Hathaway, and a fashion designer, played by Michaela Coel (I Will Destroy You), who has the job of designing a dress for her. Also, Hathaway will be performing songs by Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX – and given that her supercharged singing in Les Misérables earnt her an Oscar for best supporting actress, those songs should indeed be "wild". (NB)
Releases in 2025
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From a new medical show starring ER's Noah Wyle to the return of Apple TV+'s dystopian workplace drama, these are the shows to stream this month.
1. Missing You
The characters in Harlan Coben's novels are beset by all sorts of problems, usually murder and dark secrets from the past. But their troubles have become a happy success for Netflix, which has turned several Coben books into reliable hit series, including Fool Me Once and Stay Close. In the latest, Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses) plays Detective Kat Donovan, whose fiancé, Josh (Ashley Walters from Top Boy) disappeared one day, leaving behind an empty wardrobe and no clue to his whereabouts. Years later, pursuing a different missing persons case, Kat spots Josh's photo on a dating app, and sets out to find the truth. It seems he was up to no good. Although Corben's 2014 book was set in New York, the screen version is set in the UK and was shot in Manchester. Richard Armitage and Lenny Henry co-star.
Missing You premieres 1 January on Netflix internationally
2. Lockerbie: A Search for Truth
Colin Firth plays the real-life Dr Jim Swire in this potent, fact-based drama about the 1988 disaster in which a bomb exploded on a plane heading from London to New York, killing 270 people when it fell over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland. Swire, whose daughter was among the victims, becomes the spokesman for a group trying to find the truth behind the tragedy. The series begins shortly before the flight takes off, but focuses on the aftermath, as Swire spends years relentlessly searching for answers, even visiting Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Eventually, he uses tactics and forms opinions that distance him from the families he set out to represent. The real Swire remains controversial today, refusing to accept the guilty verdict that sent a Libyan intelligence officer to prison for the bombing. Whatever position viewers take on those events, Firth makes Swire's grief real and emotionally wrenching.
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth premieres 2 January on Sky in the UK and Peacock in the US
3. American Primeval
Set in 1857, this Western follows several characters as they head across the US wilderness, and weaves together personal drama, action and culture clashes. Betty Gilpin plays Sara, who is driving her young son in a covered wagon, hoping to meet up with her husband. The man she does meet is Taylor Kitsch as Isaac, who helps her along the journey. The story features soldiers, settlers, Indigenous Americans (a consultant advised on the accuracy of language and costumes) and the Mormon leader Brigham Young (Kim Coates), who has an army of his own. The series – written by Mark L Smith, co-writer of The Revenant, and directed by Peter Berg (Painkiller) – takes the violence of the Old West seriously. Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham), the leader of a fort where the travellers stop, warns them they are facing death from the mountain snows, grizzlies and wolves. And an Indigenous woman asks a white man, "Why do you people have so much hunger to kill?"
American Primeval premieres 9 January on Netflix internationally
4. The Pitt
This medical drama could have been called ER meets 24. Noah Wyle, whose career took off when he played young Dr John Carter on ER, stars as Dr Michael (known as Robby) Robinavitch, the chief attendant in the trauma section of a Pittsburgh hospital. Each of the show's 15 episodes takes place over a single hour of his day-long 15-hour shift, like Kiefer Sutherland in 24 but without the terror threats. Instead, Robby grapples with medical emergencies, staffing problems and the memory of a mentor's death from Covid during the pandemic. The off-screen drama might match what's on screen. The show is produced by John Wells, who also worked on ER. He and Wyle had discussed an ER sequel featuring an older Dr Carter, but never agreed to terms with the estate of Michael Crichton, that show's creator. Now Crichton's widow is suing, saying that The Pitt simply changed the main character's name and location. Warner Brothers, the studio behind The Pitt, says it is a new and different medical show. The litigation is ongoing. Maybe it could inspire a new legal series?
The Pitt premieres 9 January on Max in the US
5. On Call
Series created by Dick Wolf – including the behemoths Law and Order, and Law and Order: SVU – are known for being straightforward. But this police show from his production company comes with visual gimmickry, including bodycam and dashcam points of view, along with hand-held cameras. The essence is still true to the formula of a police procedural. Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario, Pretty Little Liars) is a veteran cop in Long Beach, California, and Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente, The Good Doctor) is her rookie partner. Lori Loughlin appears as a police lieutenant, and Eriq La Salle, who also directs several episodes, is a sergeant. Wolf is an executive producer of the show (created by his son, Elliot Wolf, and Tim Walsh), his first streaming series. "Everything old is new again," he told Deadline, pointing to the fact that half-hour programs were once a staple of network television. At that length, he points out, On Call is now perfectly suited to streaming, bingeable in three hours. "It's television popcorn," he said.
On Call premieres 9 January on Amazon Prime Video internationally
6. Asura
This promising drama was written and directed by the first-rate Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose Shoplifters won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2018. Like many of his films, the story centres on family. Four sisters discover that their aging father has been having an affair, and wrestle with the emotional impact of that knowledge while conspiring to keep it from their mother. The sisters' different lives and personalities don't make things easy. One teaches the art of ikebana, or Japanese flower arranging, another is a librarian, one is a traditional stay-at-home wife, and the youngest and most rebellious is a waitress. The show is a reworking of a 1979 Japanese series and a 2003 film, both based on the novel Like Asura by Kuniko Mukoda. Kore-eda has said, "What makes Kuniko Mukoda's dramas so rich are the superficial poison exchanged in conversation and the love hidden behind those cruel words". The word asura refers to a demigod in Buddhism, and by choosing to keep their father's secret, or not, these sisters wield sort-of-godlike powers.
Asura premieres 9 January on Netflix internationally
7. SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night
The celebration of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary includes a prime-time extravaganza full of celebrity appearances, coming in February, and this four-part documentary, in which each episode goes behind-the-scenes to explore a single aspect of making the show. The installment called Written By covers a week in the writers' room, following the process from start to showtime. Five Minutes looks at SNL auditions. Another is a deep dive into the classic 2000 sketch More Cowbell, with Will Ferrell as a cowbell player and Christopher Walken as the producer in a recording studio who tells the band as only Walken can, "I gotta have more cowbell". And "The Weird Year" is about the 1985-86 season (see picture above). That might not have been the weirdest year ever, but it was The Return of Lorne, as Lorne Michaels came back as the show's producer after five years away, the only gap in his 45-year tenure (so far). This documentary series might be puffy, and it might be fascinating; both things can be true.
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night premieres 16 January on Peacock in the US
8. Severance
The first season of this acclaimed, mind-bending series ended on a tantalising cliffhanger when the main characters at the mysterious but certainly nefarious Lumon Industries broke through the barrier separating their work life from their outside lives. A reminder: they chose to have a procedure splitting their memories in two. The office self knows nothing of their personal life, while the outside person is unaware of the cult-like control over their workday in Lumon's Macrodata Refinement Department. What happens now? Will the so-called Innies even remember the jaw-dropping discoveries about their Outie lives? Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Turturro and Zach Cherry return as the employees we're rooting for, along with Patricia Arquette as their nemesis, and Gwendoline Christie and Bob Balaban among many added to the cast. And as photos reveal, somehow the Macrodata team visits a snowy location outside the office, keeping the show unpredictable.
Severance premieres 17 January on Apple TV+ internationally
9. Prime Target
Leo Woodall, who played heartthrob Dexter in One Day and grifter Jack in The White Lotus, takes on another entirely different role in this conspiracy thriller. He plays Edward Brooks, a brilliant mathematician whose research in prime numbers may hold the key to cybersecurity around the world. No surprise that someone, or maybe many dark forces, are determined to stop him. Quintessa Swindell (Master Gardener) plays an agent at the US National Security Agency who is assigned to keep an eye on him. They team up to try to discover who is targeting him, and why playing with numbers is putting his life in danger. The amazing cast includes Stephen Rea, David Morrissey, Martha Plimpton, Harry Lloyd and Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen). If the show is as good as the cast, we can even forgive its punning title.
Prime Target premieres 22 January on Apple TV+ internationally
10. The Night Agent
One of the surprise hits of 2023, this thriller returns for a second go-round, with Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland. He started out last time as a low-level FBI agent answering phones at the White House at night, only to engage in some high-voltage action, outsmarting would-be assassins, uncovering a conspiracy inside the US government, and saving the President's life. Now he has joined the secretive Night Agent force, an under-the-radar government operation taking on problems that traditional counterintelligence can't solve. Luciane Buchanan is still in the cast as Rose, the cybersecurity expert who, in season one, became Peter's love interest and partner in conspiracy-solving. Brittany Snow plays Alice, his partner on his next assignment. And Amanda Warren plays Catherine Weaver, who trains new night agents. Netflix has guarded the precise plot details, but we know that the series was shot in Washington DC, New York and Thailand, so Peter gets to travel.
The Night Agent premieres 23 January on Netflix internationally
11. Paradise
Sterling K Brown, Randall in This is Us, and Dan Fogelman, the creator of that series, reunite here. And although the tone and plot couldn't be more different, this jaw-dropping conspiracy thriller recalls This is Us in the way both shows move back and forth between the present and the past, and because both have pilot episodes ending with a shocker that sets up the rest of the series. Brown plays Xavier Collins, once a Secret Service agent assigned to the President (James Marsden). About the only thing Xavier has in common with Randall is that they are both very smart guys. The White House scenes are in flashback, and the present day takes place in a community that looks so sanitised and stereotypically small-town that the sets might have been borrowed from the pseudo-heaven of The Good Place. There are major twists in every episode, but it's no spoiler to say that the series is intense and compelling, and that Julianne Nicholson, as the most powerful woman on Earth, plays wonderfully against her usual good-hearted, down-to-earth type.
Paradise premieres 28 January on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
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From an electrifying action thriller with Keira Knightley to Ted Danson's latest sitcom and a brutal Japanese period epic, we pick the year's greatest programmes to stream right now.
1. Industry
The third season of this show set in the intense word of high finance pushed its morally ambiguous characters to their limits, brought in timely issues including sexual abuse and climate change, and finally exploded its own premise, with spectacular results. Marisa Abela and Harry Lawtey added layers to Yasmin and Robert. She dealt with not-unreasonable guilt over her father's death, which left her a poor little princess. More than ever, Robert seemed adrift, a sad professional failure at Pierpoint, the investment bank they work for. Kit Harington was a dynamic addition to the cast as a charming, manipulative aristocrat and founder of a green startup company, who unsettles both of them. The season ended (spoiler here) with the demise of Pierpoint and such an extreme severing of ties among its players that it felt like a series finale – but not so fast. Another season is in the works, which will mean rebuilding the characters' lives. In this instance, blowing things up to start over is the mark of a great, confident show. (CJ)
Available on Max in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK
2. A Man on the Inside
This may be the gentlest show on the list, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. The latest sitcom from The Good Place creator Michael Schur reunites with him star Ted Danson, who plays a retired architect, struggling from the loss of his wife, who finds a new lease of life when he gets hired by a private investigator to go into a retirement home as a mole and help investigate a jewellery theft. What Schur does so expertly is balance sitcom sweetness with a moving and occasionally quietly devastating study of the trials and tribulations of old age, from loneliness and mental deterioration to the loss of one’s peers and friends. Which isn't to say it's bleak either, though: the home's residents, as played by a whole host of stellar Hollywood veterans including Sally Struthers, Stephen McKinley Henderson and John Getz, are full of verve. In our youth-obsessed world, you only hope A Man on the Inside's success is a reminder to producers and executives that there's an appetite to see more shows anchored by senior talent. (HM)
Available on Netflix internationally
3. Black Doves
There are plenty of spy shows out there, but only Black Doves has Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, who give this savvy action thriller an electrifying boost. The plot is unlikely but absorbing. Helen (Knightley) is married to the British Minister of Defence and for a decade has been spying on him for a mercenary company called the Black Doves. When her lover is murdered, her old colleague Sam (Whishaw) is called in to protect her. The series weaves in their harrowing backstories and establishes a touching friendship between them, never losing sight of the intrigue, which seems to place an assassin around every corner. Sarah Lancashire adds a sinister note as their Black Doves handler. Working for the Black Doves makes Helen and Sam sellouts to the highest bidder, but remarkably, the show builds sympathy for them, especially for Sam and his broken relationship with his former partner, Michael. And like all good spy stories, this one is about more than suspense, taking on love, loyalty, fake identities and global politics. (CJ)
Available on Netfilix internationally
4. Colin from Accounts
This is the second consecutive year this Australian rom-com has appeared on our "best of" list – and arguably it has only got better. After all the "will they, won't they?" of the first season, Sydney-ites Ashley and Gordon are now an established item – and that's where the angst really kicks in. The joy of this show is how exquisitely true-to-life it is in dissecting the trials and tribulations of a relationship, from negotiating your other half's family to feelings of sexual rejection, with situations that feel only mildly exaggerated for humorous effect. Plus, alongside the both charming and sometimes poignant performances of real-life couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, the supporting cast of characters is inspired, among them Helen Thomson as Lynelle, Ashley's brilliantly self-involved mother, who has become a kind of anti- #MeToo activist to Genevieve Hegney as Chiara, Gordon's mid-life-crisis-beset business partner. And, of course, Zak and Buster Feddersen as the titular Colin, the stoic border terrier on wheels who acts as the show’s weary, all-seeing witness. Give them an Emmy – or a chewbone – forthwith. (HM)
Available on Peacock in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK
5. Say Nothing
This extraordinary and fearless series, based on Patrick Radden Keefe's rigorously reported 2018 book, refuses to play things safe. The fictionalised drama dares to take us inside the minds of the highest ranking IRA members in 1970s Northern Ireland as they justify terror and murder as political weapons. At its centre is Dolours Price, who along with her sister Marian served a prison sentence for their part in a London car bombing. (Marian Price has announced that she plans to sue Disney+ because the show also depicts her shooting Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who was abducted and disappeared, which Price has always denied doing. Dolours died in 2013.) The actors bring the characters to life with passion. Lola Petticrew captures the earnest conviction of the young Dolours, and Maxine Peake is especially stirring as the older Dolours, who regrets some of her past actions and wonders what she actually accomplished. Along with its tense drama, the series is intimate and infused with thoughtfulness. (CJ)
Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
6. Slow Horses
This year, Apple continued to throw a lot of money at glamorous A-lister-led shows that hardly seemed to make a ripple in the cultural conversation, but it was this trusty, self-deprecating British espionage comedy-drama, based on Mick Herron's books about a group of MI5 rejects, that continued to represent the channel at its best. Now in its fourth series, the mixture of wry British humour and high-stakes action is more perfectly-calibrated than ever, while the cast keeps accumulating excellent new recruits, from Ruth Bradley as straight-talking MI5 security "dog" Emma Flyte to Hugo Weaving as the villainous Frank Harkness. Indeed, while Gary Oldman's dishevelled spy chief Jackson Lamb and Jack Lowden's gung-ho River Cartwright are the lynchpins, the glory of Slow Horses is just what an ensemble piece it truly is. And in a streaming world where few shows get more than a couple of seasons, the good news is that it has already been renewed for a fifth and sixth. These underdogs are really having their day. (HM)
Available on Apple TV+ internationally
7. Rivals
No one is more surprised than I am to find Rivals on the Best Of list. It's not artistic and it's not ambitious, but this adaptation of Jilly Cooper's 1988 novel about sex and power among the well-bred denizens of the fictional English county of Rutshire may be the year's most entertaining escapism. The series works mainly because of how gleefully the actors take on their over-the-top characters, in a world of country estates and 1980s excess. The standouts include David Tennant as the sleazy owner of a television network, Aidan Turner as a highly-paid but discontented presenter and Alex Hassell as a Thatcher-era Sports Minister, lover of nude tennis and of many women. Full of shifting alliances, secret affairs, and sex in every indoor and outdoor place imaginable, the show is a thoroughly engaging romp. Cooper recently told the New York Times that her goal in writing the novel Rivals was simply "to cheer people up". Its on-screen counterpart couldn't have landed at a better time. (CJ)
Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
8. The Day of the Jackal
This 10-part contemporary update of the 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth about a globetrotting assassin is the glamorous flipside of Slow Horses but equally as compelling. Eddie Redmayne plays the hitman, and has a lot of fun with some of the prosthetically enhanced disguises he's required to don, while making The Jackal an intriguingly cryptic personality, as he switches from sincerely tender-seeming family man to cold-blooded killer. And Lashana Lynch is every bit the match for him as the agent on his trail: it's pleasing, indeed, just how morally compromised her character Bianca is, guilty of callousness that makes you gasp and makes James Bond look like Mary Poppins. In fact, though, the writer/creator Ronan Bennett (who was also behind Netflix's Top Boy) has given the series a distinct Bond film vibe, from the stylish opening credits with their jazzy torch song theme tune to masterfully-filmed action sequences like a Munich car chase. But, more surprisingly, perhaps, the less high-octane domestic drama also compels, with Spanish actress Úrsula Corberó doing committed work as The Jackal's suspicious, conflicted wife. Blockbuster TV drama at its best. (HM)
Available on Peacock in the US and NOW in the UK
9. The Diplomat
The second season of this sharply-written show remained masterful at blending global politics with personal drama, and added shrewd twists that kept it surprising. Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), the reluctant US Ambassador to the UK, seemed like the smartest person in any room. But it turned out that she misjudged a few little things, like who bombed a British warship, just how high her own ambition is, and how much she relies on her partnership with Hal (Rufus Sewell), the husband she almost left. The political intrigue is polite yet explosive, as Kate learns that political players from the US and UK were complicit in the bombing. And some of the best moments are hard-nosed tete-a-tetes between Kate and Hal as they debate whether she should go after a job the White House is dangling in front of her: Vice President. Allison Janney is steely as the current Vice President, Grace Penn, whose unflinching conversations with Kate about women and power are among the show's best scenes. A jaw-dropping reversal sets up season three. How that will land in a different political landscape is an open and fascinating question. (CJ)
Available on Netflix internationally
10. Feud: Capote vs The Swans
The TV empire of super-producer Ryan Murphy has been on a downward curve for a while, artistically at least, churning out increasingly tawdry, sensationalist series at a rate of knots – such as, this September, the latest instalment in his Monsters franchise about famous killers, which focused on the Menendez brothers. But earlier in the year, he showed it could still produce intelligent, perceptive drama with this study of waspish writer Truman Capote and his coterie of high society female friends. Writer Jon Robin Baitz's script zones in on Capote's fall from grace in the mid-1970s after the publication of an excerpt of his in-the-works novel Unanswered Prayers, which contained scandalous, only thinly-veiled portraits of his close confidantes. Tom Hollander is simply astonishing as Capote, capturing the voice, the mannerisms, the caustic superiority and the child-like neediness, while the Swans are each superbly realised, with varying degrees of hauteur, by the likes of Naomi Watts, Chloe Sevigny, Calista Flockhart and Diane Lane. The series ultimately lands as a study of a particular world of "old money" in its death throes of relevance – and the fact that it manages to find pathos in the characters' fates, despite their frequent moral ugliness, is testament to its novelistic nuance. (HM)
Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
11. True Detective: Night Country
It would have been enough if the fourth season of True Detective had done nothing more than use the unforgettable word "corpsicles" for murder victims frozen in ice, but this revamped series did much more. Jodie Foster is galvanizing as the acerbic police chief in a small Alaska town, who leads the investigation into an increasingly creepy multiple murder case. Set at a time of year when the sun doesn't rise for a fortnight, the show is beautifully shot in midnight blues that let you feel the chill and draw you into a world where high-tech scientists live side by side with locals with supernatural beliefs. You could spend hours teasing out the Easter eggs and connections to the original 2014 season of the show, as many have. But no need for that context. Writer and director Issa Lopez has reenergised the franchise in a way that makes it fresh and captivating from eerie start to jaw-dropping finish. (CJ)
Available on Max in the US and Now in the UK
12. Shogun
As soon as Game of Thrones ended in 2019, conversation turned to what could succeed it – cue many fantasy series, including Amazon's Lord of the Rings spin-off and HBO's own official Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, vying to take its place. But five years on, its most convincing successor has turned out to be a show without any fantasy credentials whatsoever – but rather a historical drama about real-life 17th Century Japan that nevertheless channels Thrones' harsh worldview, epic visuals and keen interest in the business of political manoeuvring. Based on the historical novel by James Clavell, which was already made into a hugely successful miniseries back in the 1980s, Shogun centres on John Blackthorne (played by the Richard Burton-esque Cosmo Jarvis), a British sailor who is shipwrecked on the Japanese coast and gets wrapped up in a battle for power between members of the country's ruling council. What follows is at once gorgeously shot, brilliantly acted, and unflinchingly brutal, the characters' various machinations occasionally erupting in violence that pulls no punches. The cast, too, are uniformly brilliant, from Hiroyuki Sanada as embattled council member Lord Yoshii Toranaga to Anna Sawai as Blackthorne's translator, and lover, Mariko. And while it was originally intended as a limited series, such has been its success, FX has announced plans for two further seasons. Let's hope they can live up to the standards set by this one. (HM)
Available on Hulu and Disney + in the US and Disney+ in the UK
13. Baby Reindeer
Richard Gadd's autobiographical horror story seemed to land on Netflix out of nowhere yet has become, deservedly, one of the year's biggest, most talked about and unsettling hits. Gadd created and plays a struggling comedian named Donny Dunn, who befriends Martha. She comes into the bar where he works, fantasises a relationship between them and goes on to harass him with emails and almost ruin his life. Jessica Gunning is amazing as she makes Martha both threatening and pitiable in her delusions. Tension builds to an excruciating point through the series. Donny is also repeatedly sexually assaulted, in stomach-churning detail, by a man who is a television producer promising to help his career. The show caused a controversy when viewers searched the internet and discovered Fiona Harvey, who they alleged was Martha's real-life counterpart; she has since given media interviews and is now suing Netflix for defamation, negligence and privacy violations. Putting aside those real-world aftershocks, Baby Reindeer is confessional art at its most captivating. (CJ)
Available on Netflix internationally
14. Fallout
Last year, HBO's The Last of Us ended the tradition of sub-par video game adaptations with a gripping rendering of the bestselling action-adventure title. And now here's another screen translation of a post-apocalyptic gaming franchise, which is arguably even more successful: an eye-poppingly stylish and slyly funny take on the Fallout series, which imagines a world devastated by nuclear war where some people now live in shiny underground vaults. British actress Ella Purnell leads the cast as a bright-eyed Vault 33 resident who is forced on an eye-opening mission up to the Earth's surface to rescue her kidnapped father – where, in this future Wild West, she comes into contact with a nervy soldier (Aaron Moten) and a bounty-hunting "ghoul" (Walton Goggins) among others. Co-produced by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the makers of the inferior but not dissimilar Westworld, it is an impressively immersive experience which lives up to the source material while finding its own narrative groove. Meanwhile Purnell is a real star in the making, and Goggins is revelatory in a performance that stretches across two timelines. (HM)
Available on Amazon Prime internationally
15. Ripley
Andrew Scott is spellbinding as the lethal con man Tom Ripley in this Hitchcockian version of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley. Set in Naples and Rome in the 1960s, the show's dramatic black and white, shot by the Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, perfectly captures the beautiful shadowy world Ripley inhabits as he ascends from a small-time grifter in New York to a denizen of la dolce vita. As Ripley usurps the identity of his idle rich friend Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), a single shifting look on Scott's face can reveal layers of the character's deceptions. Flynn, Dakota Fanning and Eliot Sumner are all brilliant as the people Ripley feeds off. In a style far different from the sun-drenched, memorable 1999 film, Steven Zaillian has written and directed a series as enthralling and visually glorious as they come. (CJ)
Available on Netflix internationally
16. One Day
No show has stirred the emotions more than this year than this adaptation of David Nicholls' era-spanning British romance. It follows the up-and-down relationship of two friends, Dexter and Emma, from university onwards, by catching up with them on the same day, 15 July, every year for 20 years. Beginning in the 1980s, it makes for a glorious nostalgic trip for viewers of a certain age, complete with a winning, carefully curated soundtrack of period appropriate pop songs. But at heart what makes this work is the captivating performances of the two leads, individually and together: Leo Woodall, building on the promise he showed in season two of The White Lotus, makes the arrogant, upper-crust party boy Dexter convincingly irritating but also sympathetic, while Ambika Mod, who first came to attention in 2022 medical drama This is Going to Hurt, is on star-making form as the fiercely intelligent but vulnerable Emma. Be warned though: if you don't know what happens, then be prepared for some tears. (HM)
Available on Netflix internationally
17. Monsieur Spade
One of the least likely premises for a series has led to one of the year's most delightful surprises. Clive Owen is wry as the Sam Spade, the private investigator created by author Dashiell Hammett and now relocated from seedy 1940s San Francisco to 1960s small-town France. Instead of mimicking Humphrey Bogart's celebrated tough-guy Spade from The Maltese Falcon (1941), Owen smartly delivers a character who is shrewd and emotionally cool but also sometimes befuddled, especially when trying to master the French language. There are intricate personal relationships – a glamorous lover (Chiara Mastroianni) and a young girl who becomes Spade's ward – and of course murders he can't help but investigate in a lush country town where unregenerate Nazis linger and scheme. Director Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) makes the show crisp and suspenseful. Owen makes Spade his own, a man with a heart beneath his considerable sangfroid. (CJ)
Available on AMC+ in the US
18. Mr Bates vs the Post Office
It's rare that a TV show can be credited with having a tangible impact on government business – but such was the case earlier this year with this brilliant British miniseries, focusing on the national Post Office scandal, which saw more than 700 post office branch managers wrongly charged for false accounting, theft and fraud because of a failed computer system. When it aired in the UK in January, it immediately caused huge reverberations, and prompted the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to announce he would bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims". What Gwyneth Hughes' four-part drama does so brilliantly is to thread together the human stories of the many upstanding victims – among them the titular Alan Bates (Toby Jones), who became the postmasters' leader in the fight for justice – and contrast that with the inhumane bureaucracy that they came up against. The show's impact proves that, for all the value of documentaries, sometimes a dramatisation can bring a story into the cultural consciousness like nothing else. Will Mr Bates inspire more TV getting to grips with institutional scandals of our time? Let’s hope so. (HM)
Available on PBS in the US and ITVX in the UK
19. The Regime
Kate Winslet is funny, chilling and on top form in this dark political comedy as Elena Vernham, dictator of a fictional Central European country. On the ludicrous side, Elena sings Santa Baby as part of her Christmas address to the nation, and calls its citizens "My Loves". On the ominous side, she masquerades as a populist but is ruthless in her determination to hold on to power, invading a nearby country and imprisoning her political opponents. It's as if she were the child of Eva Perón and Vladimir Putin. Winslet balances the character's comic and evil parts beautifully and is surrounded by a stellar cast, including Matthias Schoenaerts as the sociopathic soldier who becomes her lover, Andrea Riseborough as her cowed servant, and Hugh Grant in a single episode as the Chancellor whom Elena deposed. The Regime's tone is more absurdist than pointedly skewering, yet by the end its politically tumultuous world comes to mirror our own. (CJ)
Available on Max in the US and Now in the UK
20. 3 Body Problem
This sci-fi show arrived with considerable hype, being the next project from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss. And while it may not have exactly become the phenomenon that the streamer might have hoped for, it deserved serious applause for its intelligence and creative ambition. Based on a Chinese novel, it tells the story of a group of scientist friends as they try and work out what is going on with a spate of suicides within their community – a story that involves flashbacks to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a mysterious virtual reality game and much more besides. It's an initially mind-boggling mix that nevertheless settles around a brilliantly compelling and timely premise: what would we do if we knew the human race was going to be destroyed, but not for 400 years? Plus it has the single most shocking TV sequence of the year, one up there with GoT's infamous Red Wedding. Netflix have announced that it will return for a second and third season, and that will be it. Here's praying it can stick the landing. (HM)
Available on Netflix internationally
The numbers in this piece do not represent rankings, but are intended to make the separate entries as clear as possible.
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From the most anticipated literary debuts to the return of heavyweights like Stephen King and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there's plenty to add to your TBR pile this year.
Exciting debuts
This year will be a great one for discovering new talent, with a slew of compelling debut novels on the horizon. Coming early in the year is Catherine Airey's Confessions, which follows three generations of women between Ireland and New York – including a teenager orphaned by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It's both intimate and ambitious, tackling issues including sexual violence, abortion and the immigrant experience. Airey quit her job in London and moved to West Cork – from where her grandmother hails – to write the book. It's not the only exciting debut to come out of Ireland this year. The golden age of Irish fiction is turning into a gold rush, with many of this year's most intriguing debuts coming from the Emerald Isle.
Garrett Carr's The Boy from the Sea starts when a baby boy is found abandoned on the beach of an Irish coastal town in the 1970s, and taken in by a local fisherman. It's a big story about a small community, told in the communal voice of the town. Meanwhile award-winning Irish poet Seán Hewitt's debut novel Open, Heaven is a story about the agony and ecstasy of first love, set in the rural north of England, and has already attracted glowing praise from writers including Anne Enright, Kaveh Akbar and Helen MacDonald.
Belfast-based Wendy Erskine has already shown herself to have an exceptional gift for finding the profound in the everyday through her two short story collections. Her first novel, The Benefactors (June), follows three women whose lives become intertwined when their 18-year-old sons are accused of sexual assault, and they leverage all of their privilege to protect them. Also making the leap from acclaimed short story writer to novelist is Roisin O'Donnell, whose debut Nesting (January) is about a young mother trying to start over after fleeing an abusive relationship. Other debuts to watch out for include Lorraine Hegarty's Fair Play - which turns the murder mystery conceit on its head – and Elaine Garvey's The Wardrobe Department, a coming-of-age tale about a young Irish woman working in a London theatre.
Florence Knapp's first novel The Names (May) was the subject of a frenzied bidding war on both sides of the Atlantic. A sliding doors story, it follows three versions of a life, each shaped by the name a mother gives to her son – and explores how a single decision can have monumental ripple effects. The Lamb by Lucy Rose (January) offers something darker – a folk-horror meets coming of age story about a girl who lives in the woods with her cannibal mother. Meanwhile Adam Kay – whose memoir about his days as a junior doctor, This is Going to Hurt, sold more than one million copies and spawned a TV adaptation starring Ben Whishaw – stays in the medical world for his debut novel, A Particularly Nasty Case, out in the autumn.
Big name returns
A lot has happened since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published her last novel, Americanah, more than a decade ago - including the author being sampled on Beyoncé's song Flawless. Her long-awaited return to the fiction shelves this March is sure to be one of the publishing events of the year, with Dream Count exploring the lives of four Nigerian women during the pandemic.
Taylor Jenkins Reid – author of the best-selling Daisy Jones and The Six – loves revisiting past decades in her books, and her next, Atmosphere, out in June, is set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program. It's likely to be spotted on many sun-loungers this summer. As will the latest from Emily Henry, whose romance novels have sold more than 10 million copies. Her newest, Great Big Beautiful Life, is out in April.
Stephen King famously writes every single day, and it certainly pays off – he's published more than 70 books. His latest, Never Flinch, due in May, is a crime thriller featuring his recurring character Holly Gibney. Another prolific writer, Anne Tyler, releases her 25th novel in February. Three Days in June follows one woman across her daughter's wedding weekend. Richard Osman is also fast establishing a meaty back catalogue - in the autumn he returns with the fifth (in five years) installment of his Thursday Murder Club series.
Anticipated follow-ups
This year will see new titles from several authors who made a big impression with their last books. Those hoping they can follow up that success include Natasha Brown, whose debut Assembly topped many best-of-year lists in 2021. Her second, Universality (March), which explores the consequences of a journalist's viral long read, looks to be just as fêted. Also out that month is Torrey Peters' Stag Dance, the follow up to Detransition, Baby – which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction. Her new book explores trans lives past, present and future in four interconnected stories.
Ocean Vuong's 2019 debut On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was a huge hit with both critics and on TikTok. He returns this spring with The Emperor of Gladness (May), the story of an unlikely friendship between a 19-year-old man and an elderly widow.
In the summer there's another sequel to Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Whereas 2001's Porno followed Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie 10 years after the original book, and 2018's Dead Men's Trousers the period after that (a prequel, Skagboys, was also published in 2012), Men In Love skips back in time to pick up events directly after the end of 1993's cult classic. The boys are trying their best to drop the drugs and find romance instead. Don't expect a sentimental love story from Welsh, though. Talking of sequels, Glyph, the sister novel to Ali Smith's dystopian 2024 novel Gliff, will be out in the autumn.
A new title from Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife, Prep and Romantic Comedy, is always something to look forward to, and this year she's treating us to a new collection of short stories called Show Don't Tell (February).
Literary highlights
It might be the start of the year, but many 2025 books are already causing a splash in literary circles. In February, Eimear McBride, whose bold debut A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing scooped awards including The Women's Prize for Fiction, returns with her fourth book. The City Changes Its Face is the story of an intense love affair set in 1990s London. Another celebrated Irish writer, Colum McCann, has a new novel out in March. Twist sees a journalist sent to investigate a network of cables deep under the sea.
David Szalay's Flesh (March) follows a teenage boy throughout decades of his life, from growing up in communist Hungary to immense wealth in London. It's already being called a masterpiece, attracting early praise from authors including Samantha Harvey, Rachel Kushner and David Nicholls.
Katie Kitamura counts Barack Obama among her fans, and has quietly built a reputation as one of America's best contemporary writers. In April she follows up her acclaimed last novel Intimacies with Audition, about a theatre actress whose life is upended after she meets a younger man for lunch.
In May you can look forward to Eric Puchner's Dream State, a gorgeous, gripping epic that chronicles 50 years of change in friendships, families and the surrounding landscape. It's being hailed by some as the next great American novel. Also out in May is the latest from Edward St Aubyn, author of the Patrick Melrose novels. He returns with Parallel Lines, a tale of several very different characters whose fates collide.
Recent years have seen a trend for authors reinventingold classics, such as Percival Everett's James and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. In The Housekeeper, out in the autumn, Rose Tremain explores the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. A film adaptation, starring Uma Thurman and Anthony Hopkins, is already in the works.
Also out in the autumn, Damian Barr's The Two Roberts is an imagined story inspired by the lifelong love affair of two real-life Scottish artists, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, whose contemporaries included Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon.
Compelling real-life stories
The year kicks off with a publication first: a memoir by a sitting pope. Hope: The Autobiography of Pope Francis, published globally this month, has taken six years to write, and the Pope, now 88, says it is "the story of a journey of hope".
If the pope's memoir turns out to be light on insider gossip, two more books promise to have plenty of it. In March, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter publishes When the Going Was Good, in which he recalls life in the glamorous golden age of magazines. Expect name-dropping aplenty. Another New York icon – though one hailing from the UK – is restaurateur Keith McNally, who changed the Manhattan dining scene with legendary spots like The Odeon, Minetta Tavern and Balthazar. He's also lived a pretty extraordinary life, from time as a child actor to a devastating stroke a few years ago. McNally isn't shy of expressing his opinions on social media, so let's hope he lets rip in his book, too. Promisingly titled I Regret Everything, it's due in May.
Both Bill and Melinda Gates have memoirs out this year. In The Next Day (April), Melinda Gates reflects on how she navigated some of the biggest changes in her life, while in Source Code (Feb), her ex-husband goes back to his youth, recalling how he first fell in love with computers – and the events that preceded his enormous success.
It might seem like there's nothing left to write about The Beatles, but Ian Leslie's John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs (March), promises a compelling and comprehensive exploration the Lennon/McCartney story, told through 23 of their songs.
With a title inspired by a classic Fab Four track, September sees Booker-prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy publish her first memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, which will focus on her complex relationship with her late mother. The autumn will also see a raft of big-name celebrity memoirs, including titles from Sylvester Stallone, Lionel Richie and the second part of Cher's life story.
Far removed from the showbiz world, this year sees a courageous book from the late Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. Amelina went from novelist to war reporter when Russia invaded her home country in 2022. Tragically, she was killed by a missile attack in July 2023, aged 37, but her photographs, diaries and interviews with women caught up in the conflict have been collected in Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary (February), along with a forward written by Margaret Atwood.
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"It's about what speaks to you": Displaying paintings, prints, textiles and sculptures can all help create a fresh living space for the new year – here's how, according to the experts.
January is a popular time of year to refresh priorities – and perhaps our surroundings too, creating a new mood for a new year. New artworks can transform a living space, and also inspire future interests, intentions, or the desire for fresh goals. Even repositioning our existing paintings, prints and photographs can revitalise a home and feel like a new start.
Imaginatively chosen and displayed art can both revive cherished memories and prompt feelings of wellbeing – and it can change the whole ambience of a space. Abstract art, for instance, evokes moods in a non-literal, suggestive way – a large painting or print dominated by loose, expressionistic mark-making can give a home a romantic, free-spirited feel, while a more hard-edged, graphic style gives a space a modern, urban feel.
Acquiring and displaying art isn't the preserve of homeowners, either; in fact, it's a great way to make a rental home feel more personal, without having to redecorate – and your pictures can move on when you do. It's this flexibility that makes art such a useful element of home décor – artworks can be arranged, then reconfigured to change the character of a room. "A piece doesn't have to be in one location forever," says Katherine Kittoe, founder of Kittoe Contemporary, an online and physical art gallery and art consultancy that promotes emerging and established artists. "A re-hang of artworks every few years – similar in principle to re-hangs in large public galleries, though obviously on a more modest scale – can be hugely rewarding and refreshing."
This, though, raises the practical but important question of how to repair walls dented by holes left after hanging. "Small nails are your best friend – they're easy to patch up with spackling paste when it’s time to move out," says Cathy Glazer, founder of Artfully Walls, a curated site for art-buyers in the UK and US. "Lightweight pieces can be hung with thin nails and hooks from a basic picture-hanging kit. Most standard picture-hangers hold up to 30lbs. It's easier still to lean art on ledges or on stacks of books, mantelpieces or consoles for a very casual look."
Of course, when art is added to a home, it must coexist with furniture and homeware accumulated over time. Yet it needn't vie for attention with existing elements or get visually lost among them – it can be artfully displayed adjacent to homeware with similar qualities, for example echoing the bold, colourful pattern in a rug or the sensual curves of ceramics. And it can be shown with ephemera – from postcards to family snaps – to create aesthetically pleasing juxtapositions.
Wall-hung art can counterbalance the bulky, imposing look of furniture that occupies a permanent spot, such as sofas, according to Sophie Goldhill, co-founder of Liddicoat & Goldhill and its interior design arm, Hector Interiors: "A striking painting can serve as a visual focal point paired with sofas and tables, and can offset the weight of larger pieces that could otherwise dominate a space," she tells the BBC.
And introducing a new artwork into a room can make the space more cohesive, Goldhill adds. "Art offers an opportunity to link different design elements, such as contrasting materials or colours, in a space, ensuring it doesn't feel disjointed. A thoughtfully chosen piece of art can reflect or complement tones in fabrics or wood, tying the room's design together."
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Opting for usable art can make buying and displaying artworks fun and accessible. A set of coasters and placemats – created with images by UK photographer Martin Parr and sold by art platform Plinth – is a good example. The aptly food-themed creations feature kitsch, close-up photos of cocktails filled with maraschino cherries, ice cream or tea in traditional cups and saucers.
Art of living
Food is also a major theme in the work of UK artist Selina Snow, whose joyful pieces depict mouth-watering delicacies from around the world – from colourful sushi to the humble full English breakfast. Snow has built up an eclectic collection of art and personal memorabilia that includes paintings and prints by her late father, Peter Snow, an artist and theatre designer, and myriad posters, textiles, objects and artefacts acquired on her travels. These are displayed in her home in the New Forest, Hampshire, alongside her own artworks, against a mainly neutral backdrop of grey and white walls.
The buttercup yellow fireplace in Snow's living room has informed the choice of objects displayed on the mantelpiece and the art on the wall above it. A Balinese theatre mask representing a devil's head and a bust by artist Corin Johnson reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich, both of a similar height, stand at either end of the mantelpiece. Above it hangs an abstract painting featuring a pattern of yellow spots that echo the colour of the fireplace. "I like the way the bust and mask balance each other and frame the painting," Snow tells the BBC.
But Snow doesn't see her combinations of objects as simply toning chromatically. "I don't want pieces to blend together so they lose their individual character, but so they enhance each other. I like to link colours but not obviously. I've got a sculpture of a violinist standing on a sulphur yellow table that picks up on a black pattern detail in a painting above it."
She also pairs very different pieces that nevertheless share the same motifs. In Snow's bedroom is a wooden headboard carved with flower shapes by her late husband, sculptor Richard Austin; above it is a painting of flowers.
Snow puts postcard-sized reproductions of paintings in inexpensive frames to elevate them and make them stand out. But for original artworks, she recommends investing in a professional framing service in order to preserve them well.
Roberto Ekholm, a London-based artist, curator and art advisor, who has mounted art shows in his own home, raises a similar point: "Be careful how you look after the medium. Don't let direct sunlight fall on framed paintings. You might have to install a UV protective window film over glass in brighter spots."
Ekholm also points out that while sculpture might be associated by many with monumental works in galleries, it has a place in the home, too. "It can be limiting using only tables, plinths or floor space to display sculptures," he says. "At home, I like to arrange mine on affordable free-floating shelves at different heights and in various sizes, which creates an interesting domestic display."
While Snow and Ekholm have art collections that grew organically, aided by long-standing art-world connections, many people establish theirs from scratch. So what criteria should apply when you're acquiring your first original artworks? "Visit art exhibitions and auctions to explore what kind of art resonates with you," advises Kittoe. She cites the London Art Fair (on later this month), Affordable Art Fair and British Art Fair as good places in the UK to source art, as well as art trails and open-studio events.
Kittoe also suggests making use of a "try before you buy" service: "Many galleries allow you to see works in your own space before committing to the purchase. This can be useful as homes are so different to a brightly lit gallery, and this arrangement allows you to see the works at different times of the day and try them in different parts of the house. When hanging several pictures together, play with potential configurations by laying them out on the floor before committing them to fixed spots on the wall."
In the end, go with what feels right for you. As Cathy Glazer puts it: "Whether it's travel posters, collages or fleamarket finds, your collection should reflect what resonates with you. But if you're unsure where to begin, it can help to adhere to a theme, for example a grouping of botanicals, portraits or black-and-white photography. Choosing art can feel intimidating but it's not about right or wrong, it's about what speaks to you."
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Rejecting the "haul" culture of excessive shopping and promoting conscious consuming, the de-influencer movement is going mainstream – here's why.
In 2019, Diana Wiebe was deep in a social media scroll when she came across an influencer promoting heatless curling rods. "They were rods you could sleep in overnight, and the promise was to wake up with beautiful curls," she tells the BBC.
It was one of many products she was influenced to buy from TikTok, but like several of the others, including skin creams and facial scrubs, she quickly realised she didn't need them. "Honestly, the curlers really disrupted my sleep, and I didn't make it past night one," she says, adding "my hair is naturally wavy, so I think the curler actually did too much".
Fast forward to 2025, and Wiebe, who lives in Ohio, is now an influencer herself, but there is a difference between her and many others. She is trying to "de-influence" her followers from buying things they don't need.
In her daily TikTok videos, the content creator – who has more than 200,000 followers on the app – asks questions like "did you want that product before it was marketed to you?", and reminds her followers that weekly and monthly clothing "hauls" are not normal. "Haul" culture is a specific kind of social-media content that originated on YouTube in which creators reveal a haul of purchases – usually clothing – to their followers.
Wiebe is part of a movement – growing since 2023 – that rejects traditional influencer culture, one that has exploded on TikTok, with the hashtag #deinfluencing racking up more than a billion views.
Along with hashtags like "underconsumption core" and "conscious consumer", they share key messages, such as "fast fashion won't make you stylish" and "underconsumption is normal consumption". As we move into 2025, Wiebe believes the cultural tide is turning and that we've reached "peak influencer".
"Some of the content from influencers is just rage-bait", she says, referencing the internet tactic of posting content to incite anger and generate views. "People will do ridiculous things with, like, their water bottles, where they'll add a snack tray, and then they'll fill it with Taco Bell or something," she explains, describing the videos where creators showcase their Stanley Cups fitted with needless accessories.
TikTok has become the default home for influencers, but with the app facing an uncertain future in the US, Wiebe believes it's a time of change. "I don't know the future of TikTok, but the kind of influencing we see on there doesn't happen on other apps", she says, mentioning how prolific haul content has become on TikTok, versus other platforms like Instagram.
Wiebe thinks this shift stems from an increased awareness of what influencers actually do (in the UK there are laws in place to address this). "When I started seeing more adverts on my TikTok timeline, I thought about how much I'd already purchased in the last few years because of influencer reviews," she says. "It suddenly hit me that it was all advertising, from paid promotional content to the creators sharing hauls. It's not like watching TV, where you can recognise a commercial. Influencers feel like hearing from a friend or family member because we almost view our favourite TikTokers as people we know."
Most of Wiebe's interactions online are positive, with comments like, "I needed to hear this advice today". Others, however, question why she feels the need to meddle in other people's shopping habits. Wiebe is keen to stress that she's not advocating for a "no-buy" lifestyle. Instead, she describes herself as a fan of "slowing down and really thinking through purchases before rushing". Her advice is the opposite of the familiar influencer slogan encouraging viewers to "run, don't walk," in order to purchase the latest product.
Mindful approach
It's this same mindset that led Christina Mychaskiw to adopt a more mindful approach to spending. Through her posts on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, she aims to help others live a fulfilling life, "without going broke".
Mychaskiw says she knows first hand how powerful influencers can be. "Back in 2019, I was $120,000 CAD in debt through student loans, and I was still buying week after week. I hit rock bottom when I bought a pair of boots that cost more than my rent, even though I knew I couldn't afford them."
The Toronto-based content creator says she felt trapped in a cycle of "Instagram versus reality", she tells the BBC. "I had this idea of what my life should look like based on my career and what my peers were doing."
It's a theme Mychaskiw often discusses on her podcast, where she hears from listeners struggling with both the constant pressure to buy and the disappointment when products fail to meet expectations. "People don't see the value in what they're buying anymore. The promise of these items just isn't living up to expectations. It feels like everything is getting more and more expensive, but lower quality and less satisfying."
Mychaskiw doesn't want people to make the same mistake she did, initially going cold-turkey on consumption, and living a minimalist life – which, she says, made her miserable. She's since come to a half-way house – treating herself from time to time, but reminding herself before hitting the shops, to "shop her wardrobe" first.
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The content creator has now written off her student debt. Her advice for others? "Get off your phone. Scrolling and constantly consuming content makes you more likely to give in to subliminal messages," she says. "Put the phone down, touch grass, play with your wardrobe, and use what you already have to create fun looks. Maybe you'll realise what you have is good enough."
According to stylist Lucinda Graham, constantly consuming fast fashion is not only bad for your finances and the environment – but for your personal style too. "Think of it like cooking" she tells the BBC. "If you make something quick, it's nice but can't compete with a dish that's been cooked for over 48 hours with care and effort. It's the same with fast fashion versus a wardrobe that has been carefully chosen."
Graham advises anyone finding their own style to be patient. "Personal style needs time to develop and experiment with the same pieces. Crucially, it's also about buying what you like, versus what is trend-driven," she says. "With influencers persuading us to buy clothes, we're buying items that represent the lifestyle of someone else, and trying to emulate their life, but that doesn't result in a practical wardrobe".
Graham's approach means she's deliberate about new purchases, and values letting her clothes "age" over time. "I have a jacket which I've owned for six years, and I love styling it," she explains. "There's something nice about watching clothes change. Right now, used carpenter jackets and distressed Carhartt pants are in fashion, but instead of buying them from a vintage shop, why not get a pair and let them age overtime".
She says the same is true about trends. "Fast fashion will never be authentic. If we look at indie sleaze for example, those classic looks come from people who genuinely live that lifestyle, not because they've bought ripped jeans online."
"The key to breaking that cycle and working out what you like is making more intentional purchases by cutting out the small, impulsive ones."
It's hard to say whether the de-influencing movement is impacting brands just yet. We know online giants like Asos, Boohoo, and Pretty Little Thing have struggled with falling demand and changing consumer habits in recent years. However, let's not forget that many timelines are still flooded with influencers. In 2023, the global influencer marketing industry was estimated to be worth $21.1 bn this year, more than doubling in size since 2019.
In Aja Barber's opinion, with content creation still seen as an aspirational career, we haven't reached "peak influencer" yet. Barber is the author of the book Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change; she thinks the de-influencer movement is helpful but believes the conversation needs to be offline to change people's spending.
The author, who is also a contributing editor of Elle, says we all have a role to play. "From the billionaire-company-owners to influencers and us as consumers," she tells the BBC. "On social media, I had a postal worker reach out to me, who said they delivered a Shein package to one house 17 times in a month."
Some estimates suggest that more than 100 billion items of clothing are produced globally each year, with well over half ending up in landfill within 12 months. Often, the unwanted clothing is exported to African and Asian countries, where up to 40% can be dumped, rather than resold, and which charities say has contributed to water pollution as well as to health risks.
We're now almost a century on from the 1930s, when women owned about 60 items of clothing, and bought five new items annually. Reflecting on how things have changed, Barber says "the goal is to sell as many products as possible. We need to get real about the damage that everyday individuals are doing through the idea that we can just consume and consume, and it has no negative impact. That's not true."
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When it premiered in 2022, Apple TV+'s surreal workplace show was a hit. Now it's finally back – and from the playful storytelling to the layered performances, there's a lot to savour.
In the second season of Severance, one character spends hours practising how to put paper clips on properly (apparently there's a right and a wrong way). Other characters find a room full of goats in their office building, and out of the office someone finds a working phone booth on the street, as if that's an everyday thing. Yet viewers of season one of the series – among the most bracing and imaginative of recent years – know that its bizarro world is also relatable to anyone who has ever been bored at their job.
With a perfect balance of the real and surreal, the show follows four employees who sort numbers floating on their computer screens at Lumon Industries, and who chose to have a chip put in their brains that cuts their memories in half. The person working inside the office, called the innie, has no knowledge of who they are beyond its walls – and their outside counterpart, or outie, has no memory of the working day. Identity crisis doesn't begin to describe it. The show's creator, Dan Erickson, was inspired by wishing that his tedious office temp job while he was a struggling screenwriter could zoom by as if it never happened, and his idea of being able to turn off your brain resonates especially well in our age of information overload.
That twist on the familiar office-show premise is a great hook. But the series' true alchemy, and the secret of its success and acclaim, is how well it builds our emotional attachment to the characters in Lumon's Macrodata Refinement Department, who now realise they have made a terrible mistake. The cast makes them so credible that it's easy to empathize with the grief-stricken widower Mark (Adam Scott), fussy and lovelorn Irving (John Turturro), rebellious Helly (Britt Lower), and Dylan (Zach Cherry), an office drone who seemed hapless until he wasn't. Some series shake things up radically between seasons, but this is a seamless continuation that works the same magic with even more mind-bending turns.
The plot picks up five months after the cliffhanging events we last saw, when Dylan stayed behind at Lumon Industries and laboriously held a switch that allowed the other three to briefly access their work memories while outside. Mark discovered that his wife, Gemma, might actually be alive, and is someone he encountered without recognising at work. Irv is an artist who for some reason has documents about Lumon employees hidden in his apartment. Most startling of all, Helly is Helena Eagan, heir to the Lumon fortune, who has undergone "severance", as the process is called, as a public display of confidence in it.
They return to the office carrying all that knowledge with them, but the storytelling is trickier and more playful now. From the start of the show, we have seen both innie and outie worlds, and so knew more about the characters than they knew about themselves. But this season we are less certain than we were – or thought we were – about some characters' motives. What is their game, what are they hiding, and are they as united as they seem? Everyone is, at least for a while, an unreliable narrator, smartly adding suspense.
Some things are the same. Scott is still heartbreaking as outie Mark, so broken by the loss of his wife that he signed up to be severed to avoid the pain of that memory for part of the day. And as disillusioned innie Mark, his sarcastic rejoinders to his bosses land with razor-sharp clarity.
Lower has an even more layered role now and plays it with perfect subtlety as Helly/Helena, with her immensely complicated double life. Turturro has never had a better role or given a stronger performance, suggesting the fire beneath the apparently bland Irv. He continues to love Burt, the former Lumon employee played by Christopher Walken, who delivers delightful, pure Walken line readings. No one else could make a dinner invitation that starts "We have a ham" sound the same. Tramell Tillman returns as the Lumon boss Mr Milchick, his smile more chilling than ever. Ben Stiller directs with visual flair, contrasting the dark, snowy outer world with the claustrophobic, blinding white maze of corridors at Lumon.
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Most of the differences can't be revealed yet. Among other things, we learn more about Dylan's family and we discover that it is possible to find a secret place to have sex inside the Lumon offices. Guest actors breeze in and out, including Gwendoline Christie, Merritt Wever, Bob Balaban and Alia Shawkat.
Apple TV+ sent critics only six episodes of 10, so I couldn't say more about the last stretch of the season even if I wanted to. But by midway through, the story has taken a turn involving the chips in the employees' brains, and although that raises the stakes, the storyline is not as compelling as it should be, at least not yet. Too much sci-fi threatens to tip the show's perfect balance.
And all along there has been too little attention paid to the cult-like aspect of Lumon, where everyone treats its 19th-Century founder, Kier Eagan, as a prophet, and whose company handbook is regarded as a religious, Bible-like document. The subservient way the employees always call Milchick "Mr Milchick" as if they were schoolchildren addressing a teacher is just the start of it. Whatever happens in the last episodes, there is a lot to savour, including the pitch-perfect scorn in innie Mark's voice when he says, "Praise Kier".
★★★★☆
The first two episodes of Severance season two are released on Apple TV+ on January 17, with new episodes released weekly.
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In January 1997, Tony Bullimore was trapped inside an upturned yacht that was filling up with "bitterly cold" water in one of the remotest parts of the Southern Ocean. In History looks back at an incredible feat of survival, and an amazing rescue.
British sailor Tony Bullimore had just made himself a cup of tea and was settling down to eat some crackers and corned beef in the galley of his racing boat, the Exide Challenger, when he heard the sound of a crack. "The snap was like a match," he said in a BBC documentary in 1997. That sound was the keel – the flat blade on the yacht's bottom that kept it right-side up – snapping off. It was then that all hell broke loose. "The yacht turned over in literally a few seconds – three, four, five seconds, the yacht was upside down. I mean, it was as quick as that."
As the boat rolled over, Bullimore was catapulted out of his seat, somersaulting and landing feet first on the inside of the roof of the yacht's galley. "The amazing thing was, I was standing all of a sudden on the roof, inside on the roof of the yacht. The roof was now the bottom of the hull. And I've got these very big viewing windows and I'm looking down into the sea."
It was then that Bullimore realised just how much trouble he was in. "When I looked down into the windows, I noticed that the boom from the foremast was slamming up against one of the windows because it was now loose, but it was hanging in there because the ropes were holding it in place." The solid carbon-fibre pole was being rammed repeatedly against the window like a sledgehammer by the motion of the storm waves. "Within about half an hour, it smashed the window. And the water came in the boat like the Niagara Falls upside down," he said. As freezing water poured into the hull, it fused the electrics – plunging Bullimore and the whole vessel into darkness. "Once the window went, that really put me into a different league of problems," he told the BBC with characteristic understatement.
The 57-year-old sailor from Bristol, England had been competing in the Vendée Globe, a gruelling non-stop singlehanded around-the-world yacht race. It is considered by many to be the world's toughest sailing race, but Bullimore was a seasoned yachtsman. As the race took the competitors eastwards into the Southern Ocean towards Australia, a violent storm struck, and the Exide Challenger was battered by ferocious waves and winds of up to 100mph (160km/h).
"You look in front of you and think it's an iceberg, you see this enormous mountain [of water], it could be up to 60, 70, 80ft (25m) high, and you can't believe it," Bullimore said. "Apart from the wave breaking forward, you get a split wave where it's breaking backwards as well, like a tumultuous mountain of water. It's really quite incredible. The power behind some of those waves, I mean, you are talking about several double-decker buses chucked in together."
He had battled this wild and unforgiving storm for several hours and, believing that he had his yacht under control and all the hatches battened down, he was "feeling pretty pleased" with himself. When the boat then suddenly flipped over, initially he couldn't believe what had happened. "I probably said to myself, 'I don't believe that the keel's snapped off,' a couple of dozen times, but it had," he told the BBC. "I was shocked, but I'm a pretty steady guy. I don't panic."
With the viewing window now broken and the upturned hull rapidly filling up, Bullimore fought his way through the "bitterly cold" rising seawater to get his insulated waterproof survival suit, stripped off his sodden clothes and put it on. Despite the sea rushing in, The Exide Challenger didn't immediately sink. This was because its bulkheads, which divided the ship into smaller watertight compartments, were helping keep it afloat. The water stopped rising just below Bullimore's neckline but it now formed waves inside the boat that were pitching from side-to-side, as the squall pounded the Exide Challenger from the outside. "You could see the seas that were inside the hull smashing up against one side, then rolling and churning up and then rolling to the other side of the yacht. It was like the inside of a washing machine," he said.
Water, water, everywhere
The smashed window and the boat's motion were creating a powerful vacuum effect, pulling everything – food, charts, equipment – out through the hole. "It was unbelievable, it just kept ripping things out. Food in plastic boxes that was lashed down, once the lashings got loose, the boxes just flew out." Bullimore found one of his emergency beacons, tied it to a piece of rope, dived down and pushed it through the broken window, hoping it would float to the ocean surface and someone would pick up its distress transmission.
Although the Exide Challenger was afloat for now, he knew that if the capsized yacht's watertight bulkheads started to fail, he would need the life raft which was secured in the cockpit. He ducked under the water and opened the hatch to the cockpit to try to cut the life raft free. "All of a sudden the door started to close with the pressure and I'm trying to get my hand back in. I wanted to shut the door with me inside and my little finger got caught in the door, right on the latch. I saw it sort of squeeze, and I saw the end of my finger drop off." The freezing seawater helped stem the bleeding from his severed finger and numb the pain. "It didn't actually hurt, my hands were that cold," he said.
Despite the trauma, Bullimore remained remarkably composed, but he knew he wouldn't survive long in the icy water. "The most important thing was that I had to find somewhere inside the yacht where I could get up and get out of the water because it was absolutely apparent that if I stayed in the water I was gone. I was going to die."
He went deeper into the pitch-black yacht and found a dry narrow shelf that was above the water. There he rigged up some netting next to it and crawled onto it. "It was a little kind of hammock that was up very high. It was just floating above the water, and I could get up in there and I could be out. It was amazing because after two or three hours my body started to feel warmer."
Meanwhile, 1,400 miles (2,250km) off the Australian coast, the Exide Challenger's distress signal was picked up. Australia's maritime authorities also received an emergency beacon from another sailor, Frenchman Thierry Dubois, whose yacht had capsized in the storm, too. They launched an intensive search-and-rescue operation, sending reconnaissance aircraft to scour the area. Because the two distress signals were transmitting from such a remote area, the planes had just three hours at a time to search that part of the Southern Ocean's expanse before the planes needed to return to refuel. The Royal Australian Navy deployed the HMAS Adelaide to join the search.
For the next four days, Bullimore lay curled up in his makeshift hammock entombed in Exide Challenger's upturned hull, as the seawater in the vessel gradually rose and his air supply slowly dwindled. "The more water that got into the yacht, the less space there was for oxygen. Eventually you get to a situation where 80%, 85%, 90% of the area where I was, was full of water, and 10%, 15% would be for air, oxygen. And when you get to that stage, I've got to hold my head up to a little area that is high up. The whole thing becomes very difficult then," he said.
Most of his food and water had been swept out the broken window, but Bullimore had found a can, which he managed to open with his knife, a bar of chocolate and a couple of small sachets of water, which he rationed to get them to last as long as possible. He lashed ropes to himself to stop himself drowning, in case he fell asleep and his head dropped into the water. After three days he ran out of water, adding the grim possibility of dying through dehydration to his list of problems.
Staying alive
Despite the cold, the isolation and his desperate situation, Bullimore did not let himself succumb to despair. He resolved to stay alive through sheer willpower. "I mean, I felt I had problems, but quite frankly if you are determined enough and you've sort of made up your mind that you are not going to give in easy and that you are going to go the whole hog, it's quite simple that you carry on."
As conditions worsened, Bullimore continued to focus on doing everything he could to give himself the best chance of rescue. He would turn his beacon on and off to signal to anyone listening that he was alive. He repeatedly plunged into the Exide Challenger's freezing water to secure his life raft so it didn't get sucked through the broken window and float away. He feared that if that happened, the search-and-rescue team might see a floating life raft and mistakenly think that he had abandoned the vessel and drowned in the stormy waters outside. "There were still a couple of opportunities and however thin and however small the opportunities were, it was a case of fighting and hanging on," he said.
In the Exide Challenger's small air pocket, 900 miles (1,450km) off Antarctica, he ran through different survival strategies in his mind. "I mean, one of my opportunities was to take to the life raft and hopefully drift to Antarctica with a finishing line that I had made up," he said. "It was a bit absurd. You've got the cold, you've got the storms, you've got the vastness of the Southern Ocean."
But as the hours and days passed, tossed around by giant waves and aware of the increasing hopelessness of his situation, he prepared himself for death. "I was beginning to feel that I might have reached the end of the line," he told the BBC.
He calmly divided up the remaining time he felt he had left, setting aside space to reflect on his life. "It was really simply just a case of me looking at the logistics of the situation and sort of finalising my mind, and indexing what I was going to think for the next few hours. I want to allocate so much time for my wife and family. I want to allocate so much time to other aspects of my life. And I actually blocked off and prepared myself for the final moment."
On 8 January, after days of searching, the rescue team spotted the Exide Challenger's upturned hull. The team had already found and rescued his competitor Dubois, who had also survived despite the appalling conditions. But on Bullimore's boat they couldn't see any visible signs of life.
The rescuers
Lying in pitch blackness inside the upturned yacht, Bullimore heard the plane flying overhead. He was aware that a plane wouldn't be able to pick him up, and that he couldn't risk leaving the boat if he wasn't sure that he had a chance of being rescued. He knew that if he swam out of the Exide Challenger, he wouldn't be able to get back in again and would drown or freeze to death in the Southern Ocean's treacherous waters.
In the early hours of 9 January, the Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Adelaide reached the upturned Exide Challenger and sent a crew out in a dinghy to determine if the sailor was still alive. When he first heard the rescuers knocking on the hull and then the sound of their voices, Bullimore told the BBC, he was ecstatic. He started banging and shouting back. "It was my opportunity, I'd been waiting for it, it was the door, the gate, the window, it opened a little bit and it was up to me to get through it. No hanging about," he said.
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Filled with a surge of adrenaline, he dived into the boat's freezing waters, and swam through the darkness out of the bottom of the yacht. "It took me just seconds to get to the other end of the yacht and seconds to dive out of the yacht and up, and there was the Adelaide."
The rescue crew spotted him on the other side of the Exide Challenger as he emerged on the ocean's surface. They raced over and hauled him out of the ocean, weak but alive. As they laid him out on the dinghy's floor, they covered him with insulation blankets. "Someone I think had a spare jacket and chucked one under my head as a little pillow and said, 'You're alright, mate.'" He was almost overcome with gratitude to his rescuers. He recalled to the BBC that one of the Australian Navy crew was "looking after me like a baby, talking, you know, and everything was great, and I gave him a kiss on his beard".
Bullimore was brought aboard HMAS Adelaide to cheers from its crew, but he did not survive his ordeal unscathed. As well as losing part of a finger, he was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, had frostbite on his forehead and fingertips, had fractured a tooth and was covered in cuts. He would undergo weeks of decompression treatment in a specialised medical centre afterwards.
He was reunited with his wife Lalel at the British High Commission office in Perth, Australia. The pair were already well-known figures in their hometown of Bristol. In the 1960s, they had opened The Bamboo Club together, a reggae venue where people of all backgrounds could socialise safely, and which had hosted such stars as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Desmond Dekker, Ben E King and Tina Turner. But now Bullimore's miraculous survival at sea had made him a worldwide news story, with many hailing his heroism and fortitude.
It was a label the sailor himself rejected, telling the BBC that the heroes were the ones "that got themselves down to the Southern Ocean to get hold of me and bring me back". He added: "I'd be happier to call myself lucky than a hero."
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Surprise wins for actresses Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres at the Globes mean that the road to the Oscars may have plenty more thrills to come.
This year's Golden Globes did what those awards do best: shook up a major Oscar race, when Demi Moore won best actress in a musical or comedy for the body-horror satire The Substance, and Fernanda Torres won in the drama category for the Brazilian political film I'm Still Here. Both actresses had been far down on most Oscar prediction lists, mentioned as unlikely possibilities. But their unexpected wins, plus the fact that both gave stirring, eloquent acceptance speeches, now puts them firmly in the mix for nominations.
Let's be blunt about what the Globes are. As awards, they're candy, an excuse for a glitzy, starry show, where everyone from Nicole Kidman to Harrison Ford and Zendaya turn up. The Globes were reconstituted two years ago when the scandal-ridden Hollywood Foreign Press Association was bought out by corporate owners, and its membership changed. But the 334 Globe voters, from international publications or websites, do not overlap with the more than 9,000 people who can vote for Oscars. Winning a Globe is all about momentum and being perceived as a winner, or at least a competitor to be taken seriously. That is why those wins are such good news for Moore and Torres.
Moore's performance as a television personality pushed aside for a younger replacement (Margaret Qualley) is strong, but an Oscar campaign needs more than that, and she has the kind of comeback narrative awards voters love. She smartly emphasised it in her acceptance speech, beginning with the fact that she had never been awarded for acting in her long career. She mentioned her own insecurity, how a producer told her 30 years ago that she was "a popcorn actress" who could make money but not be taken seriously, an idea she internalised – a nice touch of modesty. Then, she said, "As I was at a low point, I had this creative, out of the box, bonkers script come across my desk, called The Substance". That kind of resurgence plays right into voters' hands, as it did when Ke Huy Quan won an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once after having left acting for decades. And it helps that the theme of The Substance, the necessity and the high cost of Hollywood vanity and stardom, resonates among voters.
Torres, a veteran actress but hardly a Hollywood star, was even more of a surprise, but her win is well deserved. Her fierce, understated performance is the heart of Walter Salles's I'm Still Here, in which she plays a woman whose husband, a former politician, is among the disappeared victims of Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s. Torres's speech included an affecting dedication to her own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who plays her character's mother in the film and who was nominated for a Globe and an Oscar 25 years ago for another Salles film, Central Station. And Torres was among the few winners whose speech commented, obliquely, on the state of the world, linking the resilience her character needed to today. "There's something that is happening now in the world with so much fear. And this is a film that helped us to think how to survive in tough times like this," she said. It's a hopeful message delivered with tact that Hollywood is likely to welcome.
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Of course, these upsets merely put Moore and Torres in the minds of Oscar voters (and for Moore, Bafta voters, as she made the longlist). The Globes can be terrible predictors because dividing the major categories into comedy and drama doubles the number of nominees. But Moore and Torres beat the toughest competition. Moore won over three presumed Oscar frontrunners, Mikey Madison (Anora), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) and Cynthia Erivo (Wicked). Torres's category included Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door). All eight of those actresses are now in a game of Oscars musical chairs, a game in which Moore and Torres weren't necessarily players a few days ago.
Another acting upset, Sebastian Stan's win as best actor in a musical or comedy for A Different Man, isn't likely to have the same impact. The real competition there was in the drama category, with the Oscar frontrunners Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) and Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) going head-to-head and Brody winning. Stan's surprise win is likely to stand as career validation and an awards blip because he faced some weak competition. Glen Powell for Hit Man and Gabriel Labelle for Saturday Night seem like moves to fill that category. It is, after all, rare for The Golden Globes to rattle a race the way it has best actress. More often they solidify Oscar prospects, as it did for Kieran Culkin, who won best supporting actor for A Real Pain and is seeming like a lock to win the Oscar.
The most important thing about the Golden Globes this year may be its timing. Voting for Oscar nominations ends next Sunday, 12 January, which means the Globes arrived just in time to let voters mull the new awards landscape.
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When Vladimir Putin took over as acting president of Russia at the start of the year 2000, the former spy was an enigma to many. In History looks at how the surprise leader survived a tough childhood to rise to power in the Kremlin.
Russian president Boris Yeltsin made the shock announcement on 31 December 1999 that he was resigning, telling television viewers that Russia needed "new politicians, new faces, new intelligent, strong and energetic people". Amid widespread corruption and huge political and social problems, Yeltsin's presidency had become increasingly unpopular and unpredictable. While he played a key role in bringing down the Soviet Union in 1991, his time in office had been a traumatic period for Russia as it transformed from a communist state-run economy to a free-market one.
At midnight, Yeltsin's heir apparent Vladimir Putin made his first televised address as acting president. "There will be no power vacuum," he promised. There was a warning, too. "Any attempt to exceed the limits of law and the Russian constitution will be decisively crushed," he said. The lean, fit and sober Putin proved popular in a country used to the erratic behaviour of Yeltsin, who was so boozy and unhealthy that it was sometimes a news story when he managed just to make it into the office.
When Putin became prime minister in August 1999, he was an ex-KGB man plucked from relative obscurity. By the end of the year when he took over as acting president, he had won popularity for his tough line on the war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. When elections were held in March 2000, Putin was confirmed as president after securing almost 53% of the vote in the first round. Polls suggested that most Russians wanted economic stability above all else. Putin's basic message to voters was that he would make Russia strong again.
The new leader of the world's largest country had risen to the top while leaving few traces. It was clear the 47-year-old was a man who liked to look and talk tough – a judo black belt who would make pronouncements such as calling lawbreakers "rats who should be squashed". But what was he really like?
Putin grew up in St Petersburg, known then as Leningrad. Founded by Tsar Peter the Great, it was a city full of western influences but also echoes of Russia's grand imperial past. The BBC spoke in 2001 to Putin's old judo coach, who said that he was a star pupil who had the potential to make the Olympic team. Anatoly Rakhlin explained that Putin was always determined to win, if not by brute force, then by outwitting his opponents: "He could throw with equal skill in both directions, left and right. And his opponents, expecting a throw from the right, wouldn't see the left one coming, so it was pretty tough for his opponents to beat him, because he was constantly kind of tricking them."
Putin was born in 1952, seven years after the end of World War Two, following the siege of Leningrad that killed his elder brother and which his parents barely survived. He was brought up in a crowded communal flat with shared kitchen and bathroom, teeming with rats and cockroaches. He recalled in his autobiography how as a boy he had to fight rats on his staircase. He wrote: "Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. Suddenly it lashed out and threw itself at me. It jumped down the landing and down the stairs."
The tone of his famous cornered rat anecdote becomes more or less aggressive depending on his audience, according to Prof Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Speaking on the 2023 BBC podcast Putin, she said: "He chooses to tell it all the time to show his modest upbringing and how far he has come and what kind of enemies he had to endure in his lifetime; how he began enduring the lowest form of creatures, then moving up to face all sorts of enemies, foreign and domestic."
In the shadows
Childhood friend Maria Osorina, a psychologist, told the BBC in 2003 that it was "survival of the fittest" in the tough environment they grew up in. "He was small, thin and rather weak, because he was born of such old parents, and so it was very important to him to be strong so that he wouldn't get beaten up," she said.
She said that the family had strong values of duty, patriotism and loyalty. "His parents loved him very much. He was the centre of their world, the son they'd longed for. But their character was very restrained by nature – they didn't really show their emotions. The father was outwardly very cold, and his mother, too. They wouldn't even consider kissing their son in public – that would never have occurred to them."
Friends and acquaintances remembered the young Putin as clever but self-contained. He was "never the centre of attention", schoolmate Sergei Kudrov told the BBC in 2001. "He preferred to influence events from a distance, a sort of 'grey cardinal', as the saying goes. So different from Boris Yeltsin. Remember how he climbed on a tank and gestured for everyone to follow him? You just couldn't imagine Putin doing that. He is an introvert – a man of deeds, not words."
He had a romantic desire to become a KGB agent and serve his country incognito – perhaps the perfect job for someone who liked to avoid the limelight. By his own admission, his inspiration was the 1968 Soviet spy film, The Shield and the Sword. It was about a Russian double agent in wartime Germany, stealing documents to sabotage Nazi operations while posing as a chauffeur.
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Putin never wavered from his boyhood ambition to become an intelligence officer, right through university and KGB training. When he was 16, he entered the local KGB headquarters and asked for a job. They told him to study law and then wait. Six years later he was recruited by the agency. For more than 16 years, Putin would live the double life of an intelligence agent. When the Berlin Wall fell, he was serving in East Germany. He returned to a Russia where all the old certainties were collapsing.
In 1991, Putin became deputy to the new mayor of Leningrad, Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak was voted out, the Kremlin headhunted Putin. As the Yeltsin administration staggered towards its end, Putin rose stealthily until, in 1999, he was made prime minister. The man from nowhere was suddenly everywhere all at once.
For Putin's old friend Maria Osorina in 2003, his leadership was a breath of fresh air: "I was born in 1950, and since that time we've never had a leader who is pleasant to look at. I didn't like any of them. Putin is the first person to rule Russia since the Revolution whom I really like. He's the first normal person, the first one we're not ashamed of."
Putin has been in power for a quarter of a century, longer than any Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Now that he is aged 72 and in his fifth term as president, wrote the BBC's Paul Kirby earlier this year, "all semblance of opposition to his rule is gone and there is little to stop him staying on, if he wants, until 2036".
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Released in 1946, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life was derided as an "over-sentimental" Christmas yarn. In History looks at how its profound exploration of mental health, societal expectations and the healing power of community resonates today.
In the eight decades since its release, It's a Wonderful Life has become a sacrosanct part of the holiday period. James Stewart stars as George Bailey, a savings and loans manager who contemplates taking his own life until an angel shows him a vision of how much worse off his town and his loved ones would be if he had never been born. Due to a clerical oversight, the film's copyright expired in 1974, and the subsequent television broadcasts cemented its reputation as a Christmas classic. And yet, even in 1974, its director Frank Capra was still having to defend it from the charge of being "over-sentimental".
"I think it was probably the strongest picture I've made," Capra told a BBC reporter in an episode of Film Extra. "I think it's my favourite film because it epitomises everything I tried to say in all the other films in one package."
On its release in 1946, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times critiqued It's a Wonderful Life for its tone, noting that "the weakness of this picture is the sentimentality of it". Capra's earlier film-making was similarly associated with sentimental, idealised versions of US life. Works such as Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Mr Smith Goes to Washington were labelled "Capra-corn" because of their sweet, unassuming nature. However, while It's a Wonderful Life concludes with pure-hearted George winning out over the greed-ridden Mr Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the film exposes the grim, unspoken struggles of the ordinary man. In an era of masculine stoicism, when mental health went largely undiscussed, Stewart's portrayal of George's desperation addressed issues of anxiety, depression and the sense of personal failure.
The regular everyman he played was also a departure from his earlier heroic roles, marking the transformation of his persona both on and off screen. In 1973, he would describe his on-screen persona on Michael Parkinson's chat show. "I'm the plodder. I'm the inarticulate man that tries. I'm a pretty good example of true human frailty. I don't really have all the answers. I have very few of the answers, but for some reason, somehow, I make it. I get through."
George's specific personal struggles may not have been shared by Stewart, but as a veteran not long back from World War Two, the actor had his own mental health issues. "It's the first picture I did after I got out of the service," Stewart told BBC audiences in 1972. It would be almost four decades before post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) would be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (DSM). Veterans were often diagnosed with "shell shock" or "combat fatigue" and faced many difficulties while reintegrating back into civilian life.
'I broke down sobbing'
In an era of stiff upper lips, Stewart's performance was vulnerable, emotionally honest, and sometimes devastating. Near the beginning of the film, George prays for help while drinking in a bar in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, New York – and he begins to weep. He considers himself a failure. After a life of putting his personal dreams aside, and making sacrifice after sacrifice, he has lost all sense of self-worth.
George's tears in this scene were Stewart's own, genuine and unplanned. He would later explain in a 1987 retrospective for Guideposts, "As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing." Stewart's authentic emotions transcend the stigmas of his day. George's inability to seek help and his overwhelming sense of failure spoke of an era in which emotional problems were seen as shameful or insignificant. But what was once written off as sentimentality finds new and greater appreciation amid today's conversations surrounding mental health.
Mary Hatch Bailey (Donna Reed), George's childhood sweetheart and devoted wife, also reflects the role expected of her at the time, in that she largely acts according to traditional views of womanhood. Like George, she is a selfless character, making many of the same sacrifices as her husband and helping him however she can. But while we follow George's life, setbacks and inner turmoil, Mary's go unexplored. Unlike the prominent women in earlier Capra films who assert their independence, Mary is a force of quiet, unwavering support. She plays a crucial role in George's salvation, but her efforts go unsung. The film's attitude towards women can also be seen in Mary's fate in the alternate reality where George was never born. In the nightmarish Pottersville, where death, greed, and abuse have befallen George's closest friends, Mary's supposedly terrible life is simply that of an unmarried, bespectacled librarian.
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The other most prominent women in the film, George's mother and his childhood friend, adhere to these same societal expectations. Irene Bailey (Beulah Bondi) is a steadfast mother with little screentime, while the flirtatious vixen Violet Bick (Gloria Grahame) acts as a foil to the responsible, honourable Mary. After George's outburst to his frightened family, it is Mary who encourages their children to pray for him. In this way, she has a direct hand in the divine intervention he experiences in the form of Clarence Odbody, the wingless angel.
But Mary isn't alone. Clarence is sent to George because of the prayers of all the people he touched during his life in Bedford Falls. In this way, Clarence is a manifestation of the support and kindness George has given to the town. His salvation ultimately comes in the final scene, when his family and friends arrive to alleviate his financial burdens. In this climactic moment, his troubles are mitigated by the very community he has helped to build. This cathartic act illustrates the profound healing power of community and a sense of belonging.
It's a Wonderful Life explored the toll of sacrifice, the ripples of kindness, and the salvation offered by human connection at a time when films tended to prioritise optimism over psychological complexity. George's doubts about his own self-worth, given authenticity by Stewart's portrayal, resonate in today's world with its ongoing challenges related to mental health, economic hardship and societal pressures. It is in seeing his life through a different lens, sharing his burdens and accepting help from his community that George accepts the truth. He is not alone, his life has not been futile and he is not worthless. As his brother Harry says in a toast at the end of the film, George Bailey is "the richest man in town".
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In December 1933, five-year-old Shirley Temple signed with a nearly-bankrupt Fox Studios. In History looks back at how she revived the studio's fortunes – and became a superstar.
"The lesson was 'time is money', and 'it's work not play'. And I learned that before I became a star."
When Shirley Temple was interviewed on the BBC in 1989 about her superstar childhood, she was enjoying a remarkable second act in her career as a US diplomat. Despite being at one time Hollywood's best paid star, she had to work because most of her millions were long gone.
"You also saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy, didn't you?" chat-show host Terry Wogan asked the woman who was by then known by her married name, Shirley Temple-Black. "I think so," she replied.
In 1933, Fox Studios was nearly bankrupt. Founded by William Fox in 1915, it thrived during the silent-movie era. By the time the Great Depression arrived, it was operating at a loss, owed millions and share prices had plummeted. To the rescue: one blonde, curly-haired little girl.
Two weeks before signing her contract with the studio, she had been cast in Stand Up and Cheer! alongside James Dunn, who was to play her father. While their parts were relatively small, the pair made such an impression that they were immediately cast in more films together. Shirley Temple became a household name.
Temple's first foray into showbusiness came when her mother took her to dance classes, aged two and a half. She told the BBC: "I had so much energy – and wouldn't take a nap – that she put me in a neighbourhood dancing school that was less than two miles from our house. And I would work out there, you know – learn the rumba and the tango."
It was in that school where she was discovered by director Charles Lamont, and cast in a series of short films called Baby Burlesks. She was paid a total of $10 for every day she was filming but rehearsals were unpaid, and Temple was not complimentary about the production. She said: "He wasn't a great producer. He was a very cheap producer. It was part of a lot in Hollywood called 'Poverty Row'."
Dark clouds
Lamont, along with producer Jack Hays, worked for the Educational Films Corporation. The then three year old starred in eight films, but the set was not a pleasant place for Temple or the other child actors there. She described a punishment for misbehaving: "They had two sound boxes on our set. One of them had a big cake of ice in it, and when any of us misbehaved we were sent one by one into the black box to cool off and think about it. In the dark, with the door closed." She added: "I got a lot of earaches, I got a lot of styes, I got a lot of problems from that. I was in the box several times."
Also, parents weren't allowed on the set with their children. Instead, Temple's mother made costumes, gave her acting lessons and styled her hair every night into distinctive ringlets.
The topics of the films, nowadays, seem incredibly inappropriate. Temple described them as "take-offs of adult movies". One of the first characters she played was named Morelegs Sweet Trick, a pun on film star Marlene Dietrich. War Babies featured a three-year-old Shirley dressed in an off-the-shoulder blouse and a nappy held with a comically large safety pin, dancing for other children playing soldiers, who fight over her and give her lollipops. In Polly Tix in Washington, she is a "strumpet" sent to seduce a "senator". In her first scene, she wears a bra and is filing her nails. She later turns up to the senator's office wearing strings of pearls, and tells the toddler playing the senator she's been sent to "entertain" him. Temple noted in her autobiography, Child Star, that the films were "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence" and also "occasionally were racist or sexist".
The next step was a series of small roles under contract with producer, writer and director Jack Hays. When he went bankrupt, her father bought back her contract, having realised how bad it had been in the first place. Not long afterwards, Temple was spotted dancing in a lobby by a songwriter who worked for Fox. She was asked to audition for Stand Up and Cheer!, a film that was currently shooting. She got a small part, which meant two weeks' pay.
The film's premise is that the Great Depression is the result of a lack of "optimism", so auditions are held to find entertainers to cheer people up. Temple and James Dunn were partners in a dance sequence. There wasn't enough time for her to learn new choreography, so she taught Dunn a dance that she had learned for a different performance. Immediately after filming, she was offered a one-year contract, with a potential seven-year extension, for $150 a week. Her mother was also paid to accompany her on set. They signed the contract on 21 December 1933. In her autobiography, Temple called it "the first in a series of clouds to hover darkly over the next seven years".
Temple and Dunn's next film was Baby, Take a Bow, which premiered in April 1934. She was also loaned out to other studios for thousands of dollars, many times what she was being paid. Later that year, Bright Eyes came out. Written specifically for the pair, the film featured a song that would become her signature tune: On the Good Ship Lollipop.
But Fox Studios had been struggling ever since the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1934, Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox. According to Vanity Fair, Fox executive Winfield Sheehan said: "They didn't buy the Fox studio, they bought Shirley Temple."
Raising spirits
In her first year with the company, she appeared in 10 films. That year was so notable that at the 1935 Oscars she was presented with the first Academy Juvenile Award – and she remains the youngest person to have been awarded one.
Temple proved to be a big box-office draw for Depression-era audiences who wanted to see optimistic, happy films in theatres. President Franklin D Roosevelt said of her, "During this Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby, and forget his troubles."
As her films became more lucrative, her pay also increased until she was the best-paid star in Hollywood – all by the age of 10. Her work schedule may have been intense, but as an adult she looked back on it fondly. After signing the contract with Fox, her mother was always on set with her. One notable thing that separated Temple from other child stars is that she had a close relationship with her parents. She dedicated her autobiography to her "loving mother". Other child stars weren't as lucky.
In 1939, California passed the California Child Actor's Bill, commonly known as the Coogan Act, after Jackie Coogan. Coogan, born 13 years before Temple, became one of the first child stars when he appeared with Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 hit movie, The Kid. He earned millions of dollars, but it was spent by his mother and stepfather, whom he sued in 1938. The legal battle led to California passing a bill that specified working conditions, and ensured that 15% of a child actor's wages would be set aside in a so-called Coogan account.
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Temple's good luck with her parents only went so far. Because her father had worked in a bank, he became her business manager. However, as she told the BBC, "he left school right after the seventh grade", and was coaxed into making bad investments. "Out of the $3,200,000 that I had earned from everything – doll sales, books, and clothing and so forth – I had $44,000 left in a trust account," she said.
Many aspects of her films didn't age well. Temple told the BBC that, while she and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson were the first on-screen interracial dance partners, any scenes in which they touched were often cut. Meanwhile, off-screen, Hollywood was often a sinister place for young actors. Long after her film career ended, Temple would recount predatory behaviour she endured when she was as young as 12.
She retired from films aged 22; her last film being A Kiss for Corliss in 1949. It did not mark the end of her interesting career, though – she went on to work in international relations, and to serve in the US government as an ambassador to both Ghana and Czechoslovakia. In their interview, Temple told Wogan that the ambassadorship to Ghana "was the best job of my whole life".
Wogan asked her: "Are you fed up with that Good Ship Lollipop song?"
"No," Temple replied. "It's gotten me a long way."
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Charles M Schulz drew his beloved Peanuts strip for 50 years until his announcement on 14 December 1999 that ill health was forcing him to retire. In History looks at how an unassuming cartoonist built a billion-dollar empire out of the lives of a group of children, a dog and a bird.
Charles M Schulz's timeless creation Charlie Brown may have been as popular as any character in all of literature, but the cartoonist was modest about the scope of his miniature parables. In a 1977 BBC interview, he said: "I'm talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I'm only dealing with why we all have the feeling that people don't like us."
This did not mean that he felt as if he was dealing with trivial matters. He said: "I'm always very much offended when someone asks me, 'Do I ever do satire on the social condition?' Well, I do it almost every day. And they say, 'Well, do you ever do political things?' I say, 'I do things which are more important than politics. I'm dealing with love and hate and mistrust and fear and insecurity.'"
While Charlie Brown may have been the eternal failure, the universal feelings that Schulz channelled helped make Peanuts a global success. Born in 1922, Schulz drew every single Peanuts strip himself from 1950 until his death in February 2000. It was so popular that Nasa named two of the modules in its May 1969 Apollo 10 lunar mission after Charlie Brown and Snoopy. The strip was syndicated in more than 2,600 newspapers worldwide, and inspired films, music and countless items of merchandise.
Part of its success, according to the writer Umberto Eco, was that it worked on different levels. He wrote: "Peanuts charms both sophisticated adults and children with equal intensity, as if each reader found there something for himself, and it is always the same thing, to be enjoyed in two different keys. Peanuts is thus a little human comedy for the innocent reader and for the sophisticated."
Schulz's initial reason for focusing on children in the strip was strictly commercial. In 1990, he told the BBC: "I always hate to say it, but I drew little kids because this is what sold. I wanted to draw something, I didn't know what it was, but it just seemed as if whenever I drew children, these were the cartoons that editors seemed to like the best. And so, back in 1950, I mailed a batch of cartoons to New York City, to United Features Syndicate, and they said they liked them, and so ever since I've been drawing little kids."
Of Snoopy and Charlie Brown, he said: "I've always been a little bit intrigued by the fact that dogs apparently tolerate the actions of the children with whom they are playing. It's almost as if the dogs are smarter than the kids. I think also that the characters I have serve as a good outlet for any idea that I may come up with. I never think of an idea and then find that I have no way of using it. I can use any idea that I think of because I've got the right repertory company."
Schulz called upon some of his earliest experiences as a shy child to create the strip. As a teenager, he studied drawing by correspondence course because he was too reticent to attend art school in person. Speaking in 1977, he said: "I couldn't see myself sitting in a room where everyone else in the room could draw much better than I, and this way I was protected by drawing at home and simply mailing my drawings in and having them criticised. I wish I had a better education, but I think that my entire background made me well suited for what I do.
"If I could write better than I can, perhaps I would have tried to become a novelist, and I might have become a failure. If I could draw better than I can, I might have tried to become an illustrator or an artist and would have failed there, but my entire being seems to be just right for being a cartoonist."
Never give up
Peanuts remained remarkably consistent despite the relentless publishing schedule, and Schulz would not let the expectations of his millions of fans become a distraction. He said: "You have to kind of bend over the drawing board, shut the world out and just draw something that you hope is funny. Cartooning is still drawing funny pictures, whether they're just silly little things or rather meaningful political cartoons, but it's still drawing something funny, and that's all you should think about at that time – keep kind of a light feeling.
"I suppose when a composer is composing well, the music is coming faster than he can think of it, and when I have a good idea I can hardly get the words down fast enough. I'm afraid that they will leave me before I get them down on the paper. Sometimes my hand will literally shake with excitement as I'm drawing it because I'm having a good time. Unfortunately, this does not happen every day."
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Despite his modesty, Schulz insisted he was always confident that Peanuts would be a hit. He said: "I mean, when you sign up to play at Wimbledon, you expect to win. Obviously, there are a lot of things that I didn't anticipate, like Snoopy's going to the Moon and things like that, but I always had hopes it would become big."
Schulz generally worked five weeks in advance. On 14 December 1999, fans were dismayed to learn that he would be hanging up his pen because he had cancer. He said that his cartoon for 3 January 2000 would be the final daily release. It would be followed on 13 February with the final strip for a Sunday newspaper. He died one day before that last strip ran.
In it, Schulz wrote: "I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy... how can I ever forget them..."
Back in 1977, Schulz insisted that the cartoonist's role was mostly to point out problems rather than trying to solve them, but there was one lesson that people could take from his work. He said: "I suppose one of the solutions is, as Charlie Brown, just to keep on trying. He never gives up. And if anybody should give up, he should."
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In December 1950, a BBC cameraman captured the fall of Pyongyang, a defining moment in the Korean War. In History examines how the conflict ravaged the land and its people, defined the future of the peninsula, and pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.
"All roads leading out of the city were crowded with refugees. Few knew where they were going," reported the BBC as it broadcast images of desperate North Koreans trying to flee the burning city of Pyongyang on 5 December 1950.
The footage had been captured by BBC cameraman Cyril Page during his last hours in the North Korean capital. Upon hearing that occupying UN troops were pulling out, Page had taken to the streets to document the chaos and fear as the news spread that the Chinese troops were coming. In the harsh winter conditions, he filmed the frightened refugees carrying whatever they could as smoke bellowed out from the burning buildings behind them.
The panicked evacuation was emblematic of the dramatic reversal of fortunes experienced by the UN forces led by General Douglas MacArthur. Just weeks before, the general had promised US President Harry S Truman that he was poised to unify Korea. The fall of the city of Pyongyang and complete collapse of his military offensive into North Korea would trigger MacArthur to threaten an all-out nuclear war.
The havoc and bloodshed caused by the Korean War had begun six months earlier. In the years leading up to the end of World War Two, Korea had suffered under a brutal Japanese occupation. The US proposed to its wartime ally, the Soviet Union, that following Japan's surrender, they should temporarily divide control of Korea between them. The thought was that it would help them manage the removal of the Japanese forces. In 1945, the superpowers split the country in two along an arbitrary demarcation line, the 38th parallel. The Soviets supported Kim Il-sung in the north's Democratic People's Republic of Korea while the US backed Syngman Rhee in the Republic of Korea in the south.
From the outset, neither of the newly-created Korean governments accepted the other's legitimacy or the demarcation line. "It was never considered in any sense by Koreans to be legitimate or meaningful. It was completely meaningless to them," Dr Owen Miller of the Centre of Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London, told the BBC History Magazine podcast in 2024. Both leaders wanted to reunify the country by force. By 1949, the two superpowers had withdrawn most of their occupying troops from Korea, but it did little to ease the simmering tensions. Increasingly bloody clashes regularly broke out along the de facto border.
On 25 June 1950, North Korea's communist leader Kim Il-sung made his move. In the early hours of morning, he launched a surprise attack with a well-trained fighting force across the 38th parallel. The North Korean troops, equipped with Soviet weapons, quickly overwhelmed the Republic of Korea's army. Within days they had captured the south's capital Seoul, forcing many of its residents to swear allegiance to the Communist Party or face imprisonment or execution.
In the US, President Truman was caught off guard by the speed and success of North Korea's assault. A believer in the "Domino theory" – that if one country fell to communism others would follow – he appealed to the newly-formed UN to defend South Korea. The Soviet Union could have vetoed this vote. But at the time, it was boycotting the UN Security Council because of its refusal to admit the People's Republic of China. And so, on 28 June 1950, a resolution was passed calling on all UN member states to help repel the invasion. MacArthur, the US general who had accepted Japan's surrender at the end of World War Two, was named commander of the combined UN force.
Turning the tide
The US was the first to respond, hurriedly sending its soldiers stationed in Japan. But these troops were ill-prepared to contend with the superior North Korean forces that swept rapidly down the country, pushing them back. As the battles raged, thousands of ordinary Korean civilians caught up in the conflict were killed. By September, the South Korean and UN forces were pinned down, defending a small enclave around the port of Busan on the southern tip. North Korea looked to be on the brink of reuniting the entire Korean peninsula.
In an ambitious gamble, MacArthur decided to attempt a risky, sea-borne assault on Inchon, a port deep behind the North Korean lines. Under a heavy bombardment, UN forces landed on 15 September 1950, capturing the port and then quickly moving on to recapture Seoul. After they retook the capital, tens of thousands of its residents who had sworn allegiance to the city's previous occupiers were shot as collaborators by the South Korean forces. It was just one of a series of indiscriminate horrific mass killings of civilians that would take place over the course of the war. "There were a lot of massacres during the war, not at the frontline, away from the frontline, where people were rounded up because they were thought to be disloyal," said Dr Miller.
The Inchon operation managed to sever the North Korean army's supply lines and communication, and UN forces were able to break out of Busan and mount a fierce counteroffensive. This turned the tide of the conflict, forcing the North Koreans soldiers to retreat northwards and back across the 38th parallel.
But having achieved the UN resolution, MacArthur was determined to destroy the communist forces completely, and he ordered his troops to pursue the North Koreans across the border. By 19 October 1950, UN forces had captured Pyongyang and were advancing towards the Yalu River on the Chinese border. The situation that had been so dire for South Korea just a few months earlier now appeared to be reversed.
Truman was hesitant to expand a conflict that could pull not just China and also Russia, which by this time had developed its own atomic bomb, into another world war. But MacArthur was convinced he was on the verge of a swift, decisive victory that would reunify the country under pro-Western South Korean leadership. He assured the president that the war would be over by Christmas.
But the UN's rapid advance towards its border had unnerved China's communist leader Mao Zedong. Fearing a hostile Western military power on the country's doorstep, he ordered the Chinese army to gather secretly at its border to meet MacArthur's onrushing armies. In late November, with devastating suddenness, China changed the trajectory of the Korean War again.
Thousands of Chinese troops launched a series of devastating attacks on the advancing UN forces. Suffering heavy losses and struggling under the freezing winter conditions, MacArthur's troops were unable to hold the large swaths of territory that they had captured just weeks before. At the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, Chinese troops inflicted a catastrophic defeat on UN forces, causing one of the greatest and bloodiest retreats in US Marine Corps history.
The nuclear threat
As the Chinese offensive gathered momentum, the citizens of Pyongyang, which had been taken by UN forces less than two months before, again found themselves in the eye of the storm. Unable to halt the relentless Chinese advance, MacArthur made the decision to abandon the city. UN troops started preparing to evacuate and were ordered to burn any supplies and equipment that might aid the approaching soldiers, causing many of the buildings in the city to go up in flames. Aware that the North Korean and Chinese armies were threatening to purge anyone suspected of having helped the UN forces, thousands of terrified and exhausted Pyongyang residents fled the city.
In freezing weather, Page filmed these Koreans, under the supervision of the British army, desperately trying to make it across the Taedong river to avoid being trapped when the troops left. "Because of priority for military vehicles, the refugees were not permitted to cross the bridges over the Taedong river to the south of Pyongyang," the BBC reported. US engineers were rigging these bridges to blow after the last military vehicles had crossed them in an effort to slow the North Korean advance. "Yet, obsessed by the fear of being left in the city, thousands made their way to the river's edge," continued the report. "There, all kinds of craft were being prepared to take them across."
Page himself was ordered to leave from an airfield before dusk. When he reached the airfield, he discovered that much of it, too, was ablaze, with UN troops busy destroying any material they thought the North Koreans could use. "As darkness fell, blazing hangars and workshops lit up the night sky," said the BBC. "By midnight, hundreds of private dwellings near the airfield were in flames, too."
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As Page's plane left, he captured his final shots of Pyongyang, which was once a site of triumph for MacArthur, but which now seem to symbolise the failure of his military strategy. "It was almost dawn when our cameraman left Pyongyang airfield," the BBC reported, "and as his plane, one of the last to leave, flew him out he saw far below the UN retreat, with the route to the south lying under a cloud of dust from the seemingly never-ending line of vehicles."
On 6 December 1950, as Chinese and North Korean forces re-entered Pyongyang, the US strategy to end the war began to edge towards a much more dangerous idea. Truman had always had a difficult relationship with MacArthur due to the general's tendency to overstep his authority and ignore direct orders. Now in the face of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Korea, the two men found themselves clashing repeatedly over the conduct of the war.
MacArthur, who had downplayed Truman's fears that Mao Zedong might intervene, now began to advocate publicly for escalating the conflict. He argued that the US should threaten the use of nuclear weapons and bomb China itself unless the Communist forces in Korea laid down their arms. MacArthur was not alone in this: Curtis LeMay, head of the US Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, was also in favour of a pre-emptive strike. LeMay, who believed that a nuclear war was enviable, would later try to persuade President John F Kennedy that he should be allowed to bomb nuclear missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This insistence of the viability of using atomic weapons deeply alarmed other UN countries caught up in the Korean conflict, including the UK Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who flew to Washington, DC to object to the idea. But MacArthur was adamant that his plan would work, believing the Russians would be intimidated and not do anything about the US striking China.
'Back to where they started'
On 9 December 1950, MacArthur formally requested the authority to have the discretion to use atomic weapons. Truman refused. Two weeks later, MacArthur submitted a list of targets for strikes, including ones within China, and listed the number of atomic bombs he would require. He continued to push for the Pentagon to grant him a field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons as necessary. By late December 1950, the UN forces had been pushed back across the 38th parallel, with Chinese and North Korean troops recapturing the beleaguered and bombed-out city of Seoul in January 1951.
"Possibly if some of the commanders like Curtis LeMay had had the ear of the president more, they might have used nuclear weapons because those commanders like LeMay and MacArthur did want to use them," said Dr Miller. "They thought, 'What's the point of having nuclear weapons if we don't use them?'" With Truman unsure if he could control MacArthur, and fears mounting that the general's aggressive posturing might ignite World War Three, the president fired him for insubordination in April 1951.
The Korean War would grind on for another two years, with Seoul changing hands again for a fourth time. With neither side able to score a decisive victory, it descended into a prolonged, bloody war of attrition. "One of the great ironies of the war is that, at that point in the spring of 1951, where the front line of the two forces is, is not that far from the partition line, the 38th parallel," said Dr Miller. "All of these great losses on both sides, the absolute civilian devastation that had occurred, but they were more or less back to where they started."
The two countries eventually ended the fighting with an uneasy truce in 1953, but they did not sign a peace treaty – meaning that technically they are still at war. The conflict was ruinous to the peninsula. Estimates vary, but it is believed that some four million people died during the Korean War, half of whom were civilians. Many more were displaced or left hungry. The aerial carpet bombing devastated the country, destroying whole towns and cities. Families separated by the partition have never been reunited.
Decades later, the two countries remain stuck in a frozen conflict, kept apart by a 250km (160 mile) demilitarised zone covered with land mines and guarded by hundreds of soldiers. The legacy of a war that never ended.
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In 1988, World Aids Day began with the aim of raising awareness and understanding of a disease that had struck fear in communities around the globe. That same year, US tennis legend Arthur Ashe learned of his own diagnosis. In History looks at the dilemma that faced Ashe, when, after years of secrecy, he once again became a groundbreaking campaigner.
In April 1992, Arthur Ashe made his way into a packed conference room, where the media were poised with cameras rolling. This time he wasn't being asked about his role as the first black tennis player to be selected for the United States Davis Cup team, or about his pioneering victories at Wimbledon, the US Open or the Australian Open. He had cemented his name in history as the first black winner of a major men's singles championship, but after a heart attack that led to multiple surgeries, he had retired from the sport 12 years earlier, at the age of 36.
His intelligence, composure and sportsmanship had made him a popular figure, on and off the court. But the press had heard rumours about his health, at a time when the world was still full of fear of an incurable epidemic. USA Today sports journalist Doug Smith, a childhood friend, confronted Ashe about a tip-off he had received. The next day, keen to control his own story and beat the press, Ashe reluctantly told the world the secret that he and his inner circle had kept since 1988: he had Aids.
He believed that he had contracted the illness from a contaminated blood transfusion during surgery in 1983, two years before blood donations were screened for the HIV virus in the US. The devasting news shocked the nation, but it quickly led to a debate around personal privacy and the ethics of an invasive press. At the conference, Ashe read a statement: "I am angry that I was put… in the unenviable position of having to lie if I wanted to protect my privacy." He added that "there was certainly no compelling medical or physical necessity to go public with my medical condition". In his memoir, Days of Grace, Ashe wrote: "More than 700 letters reached USA Today on the issue of my right to privacy, and about 95% vehemently opposed the newspaper's position."
Some Aids activists criticised Ashe's desire for secrecy around his health, as they wanted public figures to broaden discussion beyond the focus of the LGBT+ community. Some felt that he would have been the perfect spokesperson to raise awareness, particularly amongst heterosexuals and minority groups: one letter went as far as to say that Magic Johnson, the NBA player who revealed his HIV diagnosis just five months earlier, could have been saved had Ashe spoken up sooner.
When asked at the news conference why he didn't go public in 1988, Ashe said: "The answer is simple. Any admission of HIV infection at that time would have seriously, permanently, and – my wife and I believed – unnecessarily infringed upon our family's right to privacy." When the subject turned to telling his five-year-old daughter Camera about having the disease, emotion overcame Ashe, and his wife Jeanne read on his behalf.
The parameters of privacy
USA Today sports editor Gene Policinski had no qualms about his decision to pursue the story. He told the BBC's Tom Brook: "This is one of the great athletes of the 20th Century. His name is instantly recognisable about the world. He has an illness that will prove fatal and, by any definition I've run into in 25 years in the newspaper business, that is news." When asked if he felt any guilt, he said: "No, I didn't. That would somehow imply that I felt my decision was wrong. And I don't."
Three months after revealing to the world that he had Aids, Ashe was in London to commentate on Wimbledon for HBO. During his trip, he was interviewed by the actor Lynn Redgrave on the BBC programme Fighting Back. He said: "I definitely wanted to go public at some stage, when I was reasonably healthy, to give myself time to help the cause worldwide. But my health was so good, I wanted to continue to do what I was doing without being bothered by this... Just the prospect of going public, you have some fears and some inconveniences you know you'll have to undergo."
Ultimately, the issue of privacy loomed large, and as he had done many times before, Ashe asked questions of the status quo. At the National Press Club, he challenged journalists to examine their sensibilities, asking, "What are the parameters of personal privacy? What are they? Who sets them? And by whose authority are they issued? To me, or to any other American, what is sacrosanct and inviolable?"
This was far from the first public stance Ashe took on a wider social issue. While his sporting prowess helped him break barriers on the court for black athletes, he spent much of his time off the court campaigning for change. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1943, he had retreated into the world of sports and books after his mother died when he was just six years old. "Control is very important to me," he told Redgrave. "You grow up black in the American south in the late 1940s and the 1950s, you have no control. White segregationist laws tell you where to go to school, which bus you can ride on, where you can ride on the bus, which taxis to take, what you can say. Your life is proscribed."
But Ashe was a reluctant activist at first, preferring to concentrate on tennis, despite calls for him to use his public position to further the civil rights movement. It led to some accusing him of being an "Uncle Tom", or someone who is complicit in racial oppression. But after years of being controlled by a racist system, Ashe didn't feel liberated by the 1960s civil rights. He told the BBC that he had "black ideologues trying to tell me what to do", adding: "All the time, I am saying to myself, 'Hey when do I get to decide what I want to do?' So I've always been sort of fiercely protective, with anyone, of my wanting to do and to control my life as I saw fit."
When asked about the public outburst by his fellow tennis star, John McEnroe, Ashe commented: "McEnroe had the emotional freedom to be a bad boy. I never had that emotional freedom. If I had been like that, I am convinced, the tennis world would have dug me out of it… because of my race."
Ultimately, Ashe needed to do things his way, and he would go on to use his position as a world-class athlete to campaign for several causes. At the height of his career, he confronted the apartheid regime in South Africa over many years, and in 1973, he travelled to the South African Championships under the agreement that the tournament would be integrated. Away from the glare of the world's media, he also went on to fund a tennis centre for black South Africans in Soweto.
Ashe felt similarly passionate about inclusive involvement in tennis closer to home. As a co-founder in 1969 of the National Junior Tennis League, his aim was to ensure that children of all backgrounds had access to tennis, and not just those with country-club memberships. And while he was at first tentative in his involvement, in time Ashe would go on to be one of the most powerful voices in the struggle for justice and equality in the US. In the documentary Citizen Ashe, civil rights leader and key figure in the 1968 Mexico Olympics black power protests, Dr Harry Edwards, said of the tennis star, "When you brushed away the gentility, the niceness, the intelligence, the calmness, his statement would be more militant than mine."
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After Ashe suffered multiple heart attacks, he joined the board of the American Heart Association. And after he revealed his Aids diagnosis, it was no surprise when a new campaign began. As well as making media appearances debunking myths about the disease, he established the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of Aids. On World Aids Day in December 1992, he addressed the World Health Organisation.
Ashe died in February 1993 from Aids-related pneumonia, two years before a new class of antiretroviral drugs became available that would let people with the virus live long and healthy lives. He told Redgrave in 1992: "I'm not afraid of dying. There's always hope and you must live your life as if there is, or there will be, some hope. Hope should not be a selfish hope. For me the hope is, maybe there's no cure for Aids in time for me, but certainly for everybody else."
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Work to transform a Grade-II listed building into a regional music hub has been given a £4.7m funding boost.
Harmony Works Trust has been awarded the money from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to restore Canada House in Sheffield.
The building, which dates back to 1875, will be renovated to create a flagship music hub, providing high quality rehearsal, performance and education spaces for young musicians.
Emily Pieters, project director at Harmony Works, described the funding as "completely game changing" for the plans to open the centre in autumn 2027.
She said: "It is brilliant for Sheffield, for the region and for heritage, but it is also fantastic for children and young people, who are the prime beneficiaries.
"We are reusing these wonderful spaces, with high ceilings and natural light, that for many years have not been publicly accessible.
"There might be band practice, an orchestra, university students or pre-school children. All sorts of different organisations will be occupying the space."
She said the project would provide both Sheffield Music Hub and Sheffield Music Academy with a permanent home to allow them to continue their "brilliant work".
Adha Charles, 19, said Sheffield Music Hub had given her the chance to learn to play an instrument while at school aged nine and her love of performing had grown from there.
"I had always wanted to play an instrument but I had not had the opportunity before I had lessons at school.
"My clarinet teacher suggested I start at Sheffield Music Academy when I was 11. It was the first time I had had individual lessons and I was so excited, it was the best thing ever.
"I went every Saturday until I was 18 and then went to the University of Cambridge
"Music is my whole life, I would be so sad if I didn't get to perform and make connections playing with other people."
Canada House was originally built as offices for the Sheffield United Gas Light Company and played a key role manufacturing gas burners.
It remained offices for the Gas Board until 1972, and after lying vacant and facing the threat of demolition, was awarded listed building status.
Since then, Canada House has been Turn Ups nightclub, Bloomers pub, offices for Panache Lingerie and a Chinese buffet restaurant. It was last open to the public in 2011.
Helen Featherstone, from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: "It's projects like this, buildings that have been vacant for quite a long time, that we can invest lottery money in.
"This will really bring this building back into a vibrant use, which will hugely benefit young people from Sheffield and from further afield."
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Local television channel London Live has announced it will cease broadcasting on 20 January.
In a statement on Instagram, it said: "We want to thank you for following and supporting us over the last 10 years.
"We have loved helping to share the stories that matter in London, making sure the voices that count are heard."
The channel launched in 2014 to serve the London area under new legislation for local television and it broadcasts on Freeview and Sky.
Until January 2025 the owner of London Live was Evgeny Lebedev, who is also the chairman and owner of the London Standard, formerly London Evening Standard.
This month it was bought by Local TV Ltd.
London Live said: "We want to update our loyal followers that very sadly London Live will be closing down.
"The TV channel will no longer be on air from 12am on 20th January and the final news programme will be on 16th January at 6pm.
"We want to thank you for following and supporting us over the last 10 years. We have loved helping to share the stories that matter in London, making sure the voices that count are heard.
"In our biased opinion, London is the best city in the world, made up of brilliant people. Thank you for being a part of our journey."
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A new £2 coin will commemorate the life and work of writer George Orwell.
It will be issued by The Royal Mint to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm author's death.
The design of the coin is based on the theme of totalitarianism, which was central to Orwell's writing, and it will be available to buy from Wednesday.
The inscription "Big Brother is watching you", a quote taken from Nineteen Eighty-Four, encircles the lens.
Another quote from the acclaimed dystopian novel, "There was truth and there was untruth", serves as the coin's edge inscription.
Coinage artist Henry Gray said he had given the eye in the design a "monocular" rather than "realistic" look.
"It's almost like a camera lens staring at you all the time, unblinking," he said.
"With phones and cameras being everywhere in your house, and being listened to by advertisers on your phone, you are really aware of how you're being surveyed – and that's what 1984 is all about.
"It's about living in a culture where everything is looked at and you are constantly under pressure to conform."
Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949, is set in an imaginary totalitarian future and made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases entering popular use.
Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was also a prolific journalist, writing articles, reviews and books.
The author grew up in Oxfordshire's Henley-on-Thames and Shiplake, and is buried in Sutton Courtenay.
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Bosses of a small music venue, where the likes of Sir Paul McCartney and Coldplay have played, have shared new details about their expansion plans.
Frome's Cheese and Grain, in Somerset, attracts some of the biggest names in the industry, and hopes to expand to support upcoming artists.
Under the proposals, a new centre with affordable rehearsal space and more editing suites would be built.
Peter Wheelhouse, From Town Council's deputy clerk, said: "The project will have significant benefits for the community, including a scaling up of accredited vocational training."
He added the project could also create local apprenticeship opportunities and new links between the Cheese and Grain and colleges, universities and employers.
"Somerset Council has already indicated their support for the project and we are working closely with their officers to try to secure central government funding," Mr Wheelhouse added.
The plans are expected to cost about £1.7m, and could be paid for through the government's levelling up scheme, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
It was one of four cultural venues within the former Mendip area which were included within a £5m bid to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government in late-2024 – with the government expected to announce the outcome of the bid in spring.
An application to extend the Cheese and Grain's sub-lease of the site and a "minor adjustment to the boundary of the leased area" has been submitted to the town council.
Proposals also include the installation of a lift large enough for a grand piece, new storage facilities, and a third wheelchair-accessible toilet and washroom.
Frome Town Hall will discuss the application on Wednesday at a full council meeting.
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Campaigners trying to stop the closure of Walsall's leather museum have described the proposals - including plans to digitise parts of the collection - as an "affront" to the town, given the industry "is so deeply written into our heritage".
Proposals due to be considered by Walsall Council next month also include some physical samples going on display elsewhere.
Campaigner Lauren Broxton said the industry was "about where we come from". A petition opposing the closure has more than 2,000 signatures.
Walsall Council said more visitors were needed to ensure the "long-term sustainability of the museum".
It added that a town centre location would also make it more accessible.
Gary Flint, the councillor responsible for Health and Wellbeing, said the aim was to create "a new, inclusive, and progressive museum that can better serve the diverse needs of our community".
He also said there was a wider aim of including the museum in a "dynamic cultural hub".
The local authority's cabinet is due to discuss budget proposals on 12 February and a decision to close could then follow by the end of the month.
Ms Broxton said her connection to the museum - on Littleton Street West - came through working as a fashion designer specialising in leather work for 30 years.
She said the town had a long association with the trade and "everybody knows someone who works in leather, or whose family has worked in leather".
The museum, in a Victorian building which was once a leather-making factory, explains the leather-working process and tells visitors about Walsall's links to the industry, using artefacts from local people and telling personal stories.
Proposals to move some of the artefacts to another location in the town and digitise others have not impressed campaigners.
Claire Taylor, who set up the online petition, said: "The museum represents more than just a building; it is a meeting place, an educational resource, and a symbol of our unique leather-working heritage."
Ms Broxton, who described the building as a "relic or shrine", said it would be impossible to recreate the smells, sounds and feel of leather work in digital form.
She said many people would have happy memories of going as a child to the museum, which opened in 1988.
She added she was hoping people would "make as much noise" as possible before the council meeting.
Mr Flint said feedback from a consultation was currently being considered, and added that if the museum was relocated, the council would "ensure our heritage is celebrated in a space that reflects its importance to our community".
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From simple to complex equations, maths can be stressful for anyone who finds it confusing.
One artist believes he may have found a way to help people with maths anxiety or dyscalculia by unlocking numbers and transforming them into art.
The Multicolour Maths method came to Brook Tate in a dream after being inspired by mathematician Alan Turing.
He has trialled it in schools and presented it to PhD students, Oxbridge professors and engineers and is now convinced it will "open doors in education" for millions of people.
Mr Tate, who lives in Bristol, said his idea took shape when considering how his "deep fear of maths" had stopped him from pursuing his life goals.
"I wanted to be a children's nurse, but I couldn't pass the maths test," he said.
On a visit to his family home in St Leonards-on-sea in Hastings he discovered Alan Turing had grown up nearby.
He sat on a bench dedicated to the academic and said he “had a strange emotional feeling” and wrote a letter to him in his journal asking how he could conquer his fear of maths through art and music.
After days of drafting up ideas and concepts that did not work, he went on a trip to Munroe Island in India to work with children.
"My brain was going into overdrive and started decoding my ideas subconsciously - then my life changed," he said.
That night he dreamt of numbers represented by colours in shapes and repeating kaleidoscope-like patterns.
"I woke up and thought, 'That's maths, I don't know how, but that is maths'," Mr Tate said.
The method he created uses a key of 10 colours attributed to numbers 0-9, that can be used to form equations.
The colours can be represented by any shape and placed in any direction to form multiplication, subtraction, addition and division equations.
Once arranged, the visual equation can be formed into complex mandala-like creations or simple drawings.
According to OECD data, 57.4% of English adults have numeracy skills equivalent to or lower than Level 2 (UK Entry Level 3, expected at age 9 – 11).
National Numeracy also found that struggling with numbers can make people more vulnerable to debt, unemployment, poor health and fraud and impacts mental health and opportunities.
In light of this, Mr Tate said his method could be life-changing for adults and children who need that extra maths support.
"The combination of colour pattern and design is something that keeps people calm. Now that I can connect with that, I understand the world in a different way," he said.
"I love maths now, it's cured my maths anxiety. Maths for me is now like an endless poem and song."
Mr Tate has trialled the method in workshops with adults and pupils at Callicroft Primary Academy, in Bristol.
"Within half an hour they understood the main principles," he said.
Teacher Luke Guest said: "In year four there's a big government pressure for the children to understand their times tables," he said.
"I believe it's going to help them. I really believe if they're enjoying the learning it will stick."
Oxford University mathematician Tom Crawford, also known as online content creator Tom Rocks Maths said: "There will be a very large group of people who through their childhood into adults haven't got on with maths because numbers don't make sense to them," he said.
"The fact you can then present it to them and say, 'We're just going to talk about different colours', is exciting.
"I'd be interested to create a more formal study with adults and children to see how it affects their outcomes with learning maths."
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The co-writer of The Vicar of Dibley has revealed that a new film he is working on about two people with Parkinson's disease will "hopefully" shoot later this year.
Paul Mayhew-Archer, from Abingdon, told BBC Radio Oxford he had been working on But When We Dance for the last "five or six years".
The BBC-commissioned project is a "rom-com drama about two people who both have Parkinson's and fall in love at a dance class," he said.
Mr Mayhew-Archer had been talking about the release of a new set of stamps celebrating the The Vicar of Dibley when he made the announcement.
"The film has been commissioned by the BBC, and we've got a top director attached and hopefully once the casting is all sorted, we will make it later this year," he said.
The award-winning writer was diagnosed with Parkinson's 14 years ago.
"I've been working on this for about five or six years, and each draft I do it gets a little bit more serious as the illness progresses," he said.
In the years since his diagnosis, he has spoken openly about his battle with the disease, and is one of six former BBC employees, including Jeremy Paxman, who present the Movers and Shakers podcast.
"I'm doing well," he said of his condition, adding that a year ago he had undergone deep brain stimulation treatment, which was "extraordinary".
Royal Mail this week unveiled a set of stamps commemorating Mr Mayhew-Archer's most well-known work, The Vicar of Dibley.
He co-wrote the award-winning sitcom, which ran for three series on the BBC from November 1994 to January 2007, alongside Richard Curtis.
The series was set in the fictional Oxfordshire village of Dibley, which was assigned a female vicar played by Dawn French.
Mr Mayhew-Archer called the stamps a "real treat", saying: "I had no idea that it would be quite so iconic really - it's amazing."
"It brings back such happy memories," he added.
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When Ruby-May Walker started her last year of school, her friends began talking about the event they'd all been waiting for - the prom.
While it's not until June, thinking about prom dresses and even shopping for them, can start very early.
But Ruby-May, who is 15 and from Wrexham, says that as a plus size girl, she didn't feel she could look forward to it in the same way.
She felt anxious about what she could wear - are there enough options out there for all?
According to a social media influencer, things have got better since her prom in 2007, while some businesses have even seen a gap in the market to provide more options.
"I was excited about the prom but nervous about finding a dress," said Ruby-May.
"They all make a big deal about making a big entrance... but I have always been nervous about how I'm going to look compared to everyone else."
But Ruby-May says her confidence "sky-rocketed" after she found a shop that specialises in prom dresses for plus sizes, where she was able to try on "every dress in there" because she knew they would all fit.
Ruby-May said the experience of having the pick of the dresses was "amazing".
Helping girls such as Ruby-May is why Wendy Thompson opened Ffansi Ffrogs with daughter Robyn Unsworth, to help them find their "dream dress".
They opened their plus size shop in Ruthin, Denbighshire, after finding their other prom dress shop couldn't offer enough choice in the larger sizes.
"We felt like we weren't giving plus size girls the same experience," said Wendy.
"We were saying 'these are the ones you can try', but there there were loads they couldn't, and their dream dress may have been there."
She said sometimes the plus size girls were having to choose a dress from just three or four options.
But now, by carrying a complete range of dresses from size 18 up to 30, in a dedicated shop, Wendy says they can give the girls the "experience they deserve".
"Every dress is available to them to try," she said.
"We want them to come out and stand on the podium... and when they see themselves in the mirror, it's like 'oh my goodness'.
"We want them to see that size isn't a barrier for looking amazing for prom.
"Prom is important for every single girl."
Robyn, who's 17, acknowledges that wanting to look good for prom is a "pressure" because of the high expectations.
"There are loads of people looking, loads of people taking photos, everyone expects you to look nice - you want to look nice," she said.
She added that it was great to be able to help girls look good and feel confident, saying: "One girl came in recently and she was really shy and she was reluctant to try dresses on because she said she always wears baggy clothes.
"When she came out in the first dress, she couldn't stop smiling.
"She said 'I look beautiful'. She said she had never felt like that before."
Plus size body positivity influencer, Michaela Gingell, who posts on TikTok and Instagram as Cardifforniagurl, says things have got better since she went to her prom back in 2007.
The 33- year-old from Risca, Caerphilly county, says she couldn't go prom dress shopping like her friends because there was "nothing" for her, and she had to have her dress specially made.
"Those experiences stick with you and it hurts," she said.
"Plus size fashion has got better, but it's still mainly an online offer, there's not much on the high street."
She added it "resonated" hearing about Ruby-May's experience.
"It's great that there is someone offering this and giving plus size people the opportunity to have that experience that other people have without even thinking about it," she added.
Ruby-May still hasn't decided which dress will be the one for her prom, but she says she now feels able to join in all the chat about dresses, hair and make-up, and she says she can't wait to "look amazing and have lots of fun".
She says that other plus sized girls should just "go for it" when choosing what to wear.
"Don't be scared, keep your mind open and try things you would usually be scared of," she added.
"This is your one chance to go to your prom."
The discovery of a medieval brooch believed to belong to King Henry V is being celebrated with a statue.
The Dunstable Swan Jewel, which is now in the British Museum, was uncovered during excavation work at the site of the Bedfordshire town's Friary in 1965.
A replica statue made from English oak has now been erected at the nearby Bennett Memorial Recreation Ground.
The gold and enamel brooch, crafted around 1400 AD, is shaped like a swan and believed to symbolise allegiance to the powerful House of Lancaster.
The statue by sculptor Peter Leadbeater is part of an initiative funded by Historic England's High Street Heritage Action Zone which celebrates the town's history.
Mayor of Dunstable Louise O'Riordan said it was a "really big deal" which "just goes to show that Henry V was here" and there was a long history of royalty in the town.
She said: "I think people have a lot of respect for the history of the town and people will respect what (the statue) represents."
O'Riordan said "it is a massive part of our history" and hopefully people will see it in the park and do some research and learn more about Dunstable.
Dunstable Town Council said the statue was the third in a series of six planned sculptures aimed at celebrating the town's history.
Councillor Liz Jones, chair of the community services committee, said: "The Swan Jewel is a proud emblem of Dunstable's rich heritage and this stunning new statue ensures its story is preserved for generations to come."
She added: "It's wonderful to see our town's history celebrated in such a meaningful and creative way. We're excited to continue this journey and reveal the next sculptures.''
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In a Manchester art gallery, a quiet room with just three paintings is starting a mental health movement aimed at reclaiming our lost attention spans.
There's a small, dark green room in Manchester Art Gallery, right next to a packed gallery of L S Lowry's stick figures and factory buildings. While people mill around in the bright space, as busy as the artist's workers outside the city's factories, in the dark green room they slow right down. They sit and look at the three paintings on the wall and really see them. Guided by a downloadable meditation, visitors are encouraged to spend up to 15 minutes with their chosen artwork, one on one.
In a world where demands for our eyeballs dominate and attention is the resource, this single-minded space, called Room to Breathe, is a place where you can regain your focus. It's all part of the Mindful Museum Campaign led by museum consultant Louise Thompson.
Over the past 12 years, Thompson has worked as the health and wellbeing manager at Manchester Art Gallery, developing the idea of a mindful museum, and she now consults with museums around the world. Her radical view is that a museum or art gallery are not just a place to store and exhibit items, but a public space where you can improve your mental health.
"Museums are places where social connection thrives in lots of ways," she explains. "They're also spaces where we foster connection with our identity, through seeing objects in museums, which helps us grow a sense of ourselves and of belonging."
"The act of learning, which we find in museums, increases our confidence, our self-worth, our self-esteem, and it's a really big boost for mental health."
The other thing that happens in museums and galleries, she says, is that we take notice of the objects and the collections. That act of taking notice is all about being in the present moment – a cornerstone of mindfulness meditation.
Sitting in the dark green room, I try it for myself. I take in the abstract lines, grey tones and mustard yellow of a Ben Nicholson still life, guided by a recording that asks me to breathe in and out, to notice what draws my attention and what I like and dislike.
The more I look, the more I see. The painting isn't as abstract as I first thought: shadows and shapes emerge; the edge of a cup, the curve of a plate. I feel much calmer than in the previous room where I'd felt animated and energised, looking at multiple paintings for a second or so at a time.
"It is an act between you and the object," says Thompson. "As a practitioner, you invite people in and ask them to sit and look at the object, guiding them to notice the formal elements within it."
You don't need to know anything about fine art to participate; it's about paying attention to what you can see in front of you. I'm not the only person to find it relaxing: Thompson has been collaborating with Aleksandra Igdalova from Goldsmiths University's psychology department to examine how art viewing in museums relates to engagement and well-being. They found that visitors who viewed the same works in the mindful Room to Breathe setting reported feeling more relaxed and more perceptually engaged versus those seeing the same works in a traditional gallery space.
Thompson has seen this in action.
"People become much less stressed," she said. "Their body language is a bit tense and tight when they first come in, and they are unwilling to talk to strangers. After 10-15 minutes, they physically change. Their bodies are looser, softer, and they're talking to the person next to them."
"They're also more connected to the object. They might start out thinking that the object or artwork is dull and wondering why on earth I've chosen it. But at the end of 10-15 minutes, they have completely changed their minds."
The implication is that the act of slowing down and taking time to notice allows you to see the beauty and interesting aspects of something you might have otherwise written off. It's an idea that has wider consequences: stopping to think and consider something – art, music, writing or something else – builds meaning. And the alternative, in our fast-paced, digitally driven lives, is that by not engaging fully with the moment, we never give ourselves the chance to enjoy it, engage with it or even see the beauty of it in the first place.
It all changes how a museum or art gallery functions. What if a museum is more than a collection of historical objects and becomes a place where you can learn something about yourself? What if an art gallery goes beyond a building full of paintings and becomes a mental health support that helps you think more clearly and calmly? And there's more: what if you could learn a mindfulness skill in a museum that could improve the rest of your life?
"The people that we've worked with over years and years have told us this, and I can personally testify to it," says Thompson, "if you learn this skill with an object or a painting, you start to use it in your everyday life as well. You start to notice the beauty and the simplicity of things. And it makes you appreciate them on a whole other level."
Other galleries have taken up the Mindful Museums approach. At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, mindful art viewing sessions were offered through 2024 as part of its Open Up With Vincent programme around mental health. With a focus on the artist's work and life, the sessions ran alongside yoga and guided art meditations, available on their YouTube channel.
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In Haarlem, the Netherlands, the Museum of the Mind has its own version of Room to Breathe, using mindfulness and meditation techniques based on scientific research to explore a single painting; while at the Victoria Gallery & Museum in Liverpool, visitors can follow a mindfulness trail around the museum aimed at helping them savour moments, notice patterns and look with curiosity, allowing exhibits time to reveal themselves.
If you find yourself in an art gallery or museum without a mindfulness programme, you can still reap the benefits.
Thompson suggests finding a space where there are fewer people and pulling up a seat – often art galleries have small portable stools for guests at the front desk – and sitting with just one picture for 10-15 minutes. Breathe in and out slowly and start to look at the details of the artwork, the shapes, colours, the style, the areas that interest you, the areas that don't. Participate in the act of noticing and see how it changes your experience.
"It's great to see the Mona Lisa and have that on your bucket list, but I think that if you had 10 minutes with a less famous artwork, the experience would be far more beneficial and powerful," she says. "When you're on holiday, there's a part of you that wants to see everything you can. I'm always encouraging people to tick the boxes on your list but then choose one object while you're there and sit with it for 5-10 minutes."
It's an encouragement to step away from over touristed, overhyped artworks and even sights, and see if you can find the beauty in something by just paying attention. And then see what else that approach can do for you, your travels and your life.
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"The times were crazy back then. I'm glad it's sort of quietened down a bit and, you know, I'm just an artist now."
For Kieron Williamson, it's hard to comprehend the scale of what went on 15 years ago – and what he has achieved since.
In 2010, the world's media descended on the north Norfolk countryside to witness the hammer go down on landscape works by Kieron, one of the UK's most promising painters – aged just seven.
By the age of nine, he was hosting his first career gallery and was on his way to becoming a millionaire.
Now, aged 22, and towering in height above his dad, his "mini Monet" moniker is consigned to history, in a physical sense. However, it will forever remain part of his identity as he takes his paintbrush and easel into young adulthood.
"I had sort of a love-hate relationship with it [mini Monet] – maybe because I heard it so much," says Kieron, in his countryside studio close to where he grew up, and in the surroundings he remains inspired by.
"But I mean, what an honour to have my name up there with Monet's, you know?"
Williamson's love affair with painting began when he was first able to pick up a brush, on his family holidays in Cornwall.
His ability astonished his parents Michelle and Keith, and soon after he went on to take art classes alongside adult peers.
By 2010, his work was of such a standard that he was being exhibited in his former hometown of Holt, where his family lived in an unassuming flat beside a petrol station.
In a matter of weeks, word of his extraordinary ability had spread across the world – leading to his works selling for £150,000 in just minutes.
"From that moment it all went sort of crazy, we haven't looked back," says Kieron.
"I do still remember it. I remember the feeling – it was pretty amazing. I suppose you can compare it to, like, your team scoring a goal. It's that kind of feeling."
Such global attention at such a young age was, at times, "very intense" and "overwhelming", Kieron says.
"It was crazy. I don't think I've fully understood the extent of how crazy it was.
"I felt every week we were up at London filming and there was film crews - it felt just like every week, from all parts of the world.
"It was mad, but it was also brilliant at the same time."
Far from seeing his experiences as a boy as a burden, Kieron says he will "always feel grateful that it actually happened".
"To be fair, I never really think about it, you know? It's just something that happened and it's shaped my life, but I don't see myself as anybody famous.
"It's given me such great opportunities and the people we've met along the way has been amazing.
"The times were crazy back then. I'm glad it's sort of quietened down a bit and, you know, I'm just an artist now.
"I don't know how my parents done it but they steered such a steady course. They done such a good job."
'I'm leaving my mark'
Throughout his teens, Kieron was home-schooled and was able to hone his craft.
He still takes inspiration from the landscapes where he lives, with fellow East Anglian painters Edward Seago and Alfred Munnings remaining strong influences.
But in recent years, he has ventured into portraiture and equine work too, with horse-riding becoming a passion outside of the studio.
"I go horse-riding twice a week – and that's a nice release. Just a few hours to think about something completely different," he says.
"But then again, it's also understanding of the horses [that has] helped my painting as well. I can't escape from it.
"Before bed I'm looking at art. When I wake up I'm looking at art. So I don't ever switch off. But I love it, so why would I want to?"
Despite this lack of "escape", he still gets joy from being an artist.
"It's hard to describe. I mean, I walked in my studio this morning and I was just like looking at my paintings – there's a feeling. I think it's pride, because I'm putting on to canvas and capturing something that's going to last – out-do me, out see me, and it's going to be possibly on somebody's wall for generations, you know? I'm sort of leaving my mark."
He is three-quarters of the way through his next body of work, which will be exhibited at the same gallery in Holt as all those years ago.
His works nowadays reach the high tens of thousands of pounds – with some of his sought-after early pieces starting to drip-feed back on to the market too.
Adrian Hill, the managing director of Adrian Hill Fine Art gallery in Holt, says Kieron's enduring appeal is simple to understand.
"The older he's become, he's taken the public with him, which is a very important thing to do," he says.
"He's stayed very true to himself and as a result of that, he's producing some absolutely superb paintings.
"When you look at it in art history – 200, 300 years from now and people look back and say, who was the most successful child painter in the 21st Century? The answer's undoubtedly going to be Kieron Williamson."
For Kieron's father Keith, an art dealer who lives with his son in Norfolk, he says "it's been one heck of a journey".
"I think we coped all right with it. It's changed our lives a lot and we just muddled along, really.
"No-one really knew this would still be going and nor did we, we just stayed with it."
"He'll never give up art. He gets up in the morning and that's all he ever talks about until the time he goes to bed - apart from Leeds [United]," he jokes.
"I did want him to be a footballer. I wanted him to be the next Leeds captain, but you can't have everything."
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Hollywood actor Michael Sheen is funding a new theatre company to fill the gap left by the folding of National Theatre Wales.
He will be the artistic director of Welsh National Theatre, which will aim to tell "big stories on big stages for big audiences".
The first production, due in autumn 2026 and starring Sheen himself, will be announced in the coming months.
National Theatre Wales said it had "ceased to exist" last month after £1.6m in cuts to its core funding from Arts Council Wales.
Sheen said he was putting "everything behind" the venture, which would have "Welsh theatre makers, Welsh stories and Welsh actors" at the heart of the company.
The company is seeking private and public funding, but Sheen said self-financing it initially would allow it to stand "on its own two feet".
"I want it to be something that represents the rich culture that we are and always have been in this country," he said.
"We want to please ourselves but thrill the world. I want to be able to tell big stories on big stages for big audiences."
Sheen said the news National Theatre Wales was likely to fold was "incredibly sad, but not a surprise" and prompted him to take action.
"[I realised] if we don't find a way to reimagine the way forward, it may be a long time - if ever - that we have the opportunity to have a national theatre in Wales again."
Sheen's announcement comes a day after the Senedd Sports and Culture Committee published a report showing Wales is close to the bottom of Europe when it comes to public spending.
The actor said Welsh National Theatre was open to working with other theatre makers and had already been in touch with Theatr Cymru, formerly Theatr Genedlaethol, about the possibility of collaborating.
Sheen said he was inspired to dream big after the runaway success of Nye, where he played NHS founder Aneurin Bevan.
It was written by Welsh playwright Tim Price and co-produced by the National Theatre and Wales Millennium Centre.
"Welsh writers and Welsh theatre makers have to be at the forefront of this. And our Welsh stories have to be the heart of it," he said.
"I think if you put that on with ambition and audacity, with creativity and innovation, then people will respond to it."
He said his role as the teacher in one of National Theatre Wales's first - and best known - productions, The Passion, back in 2011, was a formative experience.
Like that production, he wants Welsh National Theatre plays to bring in non-traditional theatre audiences, citing Gavin and Stacey as another inspiration.
"You know, we've just seen over Christmas, Gavin and Stacey getting massive figures. That's because that's reflecting our life, what we recognise, and not only that, but offering us something positive and hopeful, and people will respond to that.
"There's no reason why you can't do that through practical plays and some of the most wonderful pieces of literature. But it doesn't have to be just that.
"I think that's why I'm throwing everything at this. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work."
Last month, the Welsh government increased the culture sector's funding in its draft budget for 2025-2026 and, together with Arts Council Wales, provided a £3.6m jobs fund for the sector.
Dafydd Rhys, chief executive of Arts Council of Wales said it had provided National Theatre Wales with both transition and resilience funding to support it to reimagine and restructure its operations.
He added: "It is exciting that the organisation is now able to move into this new phase at the beginning of a new year, and we look forward to seeing how both Team Collective Cymru and Welsh National Theatre develop their new creative programmes."
Whether you want to know about some of the coming year's biggest gigs and festivals, or which books, films and TV shows are coming out, there should be something here for everyone.
You can also discover 2025's key fashion trends, plus which theatre is reimagining Wayne and Coleen Rooney as mythical heroes - and why a giant spider is returning to London.
Music
Here they tautologically come, slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball.
Yes, spectacular squabbling siblings Oasis are back after their 15-year huff, ready to go Supersonic all over again.
The much-anticipated tour rocks into Cardiff's Principality Stadium on 4 July, and is set to be the comeback of the year.
And a new generation of stars are stepping up to stadium headliner status. Dua Lipa and Lana Del Rey will sashay into Wembley and Anfield this summer; while K-Pop band Stray Kids have booked two nights at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Festival bills are getting a long overdue shake-up, too. Spain's Primavera has pulled a blinder, booking three of pop's biggest wavemakers - Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan.
Roan will also headline Reading and Leeds, while her friend and collaborator Olivia Rodrigo has booked her first headline slot at London's BST festival in Hyde Park, and Fontaines DC have a massive show at London's Finsbury Park in July (the announcement video is a must-see).
Meanwhile, Coldplay have booked a record-breaking 10 night residency at Wembley Stadium, as well as two gigs in Hull’s Craven Park. Ten per cent of the proceeds will go to grassroots music venues across the UK.
There's new music on the way from indie hero Sam Fender and brooding R&B icon The Weeknd, as well as a welcome return to pop from part-time actress Lady Gaga.
Gaga's progenitor, Madonna, is also back in the studio with her Confessions On A Dancefloor partner Stuart Price; while the UK's biggest rapper, Central Cee, is gearing up to release his debut album in January.
The first major event of the year (unless you're Drake) will be Kendrick Lamar headlining the Super Bowl half-time show in February. We'll also be watching the Grammy Awards, to find out whether they're prepared to snub Beyoncé in the best album category for a fifth time.
The Brit Awards follow on 1 March. They should accept the inevitable now and rename the ceremony The Brats.
What else? Glastonbury has booked Rod Stewart to play the legend slot, but the rest of the line-up is shrouded in mystery. And for rock fans, Leicestershire's Download Festival has an unassailable line-up: Green Day, KoRn, Weezer, Bullet For My Valentine, The Darkness and Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter.
This year also marks the golden anniversary of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run - so expect a flurry of nostalgia for two of rock's most seminal works.
It'll also be 25 years since Ronan Keating's Life Is A Rollercoaster topped the UK charts, but I bet that'll be brushed under the carpet.
Typical.
By Mark Savage
Film
Traditionally, January and the first half of February see a glut of Bafta and Oscar hopefuls being released, all hoping for glory as the climax of awards season approaches.
This year, those films include Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as acclaimed opera singer Maria Callas; A Complete Unknown, in which Timothée Chalamet takes on the role of Bob Dylan; and A Real Pain, a tender story about two Jewish American cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) visiting places in Poland associated with the Holocaust.
There's also Hard Truths, directed by Mike Leigh and starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a depressed middle-aged woman. And September 5th looks at the events of the 1972 Munich Olympics through the eyes of a US sports broadcast team when a group of Israeli athletes and coaches are taken hostage by a Palestinian militant group.
February will also see the return of Bridget Jones, with Renée Zellweger once again taking on the title role for Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.
After - by its high standards - a hit-and-miss couple of years, Marvel is hoping for major success with Captain America: Brave New World, where Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson takes on the Cap America mantle; Thunderbolts, where a group of anti-heroes including Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova take on government missions; and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn as the titluar quartet of heroes.
Director Danny Boyle, who directed 28 Days Later in 2002, returns to helm the third film in the series, 28 Years Later, which stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jack O'Connell.
June and July will see franchise reboot Jurassic World Rebirth; the eighth Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film, The Final Reckoning; John Wick spin-off Ballerina; and director James Gunn's new take on Superman. The summer will also bring Brad Pitt's Formula 1 action drama F1.
Towards the of the year, the second Wicked movie, Wicked: For Good, will be released. And with the first two movies being among the biggest box office hits of all time, there's huge anticipation for director James Cameron's third Avatar film, Fire and Ash.
By Lizo Mzimba
Television
In recent years, the first day of January has been when many broadcasters like to launch the shows they have particular hopes for. And 2025 is no different.
New Year's Day sees Netflix releasing Missing You, about a police officer (Rosalind Eleazar) who finds her former fiance on a dating app. Netflix's last adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel was Fool Me Once, which was a monster hit - the second-biggest drama of 2024 on any channel.
The same day also has the launch of the third series of BBC One's The Traitors, which has become one of TV's biggest entertainment hits. A few days later, Playing Nice begins on ITV1 - it's a drama starring James Norton and Niamh Algar as a couple who find that their child was switched at birth in a hospital mix-up.
Netflix's two biggest shows ever will be returning in 2025. Wednesday, the Addams Family spin-off starring Jenna Ortega, will air its second series later in the year; while Stranger Things will say goodbye with its fifth and final series.
There will be second helpings of a number of popular dramas including Tom Hiddleston spy drama The Night Manager, with Olivia Colman also back as Angela Burr; and video game adaptation The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
The stylish and slightly surreal The White Lotus is back for a third series in February.
Following The House of the Dragon, a second Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, will once again take viewers to the fictional world of Westeros. Another spin-off - The War Between The Land and the Sea - comes from the Doctor Who universe, or Whoniverse.
Nearly 40 years on from the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, there will be two TV dramas based on the tragic events at Lockerbie in 1988. Sky Atlantic's Lockerbie: A Search for Truth stars Oscar winner Colin Firth as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the disaster. Meanwhile, BBC One's Lockerbie will focus on the investigation into the crash and how it affected the families of those involved.
And not for the first time, EastEnders will broadcast a live episode in February. But this time, viewers will decide the outcome of one particular storyline. It's all to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary.
By Lizo Mzimba
Fashion
A coat and woolly hat may be the only fashion choices you're currently making, but fear not, something more exciting is just around the corner.
Thanks to the way the fashion calendar works, we already know what looks are going to be in come spring time. Back in September and October, designers showcased their looks for those warmer months, and a few key trends emerged.
One of them was very demure and mindful - think soft pastels, pussy bow blouses and pleats - as demonstrated by Chanel and Balenciaga.
And if you practically live in sportswear (whether you go to the gym in it is irrelevant), then the next trend is for you.
Designers such as Loewe showed their racier side at fashion week - think stretchy materials and big brand logos that wouldn't look out of place on your favourite athlete.
Minimalist, clean lines were a big part of autumn and winter looks, but maximum volume is in for 2025. Tutus, frills and tassels were all spotted on the runway - with Stella McCartney stealing the show with her asymmetric dresses in soft fabrics.
Let's not forget the guys either - office wear was an aesthetic seen across Men's Fashion Week with Fendi's suit and tie combos one of the most memorable takes on this look.
They were showcased in a selection of bright colours such as pale green, turquoise and peach - which looked great on the catwalk but may not be appropriate for the morning commute to work.
By Annabel Rackham
Books
If your stocking was a little lacking in the literary department, there are plenty of bookish delights heading your way in 2025.
The Hunger Games juggernaut is once again rolling into town - Suzanne Collins' Sunrise on the Reaping (Scholastic, 18 March) is a prequel set 24 years before the events of the original novels, starting on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games.
It's been 12 years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie treated us to a long-form novel, so Dream Count (Fourth Estate, 4 March) will be a publishing event.
The latest work from the author of modern classics such as Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun centres on the lives of four women living in Nigeria and the US. With family drama, career ambitions and romantic dilemmas taking centre stage, we're anticipating an ambitious, juicy epic that will hopefully be worth the wait.
Another family drama comes from debut author Sanam Mahloudji, who was born in Tehran but left during the Islamic Revolution. The Persians (Fourth Estate, 30 January) is a sweeping and irreverent tale following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family, who are trying to find an identity in their adopted home in the US. But it's a struggle to leave the past behind.
Another must-read debut is Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Penguin, 6 March). It follows a woman with a congenital muscle disorder, who posts outrageous stories on an erotica website from the confines of her care home. Her new male carer has read it all and the pair make a pact. Funny and frank, this book lingers in the mind long after you turn the final page.
Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Bloomsbury, 18 March) is the highly anticipated first novel since Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Set in Zanzibar in the 1990s, this coming-of-age novel focuses on three very different young people, including Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents.
Finally, Pope Francis's Hope (Viking, 14 January) is the first autobiography to be published by a Pope. He originally intended for the memoir to appear only after his death, but according to his publisher "the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope" moved him to release it early.
By Emma Saunders
Exhibitions
If you fancy a visual feast, having just consumed plenty of the edible variety, the works of artist JMW Turner may be just what you're after.
Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery says its In Light and Shade exhibition (7 February to 21 November) will offer a "rare opportunity" to see the Liber Studiorum prints, created from his etchings, and it will also display some of its other Turner masterpieces.
For something completely different, London's Courtauld Gallery's Abstract Erotic (20 June to 14 September) will explore the sculptural works of Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams, highlighting their "commitment to using humour and abstract form to ask important questions about sexuality and bodies".
Bourgeois will also feature at London's Tate Modern, when her giant stainless steel spider, called Maman, returns there in May to celebrate the gallery's 25th birthday. The 10m (33ft) sculpture will be reinstalled in the Turbine Hall, having been the first work seen when the gallery opened.
Norwegian artist Edvard Munch - famous for The Scream - will feature at London's National Portrait Gallery (13 March to 15 June). Calling him "one of the great portraitists of the 19th and 20th Centuries", it says the show will illustrate how many of his pictures "double up as icons or examples of the human condition".
Meanwhile, the photography of Lee Miller, whose life was recently brought to the big screen by Kate Winslet, will get the UK's "most extensive retrospective of her work" at London's Tate Britain.
The extraordinary career of the US-born Vogue model turned World War Two photographer will be explored in 250 images, with some displayed for the first time (2 October to 15 February 2026).
At the Ulster Museum in Belfast, visitors can delve into the "science of love" at the Late Late Love Lab on Valentine's Day. It will include revelations about the "scandalous" sex lives of insects - who knew? - and an exploration of "the deadly allure of beauty".
Stepping outside, V&A Dundee is hosting a UK-first exhibition on the history of modern garden design. Garden Futures: Designing with Nature (from 17 May) will explore the history and future of gardens, including how they have developed around the world - and how they influence artists, writers and designers.
By Helen Bushby
Theatre
In London, a string of big names are in new versions of old classics.
They include Jonathan Bailey as Shakespeare's Richard II at the Bridge Theatre (10 February to 2 May), Cate Blanchett and Emma Corrin in The Seagull by Anton Chekhov at The Barbican (26 February to 5 April) and Ewan McGregor in My Master Builder, inspired by Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder, at Wyndham's Theatre (17 April to 12 July).
Elsewhere, Lily Allen continues her reinvention as an actress, playing a woman trapped in a controlling marriage in Hedda, a new version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, at Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Studio (25 July to 23 August).
News of the new James Bond may come this year - but until then, A Role To Die For satirises the spy franchise, following a female film producer (who is "legally distinct" from 007 supremo Barbara Broccoli) as she prepares to unveil her new star, at Cirencester Barn (30 January to 15 March).
Another epic spoof will see Wayne and Coleen Rooney reimagined as mythical heroes in a fantasy land, where their trials and tribulations are fodder for Helen Serafinowicz's comedy The Legend of Rooney's Ring at Liverpool's Royal Court (18 July to 25 August).
A very different legend has inspired Nessie, a musical about a nature-loving 11-year-old girl whose meeting with the Loch Ness Monster leads to a quest to save the loch, at Edinburgh's Capital Theatres (28 March to 5 April) and Pitlochry Festival Theatre (9 July to 16 August).
One of Indian cinema's biggest ever hits, 1995 rom-com Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ), is adapted as colourful stage musical Come Fall In Love by the film's writer-director Aditya Chopra, at Manchester Opera House (29 May to 21 June).
Alan Partridge's downtrodden assistant Lynn (and her facial expressions) are the inspiration for punk singer Leah in Laura Horton's Lynn Faces, about the fallout from an abusive relationship. It is on tour in Norwich, Exeter, Plymouth and London (28 January to 1 March).
And Boxing legend Muhammad Ali's 1977 visit to South Shields is the backdrop to Ishy Din's Champion, a drama about a mixed-race family in the Tyneside town, at Newcastle's Live Theatre (13 February to 8 March).
By Ian Youngs
How a rarely-seen drawing of the Three Graces by Raphael reveals the era's ideas about nudity, modesty, shame – and the artist's genius. It's part of an exhibition, Drawing the Italian Renaissance – at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace – of drawings from 1450 to 1600, the biggest of its kind ever shown in the UK.
A wandering lobster and a sturdy ostrich feature among the 150 chalk, metalpoint and ink drawings on show at Drawing The Italian Renaissance, at the King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Created by Renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, often in preparation for larger painted tableaux, the works are thought to have entered the Royal Collection in the 17th Century under Charles II, several as gifts. For more than 30 of them, it's their first time ever on public display. Rarely shown due to their fragility, these fascinating drawings – which, at the time, were beginning to be recognised as artworks in their own right – make up the broadest exhibition of Italian drawings from 1450 to 1600 ever shown in the UK.
Rarer still than these animal studies are the drawings of female nudes, outnumbered by a factor of three by an abundance of naked men. "The male body is this absolute focus of creativity," explained Renaissance historian Maya Corry, discussing the exhibition on BBC Radio 4's Front Row in October. "This is a Christian society and it's the male body, not the female body, that's made in God's image." Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, with his ideal body proportions, is a case in point. It is the male physique, she said, that "comes closest to divine perfection" in those times.
There were practical issues, too. "The artist's workshop would have been a male environment, and in the absence of 'professional models' it would have gone against all societal norms for a woman to undress in front of any man other than her husband," Martin Clayton, the exhibition's curator, tells the BBC. It was male models who would pose for Michelangelo, for example, when he needed a female figure. "This led to misunderstandings and distortions in depictions of the female body."
Raphael, however, was among the first to buck the trend, sketching female nudes based on real life models. "He was a highly pragmatic artist, who used drawing brilliantly to tackle visual problems, and to work very quickly from first idea to final composition," says Clayton. The drawings "allow us to see the artist's immediate responses to the living figure as they investigated pose, proportion, movement and anatomical detail," he adds. In the case of Raphael, "his simultaneous decisiveness and openness to variations and possibilities is always on display."
Raphael’s The Three Graces (c1517-18), a work in red chalk with evidence of some metalpoint underdrawing, reveals the artist's genius at work. As he moves a single model through three different poses, we witness the meticulous process behind creating the exuberant fresco The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche, where these three figures will eventually feature, anointing the newlyweds to confer their future happiness. Unclothed, the complexity of the human body was the ultimate test of a Renaissance artist's talent, while also satisfying the era's passion for science. The women's shapely biceps and quadriceps speak to the same interest in anatomy that we see in Da Vinci's densely annotated The Muscles of the Leg (c1510-11), also on display. But there's a softness about the face and abdomen that is missing from the exhibition's depictions of men, such as The Head of a Youth (c1590) with its angular jaw, attributed to Pietro Faccini, or Bartolomeo Passarotti's sinewy St Jerome (c1580).
The feminine ideal
Much like Michelangelo's David, sculpted a decade earlier, Raphael appears to chase an ideal – even when drawing from life. In a letter reportedly written to his friend Baldassare Castiglione in 1514, he expresses the struggle of capturing perfection in real life. "To paint one beautiful woman I would have to see several beauties," he writes. "But since both good judgement and beautiful women are scarce, I make use of a certain idea that comes to mind."
In Raphael's The Three Graces, "beauty" means hairless, unblemished skin, and breasts and buttocks as perfectly round as the apples the trio clutch in his c1504-1505 treatment of the myth. When Sandro Botticelli made the Graces a feature of his vast tableau Spring, feminine softness was emphasised by flowing hair and diaphanous fabrics, while Pietro Liberi's post-Renaissance rendition of the subject (c1670-80) features the rosy cheeks and marble flesh that we see in works such as Federico Barocci's The Head of the Virgin (c1582), painted a century earlier, and also on display at the King's Gallery.
The rarity of female painters and patrons in the Renaissance meant that artworks inevitably reflected the male gaze. "Perceptions of gender and women's subordinate role in Renaissance culture played out in images, and especially portraits, with images of men stressing their social, political or professional role and status – the masculine ideal being very much one of forceful mastery," says historian and author Julia Biggs, an expert in Renaissance art history. "By contrast, the women encountered in portraits from this time are portrayed primarily in relation to the traits of ideal (youthful) feminine beauty, virtuousness (modesty, humility, obedience) and motherhood."
As deifications of charm, elegance and beauty, the Graces (Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia), daughters of the Greek God Zeus, reflect a male view in their Renaissance depictions, not just of what a woman should look like, but also of how she should behave. They embody this nebulous concept of grace – closely associated with Raphael – which patrons were keen to attach to their image. It was a term that was bound up with distinction, benevolence and love, while the Graces' circular dance suggests balance and harmony − key principles of the Renaissance aesthetic. As a group, they combine a patriarchal lesson on feminine virtue with, unwittingly perhaps, a celebration of the female form and the sisterhood of female bonding.
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At the time, female nudity had different connotations. On the one hand, Biggs tells the BBC, the Three Graces "may have formed part of the trope of 'virtuous nudity', where nakedness was "an indication of truthfulness and purity". Elsewhere, however, female nudity was "associated with shame". In Masacchio's fresco Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (c1424-27), only Eve, branded sinful, covers her genitals, while Biggs notes that "as part of the la scopa – the ritual humiliation of adulterous women in Ferrara, Italy – women were made to run naked through the city".
Such female nudity contrasted sharply with the modest female dress code of Renaissance Italy. "In public, the majority of women would cover their bodies from just underneath the collarbone down to their ankles, and cover their arms," Biggs explains. Mythological and Biblical scenes gave artists a pretext to disrobe them, and also answered, says Biggs, the desire of male patrons to display "erotic erudition" or perhaps even "pay tribute to their own sexual prowess". Even when the women are dressed, Drawing the Italian Renaissance reflects the dichotomous roles available to them, from a seductress in Annibale Carracci's The Temptation of St Anthony (c1595) to13 different Virgin Marys by Michelangelo, Da Vinci and their contemporaries. Yet, the exhibition suggests that we do more than simply stand back and drink in the Renaissance in all its flourishes and flaws. In place of the conventional catalogue is an illustrated sketchbook, and drawing materials are found in the galleries. We are invited to engage with the works through our own creative endeavour – for some an opportunity, perhaps, to redraw their definition of male and female.
Drawing The Italian Renaissance is at the King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 9 March 2025
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A new exhibition that documents the impact of the Industrial Revolution features several 1800s artists, writers and thinkers as they began to capture the transformation of the environment.
Who knew what, and when, from the start of the 19th Century on, about the impact of industrialisation and the use of fossil fuels on the environment? A new exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, just outside of Los Angeles, entitled Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis, helps to trace the scientific, historical and artistic record back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
One early witness to the changing hues of the countryside's once clear skies and untouched landscape was the British-American painter Thomas Cole (1801-1848). In 1839, he travelled to Portage Falls on the Genesee river in upstate New York to document the sublime vistas, rocky cliffs and abundant foliage surrounding the deep gorge through which the river flowed. Cole's task, commissioned by the New York State Canal Commissioner, was to preserve in oil paint the view about to be destroyed by the forthcoming construction of a new canal that would build on the success of the Erie Canal, which had opened in 1825.
Cole, who was known for his monumental landscapes, produced a giant-sized vision of nature's splendour in a canvas that stands 7ft (2.1m) tall and 5ft (1.5m) wide. Vibrant autumnal foliage frames the dramatic vertical view of the gorge and the waterfalls flowing beyond. But this Eden was not pristine. Atop the cliff on one side of the gorge sits a picturesque lodge; just across, on the opposite cliff, on level ground apparently carved out from the wild growth dominating most of the site, lies a housing camp for the canal workers.
Other omens of industry's continuing encroachment on nature appear in the form of dark clouds in agitated motion above the gorge. Below the gorge, just beyond an undulating creek, lies the gnarled, twisted remnants of two dead trees. And amidst it all, Cole himself appears as observer and chronicler to the pending loss of the natural landscape in a tiny self-portrait that depicts him sketching the scene while seated in a nearly hidden leafy bower. As if the painting has not sufficiently revealed his sentiments, his words also appear on a gallery wall above: "The ravages of the axe are daily increasing – the most noble scenes are made desolate."
Cole's majestic vision is only one of the approximately 200 items – including paintings, scientific illustrations, rare books, photographs, manuscripts, drawings and textiles – that document how once clear skies and untouched landscapes became transformed by the Industrial Revolution. We see how, from the 1780s on, the engines of industry literally took up steam. Increasing numbers of coal-burning furnaces were soon fuelling more and more factories and mills, with their products often then transported to city markets by newly built railways and re-channelled waterways and canals.
Among others, French artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812) also chronicled the metamorphosis from pastoral scene to industrial workplace. In his 1802 painting, The Ironworks, Coalbrook Dale by Night, the fiery night-time scene of the ore-smelting works appear as frightful as a Halloween cauldron.
Meanwhile, scientists were also observing atmospheric changes and weather deviations, and the exhibition tracks those findings as well. In 1833, British chemist and meteorologist Luke Howard (1772–1864) published his 700-page study, The Climate of London. His examination of a decade's worth of London's daily temperature readings, water levels, rainfall and wind direction led him to conclude the existence of what he called an urban "heat island" effect. The accompanying exhibition label explains the process behind Howard's findings: "Because buildings, roads and other urban infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun's heat, cities tend to be several degrees warmer than less developed areas with trees and bodies of water." Howard also noted that such changes in temperature coincided with a phenomenon he named "city fog" – which today we call smog or air pollution.
'Reverence for nature'
The exhibition also highlights the pioneering environmental work of the lesser-known US scientist, inventor and women's rights advocate Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888), whose 1856 publication Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays in The American Journal of Science and Arts, demonstrated that carbon dioxide (CO2) trapped heat, a climate-altering process she called the heat-trapping effect. Hers was the first recorded experiment showing the impact of CO2 emissions on what we now call climate change. But Foote's research was mostly overlooked. Instead, British physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893) received credit for the finding in a study published three years later. It remains unclear whether Tyndall was familiar with Foote's work.
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Writers like the US author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) had also begun gathering his own measurements of changing river depths and detailed notations of flowering and bird appearances near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived.
But it has only become apparent in recent decades just how essential his observations can serve as comparison points between then and now. Witness on display, for example, Thoreau's methodical charting of temperatures over the seasons at Walden Pond. More recently, climate change biologist Richard Primack has detailed in his book, Walden Warming, the many flowers that are now blooming earlier today than in Thoreau's time, due to rising temperatures.
While Thoreau's data today is mostly being used for purposes of comparison, the author did himself express alarm at the damage caused by human intervention, says Karla Nielsen, exhibition curator and Huntington's senior curator of literary collection. On his walks, "He would notice that the Merrimack's course was being changed due to the factories on the river," she tells the BBC, because the dams built in connection with the mills disrupted the water's natural, seasonal flow.
As Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington's curator of British art and co-curator of the exhibition tells the BBC: "We're not saying that climate change was recognised as such in the 19th Century," But at the same time, she says, people were beginning to: "recognise that the Industrial Revolution and human actions" were changing the environment.
Perhaps ironically, these growing inklings of the potential damage being caused by industrialisation coincided with an increasing reverence for nature, fostered by Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, some of whose early editions are also on display. Or perhaps this newfound enthusiasm was fed at least in part by the growth of cities, where many former rural inhabitants now lived, finding work in the burgeoning realms of industry. Guidebooks (several of which are on display in the exhibition) proliferated as travellers ventured into the countryside to reconnect with nature.
Such attitudes fostered the environmental awareness of Thomas Cole, among others. But it may have also influenced some artists to not explicitly show the changes taking place in the environment. The British artist James Ward (1769–1859) in 1805, for instance, matter-of-factly portrayed the landscape of the leading industrial area near Swansea, south Wales, popularly called Copperopolis, as if the dark clouds of smoke arising from the factory chimneys had always been there.
In a somewhat similar vein, some critics now argue that the paintings of the great British artist John Constable (1776-1837) present often idealised views of the Sussex countryside with which his work is so closely identified. These are the lands through which the Stour River ran, where he had grown up and to which he remained attached throughout his life. On display we see one of his famous 6ft-long landscapes (often called his six-footers), View on the Stour Near Dedham, 1822. It is an inviting pastoral scene in which riverbank greenery frames men at work steering their barges through the water – and also directs viewers' eyes to a wooden bridge in the distance and beyond that, the church tower of the town of Dedham.
Certainly, the painting shows off Constable's remarkable eye for detail; his many hours of observation spent sketching clouds had taught him to render cloud formations with scientific exactitude. But the realistically rendered scene does not tell the entire story, says McCurdy. Over the course of Constable's adulthood, British landscapes may have been in the process of being criss-crossed and torn up by railroads and factories, and rivers were being turned into easily navigable canals. But the scene that he presents, McCurdy says, is one "viewed through the nostalgic lens of childhood… while painting it as an adult".
In stark contrast, the British artist and critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) decried the coal-generated soot and smoke darkening the formerly clear skies as "The Storm Cloud of the 19th Century". That was the title he used for two public lectures he gave in 1884, and his words resound throughout the exhibition, which prominently displays his exhortation describing the storm cloud as looking as if "it were made of dead men's souls".
The exhibition shows slide projections derived from drawings by Ruskin which he used in his lectures, Thunderclouds, Val d'Aosta (1858) and Cloud Study: Ice Clouds over Coniston (1880), as well as an 1876 watercolour titled Sunset at Herne Hill through the Smoke of London. In these works, viewers can see the darkening transformation of the skies that Ruskin had meticulously traced in his diaries and drawings through the years. What we now know as air pollution he called a "plague-wind". Ruskin had hoped to stoke concern with his lectures, which were among the earliest works to explicitly discuss human-made climate change, but it's unclear what difference his outrage made. "I don't know of any specific reports of reactions to the lectures," McCurdy says.
Still, London's pea-soup thick, discoloured air was by then no secret, with writers such as Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle frequently alluding to the city's unhealthy and visibility-limiting yellowish fog, as did numerous cartoons in Punch. And in 1891, British scientist BH Thwaite (1858-1908) published a cautionary pamphlet titled The London Smoke Plague. In it, he contended that London's coal-induced poor air quality was as deadly as the 17th-Century Great Plague, accounting for the mortality of four per cent of London's population over two weeks in 1886.
By the start of the 20th Century, various groups advocating cleaner air had begun forming. Indeed, British artist RW Nevinson (1889–1946), whose 1916 hazily greyish pastel, From an Office Window, appears in the exhibition, himself helped found The Brighter London Society.
But the storm cloud of the 19th Century didn't cease, which is why the exhibition's most powerful and poignant work may well be the imposing icescape Glacier of Rosenlaui by the Ruskin-influenced British artist John Brett (1831-1902). A broad, bright stream of white tinged with blue emerges, and travels upward from a bed of boulders and stones of varying sizes, ultimately leading to a heaven-like mist of mountains and clouds, and perhaps beyond time itself as it reaches the painting's top. What better symbol of natural splendour than this pristine glacier, so thickly ensconced by layers of snow and ice, that it's almost impossible to imagine this frozen mass retreating, melting, dissolving as temperatures rise.
Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis is at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, until 6 January 2025.
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The colour survives in the work of 17th Century Spanish colonial painters, a symbol of the wealth that ultimately doomed the Maya, writes Devon Van Houten Maldonado.
In 17th Century Europe, when Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens painted their famous masterworks, ultramarine blue pigment made from the semi-precious lapis lazuli stone was mined far away in Afghanistan and cost more than its weight in gold. Only the most illustrious painters were allowed to use the costly material, while lesser artists were forced to use duller colours that faded under the sun. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution in the 19th Century that a synthetic alternative was invented, and true ultramarine blue finally became widely available.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, colonial Baroque works created by artists like José Juárez, Baltasar de Echave Ibia and Cristóbal de Villalpando in early 17th Century Mexico – New Spain – were full of this beautiful blue. How could this be? Lapis lazuli was even rarer in the New World. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th Century that archaeologists discovered the Maya had invented a resilient and brilliant blue, centuries before their land was colonised and their resources exploited.
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The ultramarine blue procured from lapis lazuli in Europe was not only incredibly expensive, but also extremely laborious to make. In Europe, blue was reserved for the most important subject matter. Rubens' Adoration of the Magi – the version that hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and which he worked on for over 20 years – is an example. The colour was primarily used to paint the robes of the Virgin Mary, and later extended to include other royalty and holy figures. In Mexico, on the other hand, blue was used to paint altogether less holy and everyday subjects.
Archaeologists studying pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican ruins were surprised by the discovery of blue murals in the Maya Riviera, modern day Mexico and Guatemala, from as early as 300 AD, perhaps the most famous being the murals at the temple of Chichén Itzá (created around 450 AD). The colour had a special ceremonial significance for the Maya. They covered sacrificial victims and the altars on which they were offered in a brilliant blue paint, writes Diego de Landa Calderón, a bishop in colonial Mexico during the 16th Century, in his first-hand account.
Archaeologists were puzzled by the resilience of the blue in the murals. The añil plant, part of the indigo family, was widely available in the region but was mostly used for dyes rather than paint. Indigo was quick to fade in the sunlight and natural elements, so experts mused that the Maya couldn’t have used the same widely available dye to paint the murals. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the source of Maya blue’s resilience through the centuries was discovered: a rare clay called attapulgite, which was mixed with the dye from the añil plant. During colonisation native materials like Maya blue and cochineal were exploited along with every other resource of the land and its people in the New World. These colours, which supposedly represented the wealth of the Maya empire, would stand as a symbol of all that would be plundered.
Rhapsody in blue
Master painters from the Americas are discussed in art history – if they’re mentioned at all – as a lesser school of Baroque compared to Caravaggio and Rubens. It's overly simplistic to assume that these Baroque masters were only impersonating their European predecessors. In fact, second and third generation painters born in Mexico City, such as Juárez and Echave Ibia, departed from European aesthetics, but arrived to something uniquely layered: enormous and sophisticated compositions that drew upon the full vibrancy of the New World. At Mexico’s National Art Museum (Munal) in Mexico City, works by Juárez seen chronologically show his development from a European impersonator to a New Spanish Baroque master. His early canvases departed from the dramatic spotlighting and warmth of European Baroque imagery and later moved into cold saturation throughout the picture plane (vibrant blues, yellows, greens and reds), multiple light sources, collaged compositions and grand scale – and in part because the use of local materials, such as Maya blue, expanded his palette.
While Rubens also used vibrant colours, his compositions, on the whole, were more chaotic and warmer than those of Juárez. His pallet was even more vibrant than Rubens’, perhaps the most vibrant of the European Baroques, but his compositions were more akin to Caravaggio. Caravaggio's canvases were, without fail, full of rich reds and yellows, but nearly devoid of blue – if you think of a Caravaggio masterpiece, blue is usually absent. The closest to a blue-tinted Caravaggio you can find is Juárez’s work, but, despite his prolific reach and realised compositions, Juárez died in poverty. If Juárez died without a peso to his name, how would he have had the resources to order large quantities of precious lapis lazuli from Europe?
On the other hand, Villalpando, often said to be the most prolific colonial painter in New Spain, imitated the chaotic compositions by Rubens. Villalpando fits more neatly into the European history of Baroque painting and didn't depart from Rubens' ‘fear of space’ – the Baroque notion that every space of the canvas must crammed with imagery and incident – thus he was accepted by the canon of art history as the mascot of Novohispanic Baroque painting. Still, as much as he wanted to imitate Rubens, Villalpando painted with Mesoamerican materials and labour. The consistent result – the same as his peers in Mexico – was that his paintings and murals were cooler and more saturated. His mural adorning the dome of Puebla's cathedral was the first and only of its kind in New Spain. Swirling blue and purple clouds back the images of the virgin, the saints and the angels painted by Villalpando. Even though he sought to make European Baroque in the Americas, his materials gave him away as a criollo, a non-mixed-race descendant of the original Spanish settlers, from Mexico City.
Baltasar de Echave Ibia painted such elaborate blues that he became known as ‘El Echave de los azules’ (the Echave of the blues). His father, Baltasar de Echave Orio, also used blue generously, but Echave Ibia was especially famous for his copious use and mastery of the colour. There is a reason why Ibia, working in Mexico City between the 17th and 18th Centuries, had access to seemingly limitless amounts of blue. All three had had sources of the brilliant colour closer to home.
The lack of written evidence of the use of añil or Maya blue in Novohispanic Baroque paintings is made up for with visual evidence. From these painters and others in the colonised Americas it's apparent that Baroque artists in the New World weren’t using the same blue pigment as their European peers. The lapis lazuli blue being used in Europe was a dark ultramarine blue. While the blue being used in New Spain reflected the vivid azure, originally extracted from añil by the Maya. Maya blue is one of the most durable of all Mesoamerican colours, as seen in the 1,600-year-old murals at Chichén Itzá. Perhaps the same resistance to time has kept Baroque canvases and murals in the Americas, from Mexico to Peru, bright through the centuries.
This cross-pollination of influences, from Maya to European Baroque, happening in Latin America on the canvases of criollo painters suggests globalism began much sooner than academic history has led us to believe.
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Green has symbolised both decay and regeneration, offering a bridge between this world and the next, writes Kelly Grovier.
Beware of green. It can’t be trusted. Leonardo da Vinci knew, and cautioned his contemporaries against the pigment’s toxic instability. Its beauty, Leonardo warned, “vanishes into thin air”. Volatile and evanescent, green is more than just a colour. It is the energy that connects us to the unknown. Remove green from the palette of art history and a bridge between life and death would disappear. Equal parts morbid and vital, green curdles the cadaverous cheeks of Pablo Picasso’s macabre portrait of his young friend, Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself dead in lovelorn torment at the age of 20, while at the same time ignites with joyous chlorophyllic fire the life-affirming and ever-verdant canvases of Claude Monet.
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To dabble in green is not merely to tread a path between being and unbeing, but to make inroads into the mysteries of each. Simultaneously the colour of putrefaction and of verdurous regeneration, green participates with unbiased vividity in decay and rebirth. Perhaps it is green’s teasing ambiguity that compelled Leonardo himself, against his own better counsel, to clad his most famous and enigmatic subject, the Mona Lisa, in a darkening shade of that colour – one that has since bruised itself to a sublime and submarine blackness in the subconscious of cultural history.
Donning the deepest of shadowy green costumes, La Gioconda night-swims in the vitrine of our psyche and has long been recognised as a mystical commuter between the world of the living and that of the dead. “Like the vampire,” the 19th-Century English essayist Walter Pater once wrote of her, “she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave”. Describing Leonardo’s inscrutable sitter as “older than the rocks among which she sits”, Pater proceeds to imagine that Mona Lisa has, throughout history, returned again and again as everything from “a diver in deep seas” to a savvy operator who has woven “strange webs with Eastern merchants”. Ceaselessly resurgent in her murky green gown, which symbolised her status as a merchant’s wife, Mona, according to Pater, was “the mother of Helen of Troy” and the “mother Mary”.
Long before Leonardo reached for green, the colour had been assigned a special esoteric place in cultural imagination. Ancient Egyptians reserved green for the bold beryl complexion of their god of life and death, Osiris – ruler of the underworld, who held dominion over the passage of souls between this world and the next. Typical depictions of Osiris, such as one found on the 13th-Century BC walls of the burial tomb of Horemheb, the last monarch of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, portray a skinny, grassy-skinned god, whose false pharaoh’s beard marks him out as a deity of incontestable pre-eminence.
Perennially young, Osiris was believed to be a serial resuscitator, both of himself and of the natural world. Holding sway over the flow of floods and flourishing of flora alike, leafy-cheeked Osiris, it was believed, would eventually show the souls of Egypt’s kings the path to resurrection.
Flora and fauna
For millennia, concocting green pigments was achieved by a variety of artistic alchemies that harnessed the hues of everything from pulverised malachite to the juice of buckthorn berries, from dessicated foxgloves and fraxinus leaves, to soaking yellow saffron in the purple dye of woad, also known as the ‘The Asp of Jerusalem’. Verdigris, among the more common iterations of the colour, and the one of which Leonardo was most wary, is forged in a curious ritual that involves the slow sousing in wine of a brass or copper blade.
An acetic crust of green that scabs to the metallic surface is then scraped clean and ground into pigment. It was a green ghost of similar chemical contrivance that confirmed to scientists digging recently for the remains of the 16th-Century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that they had indeed found their target. Known to have worn a prosthetic nose to replace the one he’d lost in a sword fight in 1566, Brahe’s aesthetic skull bore traces of copper and zinc when, like a disciple of Osiris, it eventually came up for air in 2012.
Fertile with life, even in death, the invocation of green in countless masterpieces from antiquity to the present day impregnates our eye with expectancy. Everything about the physique, posture and gestures of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini’s green-enrobed wife, who seems to rest her tired hand tenderly on her tummy’s bump in Jan van Eyck’s famous painting, The Arnolfini Portrait (painted in 1434), leads our modern mind to suspect that she is pregnant, however convinced art historians may be that she isn’t. The great gush of cascading green that capsizes our eye, scholars contend, is more likely a symbol of hope for the eventual blessing of children. Green springs eternal.
An alternative reading of the riddling portrait only amplifies the eeriness of green’s potential to wed the living and the dead. According to one theory, the depiction of the woman in Van Eyck’s work is herself a composite double-portrait of two successive wives of Giovanni di Nicolao – his first having died in childbirth. Supporters of this view point to tropes of death that haunt the painting, such as the extinguished wick on the candle above her. Certainly the complex convex mirror, bolted to the back of the painting, which warps the couple’s reflection as if into a different continuum of reality, compounds the sense of strangely splitting selves that reverberate from the painting. If ever there was a colour capable of cloaking such a curious compression of life and death, it’s green.
So green goes, sowing into the story of art the mysteries of our own fleeting appearance in the world. The murky green water that laps against the ochre edge of the River Stour in John Constable’s famous Romantic landscape The Hay Wain, delineates a boundary between the world that the artist can see in the here-and-now and one that haunts his imagination from childhood. Look closer at the weave of summer greenness at which the little dog in the foreground appears to pant, and you can barely discern the ghost of a horseman and barrel that the artist had once intended to include in the painting – a spectre that, over time, is re-sculpting itself from the verdurous summer air that Constable has mystically conjured.
Though rightly celebrated for the accuracy of his carefully observed clouds, Constable is a master too of earthy hues and terrestrial textures. The tapestry of greens he weaves in The Hay Wain is a tour de force of that colour’s ability to convey the vibrancy of nostalgia for a place that ceaselessly shifts in one’s memory between wilting loss and luminous revelation.
Hiding in plain sight
In more recent eras of artistic expression, green has continued to be an enigmatic hue that hides as much as it reveals. Paul Gauguin’s seminal symbolist painting Green Christ (1889) is a teasing tangle of the colour’s contradictory connotations. Over a stone statue of the deceased Christ in the middle distance of the painting, a lucent layer of moss has stitched itself like a second skin. The face of a Breton woman, who stands in the shadow of that sculpture, is tinged a sepulchral green, as if she were slowly turning into the life-in-death and death-in-life statue – as if a kind of chromatic continuum exists between the physical world she inhabits and a mystical one that lies beyond.
Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte’s famous anti-self-portrait, The Son of Man (1964), defies the logic of likenesses by refusing to let the viewer see the key features of the artist’s face by interposing between them and us the greenest of green apples the mind is capable of picturing. “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see,” Magritte observed to an interviewer. “There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of quite an intense feeling, a sort of conflict one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”
No contemporary artist has understood more profoundly the rhythms of the visible that is not there and the visible that is, than the Irish-American abstract painter Sean Scully. The bold vertical columns of Scully’s The Bather (1983), inspired by Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River, painted 70 years earlier, are stripped-down stand-ins for the already over-stylised bodies Scully recalls from Matisse’s work. Intensified by the boxy protrusions that complicate the carpentry of Scully’s work, which physically intrudes into the gallery-goer’s space, the ficus greens of Scully’s torso-wide trunks have succeeded in achieving an effect to which centuries of artists have only aspired: converting green from perishable colour into purest feeling.
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A hue now associated with innocence once had a murkier meaning: Kelly Grovier looks at the ways in which pink has represented violence and seduction.
Pink is a double-edged sword. While red is raucous and racy, and white is prim and pure, pink cuts both ways. Long before the word “pink” attached itself to the pretty pastel shade of delicate carnations, as we define the term today, the London underworld enlisted it for something rather less frilly or fragrant – to denote the act of stabbing someone with a sharp blade. “He pink’d his Dubblet”, so reads an entry for the word in a 17th-Century dictionary of street slang used by “Beggars, Shoplifters, Highwaymen, Foot-Pads and all other Clans of Cheats and Villains”, describing a lethal lunge through a man’s padded jacket, “He run him through”.
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At what point the unlikely linguistic slide was made from mortal piercing to mellow pigment, no one can say for sure. But the enticing hue itself, by whatever name it was known before the assignment of “pink” to the colour chart in the 18th Century, has kept culture blushing since antiquity. Now seductive, now innocent, pink is coquettish and coy, sultry and sly.
Remove pink from the palette of art history and a teasing dimension to the story of image-making would be lost. Edgar Degas’s Pink Dancers would fall flat-footed and Pablo Picasso’s pivotal pink period wouldn’t rise to the occasion.
A flesh in the pan
A key moment in pink’s emergence as an essential element in the development of painting is the creation by the Early Renaissance Italian painter Fra Angelico in the middle of the 15th Century of his famous fresco in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy, The Annunciation, which depicts the moment in the New Testament that the Virgin Mary is informed by the Archangel Gabriel that she will become the mother of Christ. Situated at the top of a staircase solemnly ascended daily by pious monks, Fra Angelico’s ground-breaking painting is one into which an observer’s spirit is summoned to levitate.
Crucial to sparking that mystical lift-off in the fresco is the portrayal of the ethereal Archangel – who has himself mystically crossed planes of being to swoop into Mary’s material sphere. Never mind the polychromatic wings, what’s most surprising about Gabriel’s depiction is Fra Angelico’s decision to clad him in plush pleats of sumptuous pink.
We know from a contemporary artist’s handbook on how to concoct pigments (Cennino Ceninni’s Il libro dell'arte, published a few decades before Fra Angelico painted his fresco) that pink had been traditionally reserved primarily for the rendering of flesh. “Made from the loveliest and lightest sinopia that is found and is mixed and mulled with St. John’s white”, Cennini explains, “this pigment does you great credit if you use it for painting faces, hands and nudes on walls”.
By draping Gabriel in the lushest of pinks, Fra Angelico fleshes the Archangel out as a being of body and blood, breaking down the distinction between holy spirit and ephemeral flesh. Pink is the pivot that humanises heaven. No one would ever see the colour the same way again. In the ensuing centuries, artists would invoke pink as shorthand for the blurring of boundaries.
Bloom of Christ
As the focus of Renaissance master Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, a sprig of blushing carnations handed to the Virgin Mary by the infant Christ, may seem unremarkable enough at first glance. In fact it amounts to a kind of miraculous wrinkle in the fabric of time. According to religious tradition, dianthus (the Greek name for the plant, meaning “flower of God”), did not appear in the world until Mary wept at her son’s crucifixion.
The flower’s anachronistic appearance in Raphael’s scene, therefore, tinged with the future blood of the baby who holds it, mysteriously establishes a pink kink in the linear unfolding of the universe.
Over time, pink would eventually blossom beyond the petals of its complex theologies to inflect a wider array of secular personality, all the while retaining its elusive allure and capacity to tease. By the 18th Century, pink was offering itself as the colour of choice for portraying high-profile mistresses, daring observers to deny its very legitimacy as a respectable hue.
Famous portraits by the French Rococo portraitist Maurice Quentin de la Tour of Madame de Pompadour and by the English artist George Romney of his muse Emma, Lady Hamilton (later mistress of Lord Nelson), posing as a mythological maenad, reveal how decidedly deconsecrated the colour had become.
La Tour’s full-length pastel-pencil portrait of the official chief mistress to Louis XV of France, begun around 1748, is a rumbunctious jungle gym of superfluous pinks that spider across every inch and threaten to suffocate its subject. Here, pink is an energy that vibrates from the sitter to the secular subjects with which Pompadour has surrounded herself – music, astronomy, and literature.
Porcelain pink
A patron of the porcelain trade, Pompadour had famously inspired the minting by the Sevres porcelain factory of a new hue of pink, delicately bruised by dabs of blue and black. To Pompadour, pink was no longer a mere accessory but a partner in crime – an aspirational second skin into which she grew intellectually and emotionally. She became her colour.
No painting embodies pink’s gradual pendulum movement from the spiritual to the secular more vividly than the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s exuberant The Swing, painted around 1767, between La Tour’s and Romney’s works. Here, a fabulous flounce of flowing rose is frozen in mid swivel as the swinging girl, pillowed in pinkness, flicks loose a silk shoe, attracting the titillated attention of any number of camouflaged male gazes hiding in the bushes around her. We’re a long way from the pink whisper of angels now.
In more recent times, pink continues to be seized upon by artists keen to confound our expectations of what notes or message the floral pigment can confidently carry. Having established a formidable reputation in the middle of the 20th Century as a first-generation Abstract Expressionist, eschewing figurative subjects entirely in the 1950s, Canadian-born American artist Philip Guston reached for pink in a dramatic turn back to representational art in the late 1960s.
By then, the colour itself had undergone something of a commercial transformation in American retail culture, having begun the century as a shade more often associated with boys and masculinity than fairy princesses and little girls’ dolls. But by the time Guston began introducing a menacing cast of Ku Klux Klan-inspired cartoon goons, whose implausibly pale pink stubby hoods continue to menace popular imagination to this day, the colour had been re-commodified as delicate and feminine. Grabbing pink by the scruff for his unsettling scenes of a seedy Americana, Guston slaps Barbie across the chops.
At the same moment that Guston’s provocative pink was poking the art world in the eye, scientific studies were underway by Alexander Schauss, Director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research, to determine whether manipulations of the colour could help control the behaviour of subjects surrounded by it. The result of Schauss’s investigation was the concoction of the psychologically subtle shade now known as “Baker-Miller Pink”, after the Naval correctional institute in Seattle, Washington where the pigment was successfully tested on the walls of inmates’ cells and credited with a significant calming of aggressive urges.
Yet despite its ability to inspire docility, pink is still picking fights, challenging our perceptions to an aesthetic duel. Upon learning that the British artist Anish Kapoor had signed a contract giving him exclusive rights to a recently engineered colour known as Vantablack (the darkest shade ever devised), and the legal right to prohibit other artists from doing so, Kapoor’s younger contemporary Stuart Semple saw red.
Emboldened by Kapoor’s black embargo, Semple began concocting a supremely-fluorescent pink paint he contends is the “pinkest pink” ever contemplated (“no one has ever seen a pinker pink”, he insists). As a poke in the eye of Kapoor, Semple has made his colour available at a small price to anyone in the world so long as they confirm that they are not Anish Kapoor nor friendly enough with Kapoor to share it with him. En garde, Kapoor. You’ve been pink’d.
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For centuries, the orange pigment was sourced from a toxic mineral. Kelly Grovier looks at a hue that alchemists believed was crucial to creating the Philosopher’s Stone – and which allows art to swivel between different states of being.
Expunge orange from the history of art and the whole thing collapses. The sky above Edvard Munch’s The Scream falls down and the fire that ignites Frederic Leighton’s famous Flaming June flames out. Take away orange, and everything from the warm eternal glow of Egyptian tomb painting to the troubled stubble of Vincent van Gogh’s smouldering self-portraits vanishes. A savvy arbiter between resolute red and unyielding yellow, orange is a pigment that pivots. It’s a hinge of a hue that enables a work of art to swivel between contrary states of being – this world and another, life and death.
Outside the frame of art history, orange has proved an unusually elastic symbol, blossoming into a spectrum of shapes and cultural meanings. Although the influential European royal House of Orange traces its name back further than the actual coining of the colour in the 1540s, its prominent son, William III (better known as William of Orange), quickly embraced the linguistic coincidence in the 1570s. His orange-white-and-blue rebel flag would become the forerunner of the modern tricolour of The Netherlands. From there orange took on the complexion of everything from Swiss fire engines to the suits worn by astronauts in the International Space Station. But it’s in the realms of art and aesthetics that the colour has fructified more soulfully.
From antiquity to the end of the 19th Century, a volcanic mineral found in sulphurous fumaroles (great gashes in the Earth’s crust) was a significant source for the harvesting of orange pigment. The highly toxic orpiment, rich in lethal arsenic, ripens from mellow yellow into outrageous orange when subjected to the heat of a fire.
Convinced that the luminous shimmer of orpiment (its name is a contraction of Latin aurum, meaning ‘gold’, and pigmentum meaning ‘colour’) must be a key ingredient in concocting the Philosopher’s Stone, alchemists for centuries risked exposure to the noxious substance. So did artists. To dabble in the occult of orange was to flirt with mortality and immortality in equal measure.
A spark to a flame
Intentionally or not, that ambiguous aura is irrepressible wherever orange is conjured in art. Take for example the French Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s portrait of a generic writer captured at a moment of intense vision: Inspiration, painted around 1769. The poet’s plush orange jacket – its vibrant rumples flickering like flares – threatens to engulf the allegorical subject of a poet whose imagination has just been ignited. The furrowed velour has become an outward reflection of the writer’s mind. This evaporative moment of reverie that illuminates the subject, as if from inside his soul, will either ensure his eternal fame as a celebrated bard or will set on fire his very being. Fashion him in any other colour than orange and the work’s flustering power would be utterly lost.
Nor is it possible to imagine Self-portrait with Halo and Snake, painted by the post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin more than a century after Fragonard’s canvas, soaked in any other colours than the two competing complexions of orange that dominate and divide its radiant surface into competing territories of piousness and malevolence. Created by Gauguin while living in the North-western French fishing village of Le Pouldu, the work portrays, in its upper half, a saintly indifference to worldly temptations, as symbolised by a dangling sprig of forbidden fruit. To make certain we don’t miss the unmissable point, the artist has crowned himself in this hemisphere of the work with an angelic halo. The lower half of the wood panel, however, reveals an uncontainable susceptibility to evil as the seductive snake from the Garden of Eden has the artist wrapped around his proverbial finger. Tying the work together tonally is a dramatic shift at its equator in shades of orange – not unlike orpiment itself, before and after its purifying baptism by fire.
And so it goes, work by work, century after century: wherever the colour orange dictates the temperature of a work of art, we know we’ve arrived at a precarious hinterland between a universe we can see and a mysterious unknown we tentatively feel. How else can you characterise the realm in which the liquified face of Munch’s hero howls under a strange and estranging burnt-cinnamon sky in The Scream? How else can you describe the eternal space in which Henri Matisse’s iconic The Dance whirls apocalyptically on the edge of oblivion?
Commissioned in 1909 by a wealthy Russian businessman to adorn the staircase of his mansion, at first glance The Dance might appear the apotheosis of rhythmic delight and synchronised levity. But the eerie apricot tinge of the five ecstatic nudes, who seem to have subsumed into their very being the armageddon orange of Munch’s work, is a tip-off that something more complex and perilous is at play. The two dancers who stretch the foreground of the work have lost their grip on each other’s hands, as the one closest to us begins slipping to the ground. Her left foot is already sliding out of view. Far from depicting untroubled joy, Matisse’s carefully choreographed masterpiece teeters on cosmic disaster. The very rotation of the world is left dangerously in doubt.
Amber alert
Munch and Matisse set the tone, as it were, for the portentous temperament of orange in modern and contemporary art. Throughout the 20th Century, the ominous refulgence of orange will find itself refracted variously in the works of everyone from Francis Bacon, where it sets the sinister scene for the disturbing Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), as well as Rene Magritte’s Art of Living (1967), where the colour inflates itself to popping point as a surreal cranium. The syncopated pigments and shudders of Rhythm, joy of life, painted in 1931, is characteristic of how crucial orange is to the work and imagination of the Ukrainian-born French artist Sonia Delauney, who once protested: “You know I don’t like orange”. Like it or not, orange is frequently the heat that holds together – while threatening to break apart – the visual music of her sinuous mosaics.
As crucial as orange has been to the story of art through the end of the last century, it has already dyed itself indelibly into the unfolding fabric of contemporary artistic consciousness. Among the most celebrated major works of the new millennium, The Gates, by Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff and French artist Jeanne-Claude (known together as Christo and Jeanne-Claude), colonised New York City’s Central Park in February 2005 with over 7,500 passageways – each flowing with orange nylon fabric. The lyrical succession of thresholds, which fostered a poetic sense of the endless comings and goings of life – birth and rebirth, mortality and eternity – could, on reflection, have only been draped in stirring saffron. To some, the colour echoes the robes of Buddhist monks. But to my mind, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who passed away four years later) were rekindling a sacred flame, inviting those who would come to bask their weary souls in the transformative power of that most mystical of ancient tints: orange.
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Marcel Duchamp’s last painting has influenced artists for a century. Kelly Grovier looks at how it inspired the modern colour chart – and at its 17th-Century predecessor.
This year marks the centenary of one of the more curious milestones in modern cultural history – a landmark in image-making with intriguing echoes of a long-forgotten tome from the 17th Century. In 1918, the French avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp picked up his brush after a four-year hiatus from painting and created a mysterious work that changed forever the way artists use and understand colour. After completing his painting, Duchamp put his brush back down again and, for the next 50 years (until his death in 1968), never painted another picture.
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The work in question is awkwardly proportioned – over 3m (9.4ft) long, yet barely two-thirds of a metre tall – and was commissioned to hang above a bookcase in the library of the US collector and patron of the arts Katherine Dreier. At first glance, the canvas (which Duchamp eccentrically entitled T um’, a terse abbreviation of the tetchy French phrase tu m’ennuies, or ‘you bore me’) appears to do everything it can to be something other than a painting. Its surface is dominated by shadowy allusions to a series of controversial sculptures that Duchamp had recently been making – found objects such as a hat rack, a corkscrew, and a bicycle wheel – that he christened ‘readymades’.
In stark contrast to these large ghostly echoes of another artistic medium, a scatter of worldly debris is strewn across the painting: safety pins, a bolt, and a brush for cleaning bottles. According to Yale University, “Duchamp summarises different ways in which a work of art can suggest reality: as shadow, imitation, or actual object.” Stretching over this odd array of forms is a carefully-rendered cascade of colourful lozenge-shaped tiles that swoop vibrantly into the centre of the painting from the top left, like the tail of a mechanical polychromatic comet.
Anyone who has ever shopped in a DIY store for domestic paint will recognise immediately this splay of colour tiles. But in 1918, pigment samples from commercial colour charts were still relatively cutting-edge in their retail trendiness, having only hit shop floors towards the end of the previous century. As yet unassigned to an actual object, these ‘readymade’ swatches of colour are at once both physical and theoretical; they haver between the real world of things waiting to be painted and a realm of pure mind in which those things can still be any colour.
A pigment of our imagination
In a sense, this endless deck of dyes bursting into the middle of Duchamp’s painting is a Tarot of tincture, prescient of how things could eventually appear in an ideal world, not as they actually are. Though Duchamp’s tiles are merely a prophecy of hue, they seem somehow more real and urgent in his painting than the shadowy shapes of the hat stand, bicycle wheel, and corkscrew whose space they intersect cosmically, as if from another universe.
The years and decades that followed Duchamp’s final painting witnessed a succession of works by modern and contemporary artists that wrestle with and absorb the implications of his mischievous slicing of the mere idea of colour from the fact of physical form. Where proponents of colour theories of the 19th Century, such as those by the German Romantic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and by the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, are concerned with how colours are perceived by the human retina, the disciples of Duchamp became obsessed instead with colour as a commercialised concept – a pigment of their imagination.
At the same moment that descendants of post-Impressionism and the early pioneers of Expressionism were formulating quasi-scientific manifestos for how colour functions in the eyes of those who encounter their work, Duchamp was laying his new-fangled cards on the table: colour is an aspirational commodity – a property to be found, not an emotion to be felt.
Titians of industry
Suddenly, two philosophies of colour found themselves competing for artistic regard – one that understood it as a traditional tool of the craftsman to be soulfully mastered, the other that saw it as an artificial aspect of soullessly manufactured goods. That clash of sensibilities was perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the near-simultaneous appearance in 1963 of two very different kinds of publication. It was the year that the German-born American artist Josef Albers released his still-influential visual treatise, Interaction of Colour, which provides complex ruminations on the harmony of hues – a system that continues to be taught to this day. It is also the year that Pantone published its encyclopaedic compendium of subtle shades – a volume that appeared to prove the dominion of industry over the empire of conceivable colours.
The sway over artistic imagination in the 20th Century of the Pantone colour-matching system, and its precursors in the pigment charts distributed by companies such as DuPont, is impossible to overstate. Their influence can be traced in the works of generations of artists from Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst, Ellsworth Kelly to Gerhard Richter. But if Duchamp’s echelon of mechanical colour stretches prophetically forward in time to the obsessions of everyone from the Pop Artists to the YBAs, it also stretches back in history to the preoccupations of one of the most extraordinary, and extraordinarily neglected, books ever created.
Long forgotten until its rediscovery in recent years by Medieval and Renaissance scholars, Klaer lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst is an 800-page handwritten and hand-illustrated volume from 1692 that seeks not only to illustrate every conceivable shade of watercolour possible, but to explain how to create them. An obsessive-compulsive recipe book for concocting the subtlest variations of tint, the book is the brainchild, according to the title page, of ‘A. Boogert’ – a Dutch hustler of hues about whom nothing else is known.
Boogert’s book, which the inscrutable author says was intended to assist artists, came to the attention by accident of a Dutch Medievalist and blogger who was conducting research on the online databases of the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 2014. Erik Kwakkel’s decision to feature the vibrant volume on his popular scholarly blog, and to provide links to a high-resolution scan of the entire book, helped propel the lexicon of luminosity into wider recognition than the single-surviving copy could ever have enjoyed in the author’s own lifetime.
To click through the digitised pages of the book and watch the hundreds of abutting tiles flick into a shuffled blur of calibrated colour is to find oneself enacting the geometric drama of Duchamp’s pivotal final painting. Speaking to each other across centuries, Boogert’s long-lost opus maximum and Duchamp’s underappreciated prophetic masterpiece reveal a perennial fascination with the mysterious disguises of life’s most elusive dimension: colour.
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Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico. Devon Van Houten Maldonado reveals how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status.
Although scarlet is the colour of sin in the Old Testament, the ancient world’s elite was thirsty for red, a symbol of wealth and status. They spent fantastic sums searching for ever more vibrant hues, until Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered an intoxicatingly saturated pigment in the great markets of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. Made from the crushed-up cochineal insect, the mysterious dye launched Spain toward its eventual role as an economic superpower and became one of the New World’s primary exports, as a red craze descended on Europe. An exhibition at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes museum reveals the far-reaching impact of the pigment through art history, from the renaissance to modernism.
In medieval and classical Europe, artisans and traders tripped over each other in search of durable saturated colors and – in turn – wealth, amid swathes of weak and watery fabrics. Dyers guilds guarded their secrets closely and performed seemingly magical feats of alchemy to fix colours to wool, silk and cotton. They used roots and resins to create satisfactory yellows, greens and blues. The murex snail was crushed into a dye to create imperial purple cloth worth more than its weight in gold. But truly vibrant red remained elusive.
For many years, the most common red in Europe came from the Ottoman Empire, where the ‘Turkey red’ process used the root of the rubia plant. European dyers tried desperately to reproduce the results from the East, but succeeded only partially, as the Ottoman process took months and involved a pestilent mix of cow dung, rancid olive oil and bullocks’ blood, according to Amy Butler Greenfield in her book, A Perfect Red.
Dyers also used Brazilwood, lac and lichens, but the resulting colours were usually underwhelming, and the processes often resulted in brownish or orange reds that faded quickly. For royalty and elite, St John’s Blood and Armenian red (dating back as far as the 8th Century BCE, according to Butler Greenfield), created the most vibrant saturated reds available in Europe until the 16th Century. But, made from different varieties of Porphyrophora root parasites, their production was laborious and availability was scarce, even at the highest prices.
Mesoamerican peoples in southern Mexico had started using the cochineal bug as early as 2000 BCE, long before the arrival of the conquistadors, according to Mexican textile expert Quetzalina Sanchez. Indigenous people in Puebla, Tlaxcala and Oaxaca had systems for breeding and engineering the cochineal bugs for ideal traits and the pigment was used to create paints for codices and murals, to dye cloth and feathers, and even as medicine.
Cochineal in the New World
When the conquistadors arrived in Mexico City, the headquarters of the Aztec empire, the red colour was everywhere. Outlying villages paid dues to their Aztec rulers in kilos of cochineal and rolls of blood-red cloth. “Scarlet is the colour of blood and the grana from cochineal achieved that [...] the colour always had a meaning, sometimes magic other times religious,” Sanchez told the BBC.
Cortés immediately recognized the riches of Mexico, which he related in several letters to King Charles V. “I shall speak of some of the things I have seen, which although badly described, I know very well will cause such wonder that they will hardly be believed, because even we who see them here with our own eyes are unable to comprehend their reality,” wrote Cortés to the king. About the great marketplace of Tenochtitlan, which was “twice as large as that of Salamanca," he wrote, “They also sell skeins of different kinds of spun cotton in all colours, so that it seems quite like one of the silk markets of Granada, although it is on a greater scale; also as many different colours for painters as can be found in Spain and of as excellent hues.”
First-hand accounts indicate that Cortés wasn’t overly smitten with cochineal, more concerned instead with plundering gold and silver. Back in Spain, the king was pressed to make ends meet and hold together his enormous dominion in relative peace, so, although he was at first unconvinced by the promise of America, he became fascinated by the exotic tales and saw in cochineal an opportunity to prop up the crown’s coffers. By 1523, cochineal pigment made its way back to Spain and caught the attention of the king who wrote to Cortés about exporting the dyestuff back to Europe, writes Butler.
“Through absurd laws and decrees [the Spanish] monopolised the grana trade,” says Sanchez. “They obligated the indians to produce as much as possible.” The native Mesoamericans who specialised in the production of the pigment and weren’t killed by disease or slaughtered during the conquest were paid pennies on the dollar – while the Spaniards “profited enormously as intermediaries.”
Red in art history
Dye from the cochineal bug was ten times as potent as St John’s Blood and produced 30 times more dye per ounce than Armenian red, according to Butler. So when European dyers began to experiment with the pigment, they were delighted by its potential. Most importantly, it was the brightest and most saturated red they had ever seen. By the middle of the 16th Century it was being used across Europe, and by the 1570s it had become one of the most profitable trades in Europe – growing from a meagre “50,000 pounds of cochineal in 1557 to over 150,000 pounds in 1574,” writes Butler.
In the Mexican Red exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the introduction of cochineal red to the European palette is illustrated in baroque paintings from the beginning of the 17th Century, after the pigment was already a booming industry across Europe and the world. Works by baroque painters like Cristóbal de Villalpando and Luis Juárez, father of José Juárez, who worked their entire lives in Mexico (New Spain), hang alongside the Spanish-born Sebastián López de Arteaga and the likes of Peter Paul Rubens.
López de Arteaga’s undated work The Incredulity of Saint Thomas pales in comparison to Caravaggio’s version of the same work, where St Thomas’s consternation and amazement is palpable in the skin of his furrowed forehead. But the red smock worn by Christ in López de Arteaga’s painting, denoting his holiness, absolutely pops off the canvas. Both artists employed cochineal, the introduction of which helped to establish the dramatic contrast that characterised the baroque style.
A few steps away, a portrait of Isabella Brandt (1610) by Rubens shows the versatility of paint made from cochineal. The wall behind the woman is depicted in a deep, glowing red, from which she emerges within a slight aura of light. The bible in her hand was also rendered in exquisite detail from cochineal red in Rubens’ unmistakable mastery of his brush, which makes his subjects feel as alive as if they were in front of you.
Moving forward toward modernism – it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th Century that cochineal was replaced by synthetic alternatives as the pre-eminent red dyestuff in the world – impressionist painters continued to make use of the heavenly red hues imported from Mexico. At the Palacio de Bellas Artes, works by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh have all been analysed and tested positive for cochineal. Like Rubens, Renoir’s subjects seem to be alive on the canvas, but as an impressionist his portraits dissolved into energetic abstractions. Gauguin also used colour, especially red, to create playful accents, but neither compared to the saturation achieved by Van Gogh. His piece, The Bedroom (1888), on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, puts a full stop on the exhibition with a single burning-hot spot of bright red.
After synthetic pigments became popular, outside of Mexico, the red dye was mass-produced as industrial food colouring – its main use today. Yet while the newly independent Mexico no longer controlled the valuable monopoly on cochineal, it also got something back – the sacred red that had been plundered and proliferated by the Spanish. “In Europe, as has happened in many cases, the history of the original people of Mexico has mattered very little,” Sanchez told the BBC, but in Mexico “the colour continues to be associated with ancestral magic [and] protects those who wear attire dyed with cochineal.”
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Released 40 years ago this month, Miloš Forman's best picture-winning Amadeus is often accused of historical inaccuracies – but the film's critics could be missing the point.
When it premiered 40 years ago, Amadeus drew an initial wave of praise. A historical drama revolving around the rivalry between two composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, it went on to win eight Oscars, including for best picture. Miloš Forman took home the best director prize, Peter Shaffer won for best adapted screenplay and both of the lead actors were nominated: F Murray Abraham, who played Salieri, beat Tom Hulce, who played Mozart.
But in the years that followed, a backlash grew over what some people saw as Amadeus's litany of historical errors. An article in The Guardian declared that "the fart jokes can't conceal how laughably wrong this is", and the BBC commented that "the film plays shamelessly fast and loose with historical fact". Salieri, critics noted, was no pious bachelor (as attested by his wife, eight children and mistress), and it's after all an odd kind of hateful rivalry when the real Mozart entrusted the musical education of his own son to Salieri. As for Mozart's lewd humor, that cheeky insouciance was actually commonplace in middle-class Viennese society. Most egregiously of all, world-famous Mozart was not dumped in an unmarked pauper's grave. If this is a homage to history, the complaint goes, it's akin to Emperor Joseph II fumbling ineptly on the pianoforte and bungling every other note.
But this kind of cavilling may be missing the point. Forman's aim for Amadeus can be seen as radically different from a typical biopic, and that was to use a fictionalised version of an epic clash between musical composers to allegorise the defining global rivalry of the mid-to-late 20th Century: the Cold War. Put simply, the film may have played fast and loose with 1784 because its real preoccupation was 1984.
The film opens in Vienna in 1823. Grizzled court composer Salieri howls through a bolted chamber door that he has murdered Mozart, then slashes his own throat. Days later, as he convalesces in an asylum, a priest arrives to hear his confession. It doesn't disappoint. Salieri recounts that as boy he made a vow of chastity to God as an expression of gratitude for, as he sees it, ushering in the providential death of his father to clear the path for his musical development.
Jump ahead some years, and Salieri is now an eminent composer in the court of Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), where he eagerly awaits an introduction to musical prodigy Mozart. That eagerness curdles when he sees the man in the flesh – he turns out to be a lascivious vulgarian with an ear-splitting cackle. Convinced that God means to mock his own mediocrity, Salieri hurls a crucifix in the fire and vows retaliation. When Mozart's father dies, Salieri seizes on the misfortune with a dastardly stratagem: dupe Mozart into believing that his father has risen from the grave to commission him to write a requiem, then murder him and pass off the masterpiece as his own. Mozart, feverish and besotted with drink, dies, leaving Salieri addled with bitterness and destined for obscurity.
The premise wasn't original to Forman. Drawing inspiration from Alexander Pushkin's taut 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, Peter Shaffer wrote a highly stylised play called Amadeus, which premiered in London in 1979. Forman, sitting in on a preview, was entranced by the dramatic rivalry and convinced Shaffer to collaborate with him, not merely to adapt the play for the screen but to "demolish the original, then totally reimagine it as a film". Across four irascible months cloistered in a Connecticut farmhouse with Shaffer, Forman fundamentally rebuilt the narrative with a fresh palette of political resonances.
The casting process for the coveted roles of Mozart and Salieri rivaled Gone with the Wind in scope and behind-the-scenes intrigue, all of which played out over a year and involved meetings with literally thousands of actors. Kenneth Branagh was nearly victorious in landing Mozart, then got dropped from consideration when Forman pivoted to a US cast. Mark Hamill endured grueling hours of auditions, only to be told by Forman: "No one is believing that the Luke Skywalker is the Mozart." Al Pacino lobbied hard for the part of Salieri, in competition with Mick Jagger, Burt Reynolds, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterson. In the end, Forman eschewed splashy celebrities for Hulce and Abraham, only to have casting drama explode again when Meg Tilly, slated to play Mozart's wife, Constanze, broke her ankle playing football: she was replaced by Elizabeth Berridge a week before shooting was to commence. With the plot rebuilt and the cast in place, more than one rivalry was poised to come into focus.
The triumph of genius
The Czech-born Forman had been a galvanising force behind the Czechoslovakian New Wave film movement in the 1960s, reaching a climax with his 1967 film The Firemen's Ball, which satirised the absurd inefficiencies of Eastern European communism. The film was initially warmly received within the reformist milieu of the Prague Spring, but when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague the following year and organised Czechoslovakia into the Eastern bloc, Forman, tarred as a "traitor" to the state, was forced to flee to the West and found refuge in the US.
Nearly all of Forman's film work thereafter would show glimmers of opposition to Soviet-style censorship, confinement, and concentrated power. His first success in the US, for example, 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, depicted a mental health ward meting out cruelty and coercion to patients under the guise of benevolent care. Audiences barely needed to squint to see the asylum as gulag and Nurse Ratched as the embodiment of the drunk-on-power Soviet bureaucrat. Likewise, Forman's 1996 film, The People vs Larry Flynt, depicted the founder of Hustler magazine squaring off against censorship at the cost of being jailed, locked up at a psychiatric facility and paralysed by an assassin's bullet.
The Soviet allegory can certainly be applied to Amadeus. Perhaps Forman was less concerned with hewing to biographical facts as he was with presenting Mozart as a beleaguered type of ecstatic genius who, hostage to patronage, is stifled and finally crushed by the repressive apparatus of the state. Joseph II, absolute ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, is advised at court by a clutch of prudish sycophants who undermine Mozart's achievements and smear his reputation. Whatever its loose correspondence to the late-18th and early-19th Centuries, this critique can be read as a stab at the USSR – a debilitatingly centralised bureaucracy hostile to insurgent ideas and innovation. But Forman showed that Mozart would get the last laugh. By the events of 1823, Salieri's insipid, state-sponsored melodies have all been forgotten, while a few bars of Mozart draw immediate joy to the priest's face. In the free market of popular tastes, Salieri's mandated drivel has been suffocated by the triumph of genius.
In Forman's hands, the Habsburg Empire bears the hallmarks of Soviet power. The masquerade balls, with their bewildering swirl of masked identities, conjure the confusion and paranoia that proliferated under the Soviet system. Salieri's reluctant servant-spy (Cynthia Nixon) carries out covert surveillance, a nod to the 20th Century's KGB, which had thousands of its moles burrow into the private lives of artists and dissidents. Meanwhile, Salieri's heretical burning of the crucifix and war on God call to mind the ideological struggle between a Christian worldview and secular Soviet hubris. (After Abraham's mother – a pious Italian woman – saw the cross-burning scene, she browbeat her son so relentlessly that he blurted out what he now tells the BBC was a lie: "I told her, 'mum, that was an extra – somebody else threw it in there!'")
And then there's the mass grave into which Mozart's corpse is dumped. This depiction does not fit the facts of what is known about his death, but it makes sense if read as an indictment of Soviet practices – the effacement of individual identity and literal mass murder. Grim excavations of these pits continue to this day. Forman, whose own parents perished in Nazi concentration camps, understood the power of this imagery.
Jeff Smith, author of Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist, tells the BBC that Mozart's struggle against the status quo tapped into Forman's own frustrations with Soviet censorship. "The emperor's fatuous judgment about Mozart's opera – 'too many notes' – is just the kind of accusation that was used as a cudgel used against avant-garde artists and thinkers to imply their work isn't pleasant or edifying to Soviet ears. Mozart's enraged incredulity in that scene must have mirrored Forman's own longstanding contempt for Soviet stagnation and repression."
Amadeus behind the Iron Curtain
Shooting took place in 1983 over a six-month period in Prague, which had the virtue of offering basilicas, palaces and cobblestone squares virtually unchanged since the late 18th Century. Even with Soviet power waning, however, Czechoslovakia remained part of the Eastern bloc and Forman was still persona non grata, so a deal was struck: the director would refrain from meeting with political dissidents, and the regime would allow friends of Forman to visit with their repatriated prodigal son.
Forman's own recollections from the shoot centred on the travails of Soviet interference. His landlady warned his phone is bugged. Informers lurked in every room. Two unmarked cars tailed him everywhere, which seemed redundant since his own driver was also a secret agent. In his autobiography, Turnaround, Forman is just shy of explicit about the degree to which themes of Soviet repression leaked into Amadeus. "As it had to be in the socialist Prague," he wrote, "the spirit of Franz Kafka presided over our production".
Perhaps even more telling is a story he recounts of negotiating with the general director of Czechoslovak film, Jiří Purš, who, as Forman recounted, wanted absolute assurance that the Communist Party would have nothing to fear: "I assume that politically there is nothing in the script that they could hang their hats on?" Forman's reply is a model of plausible deniability and acid irony: "Look, it's about Mozart!"
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F Murray Abraham felt the strain of coercive scrutiny as he was traveling back and forth to the United States to shoot his role in Scarface (1983) while Amadeus was in production in Prague.
Abraham tells the BBC, "At the end of every shooting day I had to cross the border to get to the airport in Vienna to return to Hollywood. At the checkpoint, the Czechoslovak Police would make us sit idle at the gate, just as a way to throw their weight around, make you know who's in charge. That sense of bullying and intimidation was everywhere, and even when the Czech people responded with subversive humor, the strain was palpable. We never forgot for a minute that we were under communist surveillance."
That tension between the US crew and Soviet agents finally burst out into the open on 4 July. The production was shooting an opera scene, and the crew arranged so that when Forman yelled "action" a US flag unfurled and the national anthem played in lieu of Mozart's music. Some 500 Czech extras burst forth into emotional song, in effect revealing their sympathies with the West. But not all of them.
Forman recalled, "All stood up – except 30 men and women, panic on their face, looking at each other [asking] what they should do. They were the secret police, dispersed among the extras."
As Amadeus continues to be reassessed at its 40th anniversary, the significance of the Cold War looms ever larger. Paul Frazier, author of The Cold War on Film, tells the BBC that the film brilliantly tapped into a deep vein of Soviet envy: "Salieri is the Soviet Lada trying to be a Ford Mustang. He can't be as great as Mozart, so he resorts to undermining and manipulating him. This too was the approach of the old USSR towards the West: rather than being better than the West, the Soviets resorted to undermining and discrediting the West at every turn."
Historian Nicholas J Cull echoes that analysis. "Think of the Jonathan Swift line: 'When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.' Whether it's the 1780s or 1980s, what you have is true genius facing off against mediocre, conniving bureaucrats. You see this same dynamic at play in a Cold War film like last summer's Oppenheimer, which in some ways is Amadeus with A-bombs. It makes sense that refugee film-makers like Forman and his creative team would be drawn to tell an allegory of communist mismanagement."
Not everyone is sold on the idea that Amadeus wrestles with Soviet totalitarianism. Kevin Hagopian, a media studies professor at Penn State University, says there's a risk of allegorising everything as an unseen Soviet menace, which ends up making art a mere handmaid to politics.
"That ultimately becomes a depressingly narrow way to appreciate the dazzling beauty and emotional breadth of Mozart's music," Hagopian tells the BBC. Nevertheless, he adds, we can't ignore the political resonances.
"The allegorical space that satirical Czech film-makers like Forman opened up meant that audiences began to look for, even perhaps invent, allegorical political meaning," he says. "All films could be read against the grain of a regime that lacked not only humanity but any sense of irony about itself. So if Amadeus wasn't really about Soviet-style tyranny, but audiences merely thought it was, well, I have a feeling that would be just fine with Miloš Forman."
For his part, Abraham is candid about what he believes are the more contemporary political stakes of the film, as he told the BBC in June. "Think about how many Americans now idolise Putin. These autocrats are suddenly celebrated again. It's disheartening, truly demoralising, but if Amadeus can help us see our current predicament through fresh eyes, that shows you how powerfully its message still resonates."
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From a 17th-Century Italian violin stolen from Japan to Drake's lost Blackberry in Mexico, here are musical lost and found mysteries that rival Sir Paul McCartney's.
In musical happy endings, last week, Sir Paul McCartney was reunited with his bass guitar that was stolen 51 years ago in London. The instrument, which McCartney purchased in 1961, was subsequently nabbed from a band van in 1972. Now, thanks to the Lost Bass search project, the Beatle has been reunited with the bass, which had been until recently stashed in a Sussex attic. Both McCartney and Höfner, the instrument manufacturer, authenticated the found item upon its rediscovery, and a spokesperson for McCartney told BBC News he was "incredibly grateful" for the return of his lost guitar.
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But McCartney certainly isn't the only musician to lose a valuable piece of his kit – in fact, he's not even the only Beatle. And for non-Beatles-level musical acts, the loss of an instrument – or worse, an entire kit – can be devastating. The BBC previously reported on the theft of rock band Cemetery Sun's entire kit and van, as well as trio Noisy's stolen kit reappearing with individual instruments and pieces of gear up for auction online weeks later.
Bassist Grant Emerson of Americana band Delta Rae recalls having around $10,000 (£7,937) of musical instruments stolen: "We played at the Bitter End in New York City and parked our van down the street. When we came back to the van, the back door had been broken into, and all of our guitars were gone, plus a pedal board and a piece of the drummer's equipment. Probably four to five pieces of gear were stolen. It was a really terrible drive back to North Carolina." He notes that for most bands, the only recourse is fundraising: "You just rely on your fans. You ask for help and donations, which isn't easy." And he urges all musicians to "photograph the serial number of every instrument and piece of gear you own".
Lost or stolen instruments over the years have kept musicians and fans alike searching for guitars, violins, and even an entire brass band. Here are a few more musical mysteries – some of which remain unsolved to this day.
BB King
The famous blues legend was known for riffs on his legendary guitar, a Gibson he named Lucille – in fact, King had multiple performance guitars named Lucille over the course of his career. The name was inspired by a lover’s quarrel King witnessed in 1949 (the woman arguing was named Lucille, and she left quite an impression on King). When this particular Lucille guitar was stolen, it was eventually found in a Las Vegas pawn shop by Eric Dahl, a fellow musician who mistakenly purchased the guitar and later returned it to King. Dahl offered it without compensation and went on to write a book about King and his many guitars. The Gibson also ended up being one of the last instruments King played before his death in 2015, and it was subsequently sold at his estate auction for $280,000 (£222,286) in 2019.
Eric Clapton
Clapton's Gibson Les Paul guitar, named Beano, was stolen soon after his studio album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton was released in 1966. Unlike King, Clapton hasn't been so lucky as to be reunited with his lost guitar – yet. But singer-songwriter Joe Bonamassa has claimed he knows where it is: In 2016, Bonamassa gave an interview in which he said the guitar was in a private US collection, which spurred a 2018 petition to encourage Bonamassa to reveal more details. On their YouTube channel, music aficionados Baxter and Jonathan of North Carolina-based Casino Guitars joked that they imagine a "guitar illuminati" trading in lost and rare instruments might not be pleased with what Bonamassa has already shared so far – and pondered whether he has a responsibility to help Clapton retrieve the stolen item if he does, in fact, know where it is.
Takiko Omura
A violin made in 1675 by Nicolo Amati in Italy was stolen in 2005 from the home of Japanese violinist Takiko Omura, who had purchased the instrument in the United States many decades earlier. The violin, which was priced at nearly £300,000 ($377,895) in 2005 when it was taken, was reportedly found in 2020 in Parma, Italy, in the raid of a home of a suspected drug trafficker. Authorities in Italy and Japan worked together to return the instrument to its rightful owner.
Stooges Brass Brand
It's difficult enough to find one lost guitar, let alone an entire brass band. In 2022, a famous local New Orleans "second line" brass band had all their equipment stolen from their van during the worst possible time for them – two weeks before New Orleans Jazz Fest. Nearly $12,000 (£9,526) in musical instruments, including cymbals, drum sets, keyboards and amps, were stolen when the band's van disappeared from outside the home of a band member. The theft threatened to derail the Stooges' festival appearance that year, but the band is back on its feet, with a scheduled appearance on 28 April at this year's Jazz Fest.
Min Kym
As the BBC has previously reported, the violin prodigy Min Kym's Stradivarius was stolen in 2010 from a Pret a Manger restaurant. This was no ordinary violinist and no ordinary violin: At just seven years old, Kym had earned a slot at the prestigious Purcell School of Music in the UK, and at age 11, she won first prize at the Premier Mozart International Competition. When presented with the opportunity to own a rare 1696 Stradivarius, "Kym remortgaged her flat and bought the violin for £450,000 ($580,000). If this seems like an astronomical amount of money, it was in fact a steal in Stradivarius terms: the violin's actual worth was closer to £1.2m ($1.5m) and these instruments are so precious that their value only ever goes up,” reads the 2017 article about the crime. Although the stolen violin was eventually recovered three years later, it was not returned to Kym, and her memoir, Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unstrung, tells the story of coping with a musical instrument being lost and found and then lost again.
George Harrison
Sir Paul wasn't even the only Beatle whose beloved instrument was absconded with: George Harrison's 1965 Rickenbacker guitar was allegedly stolen in 1966. Rickenbacker CEO John Hall told Reverb that the guitar's mystery has been so longstanding because "no one knows the exact serial number of the original guitar." The Rickenbacker team were, however, able to narrow the list down to five potential guitars based on shipment dates.
Harrison also had his '57 Les Paul, Lucy – which was formerly owned by the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, Rick Derringer, and Eric Clapton – stolen. It was nabbed from Harrison's home during a burglary in 1973 and then sold to a Los Angeles music store who, in turn, sold it to Mexican musician Miguel Ochoa, who declined to sell it back to Harrison at full price. Instead, Ochoa negotiated a trade with Harrison: Harrison got Lucy back, and Ochoa would get a 1958 Les Paul Standard and a Fender Precision bass.
Drake
In his 2009 song Say What's Real, produced by Kanye West, Drake revealed that he lost some of his best lyrics in Mexico: "Lost some of my hottest verses down in Cabo/So if you find a Blackberry with the side scroll," he raps, followed by an expletive-laden line that finishes the rhyme. For his genre of music, that Blackberry was his instrument, which he used to pen his songs. While it doesn't sound like it's ever been returned, Drake has probably upgraded his tech.
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Many opera companies are working towards full sustainability, and Glyndebourne is among those aiming to be a force for good, according to a new documentary.
A night at the opera is not typically equated with restraint, instead conjuring images of chandelier-filled theatres and arias performed in exquisite costumes against transportative stage sets. Yet, recent years have seen opera companies across the globe make a determined effort to operate more sustainably, implementing numerous strategies in a bid to reduce their carbon emissions and overall impact on the planet.
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This is, in part, the result of climate activists, who have increasingly targeted the arts and entertainment industries over the past few years with the aim of drawing greater attention to their cause. At the end of 2022, for instance, responding to mounting protests, the Royal Opera House cut ties with its long-time sponsor, the oil giant BP. Yet, it is also a response to the shifting expectations of audience members: according to a UK study conducted in 2022, 77% of audience members now expect theatres to address the climate emergency in their work – and opera houses are no exception.
The pandemic, while posing innumerable difficulties for the live entertainment industry, also offered an important pause for reflection. It was during this time that a number of UK theatre-makers joined forces with sustainability experts to conceive the Theatre Green Book, a publication setting a common standard for sustainable theatre production, and providing guidance on how best to achieve it. Divided into three volumes – sustainable productions, sustainable buildings and sustainable operations – spanning the many facets of what it means to run a theatre, the acclaimed guide has already been widely implemented.
A key collaborator in the creation of the Theatre Green Book was the historic East Sussex opera house Glyndebourne, renowned for its summer festival which draws thousands of opera lovers to the stately home's verdant grounds each year. Glyndebourne has been forging a path towards greater sustainability in opera for some time. "Art, opera, nature [has always been] a core trinity for Glyndebourne," explains its archivist Phil Boot in a new BBC documentary Take Me to The Opera: The Power of Glyndebourne.
In 2012, executive chairman Gus Christie oversaw the installation of a 67m (220ft)-tall wind turbine on a hill adjacent to the opera house, which between then and 2022 has generated the equivalent of 102% of the electricity used by the company in the same period. The turbine serves as an important statement of intent for Glyndebourne. Alison Tickell, the founder and chief executive of Julie's Bicycle, a non-profit organisation dedicated to mobilising the UK arts and culture sectors in a fight against climate change, says in the documentary: "I know that many opera companies… don't have the luxury of space. But [the turbine] still remains a beacon for us all [demonstrating] that climate action really matters."
Glyndebourne has innovated in sustainable practice in the years since. In 2021, it joined the global Race to Zero, pledging to halve its direct carbon emissions by 2030, and to reach net zero by 2050. "We are zero waste to landfill now, so any waste we have goes down to [an] incinerator, which provides power for local homes," Christie says of some of the measures he and his team have taken to achieve this. "We compost all our garden waste, we recycle as much of our stage-set material, costumes, props [as we can]. We have about 32 electric vehicle charging points [for visitors] which are all charged from the wind turbine." They are drawing from their resources in other ways, too: by the end of this year, they predict, all water served at Glyndebourne will come from the property's own natural spring, while plants grown in their gardens are being used to produce dyes for the company's costumes. "Rivers around the world are polluted by dyes a lot," says dye room supervisor Jenny Mercer in the documentary. "This way everything goes back into the ground."
Climate action
Glyndebourne isn't the only opera company taking steps towards sustainability. It is now usual among major opera houses, from the English National Opera to Opéra National de Paris, to boast a dedicated webpage outlining their sustainability mission statements, including pledges to adhere to the UN sustainable development goals, facts and figures relating to their reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions, and details of their own planet-friendly solutions.
The rooftop of the Opéra Bastille, for example, is host to an urban farm, cultivated using agroecology, which also contributes to the thermal insulation of the building. This produces around a hundred weekly baskets of fruit and vegetables that are then sold to staff and local residents.
The Sydney Opera House – a longstanding champion of environmental consciousness that achieved carbon neutrality in 2018 – has installed an artificial reef alongside the iconic building's sea wall, encouraging marine biodiversity and supporting Sydney Harbour's native species. Most recently, the opera house was awarded a six-star performance rating by the Green Building Council of Australia, the highest possible ranking. This is no mean feat given that perhaps the biggest challenge facing opera is achieving energy efficiency within its decades-, if not centuries-old, buildings. Indeed, in 2021, a survey by the UK's Theatres Trust found that it would cost more than £1bn ($1.2bn) to make the UK's theatre buildings sustainable.
In the meantime, many companies have been looking to achieve sustainability through new buildings, while doing what they can to reduce waste in their pre-existing spaces. The Royal Opera House's production workshop just outside London, built in 2015, is in the top 10% of sustainable non-domestic buildings in the UK. While Milan's storied opera house La Scala's new office is a zero-energy building, producing more energy than it consumes thanks to rooftop solar panels and an open-cycle geothermal system. La Scala has also cut its carbon emissions by more than 630 tonnes since 2010, according to a recent New York Times article, having upgraded to LED and smart lighting.
Elsewhere, the Opéra de Lyon, Göteborg Opera and Tunis Opera are currently partnered on a new project investigating how best to implement the circular economy of production materials, while Leeds' Opera North is soon to launch its first "green season", using shared set design across its three productions, recycled or second-hand costumes, and including a new "eco-entertainment" work titled Masque of Might.
As the Theatres Trust's study shows, there is still a long way to go, and a lot of money required, to make the changes necessary to safeguard the future of opera amid the ever-worsening climate crisis, but there appears to be no shortage of determination and imagination among opera houses in their quest to do so.
Take Me to the Opera: The Power of Glyndebourne is on BBC News Channel and on BBC Reel
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Is the world of opera becoming more inclusive? A new documentary, featuring conductor Antonio Pappano, explores the mission to open up the art form to everyone.
Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano is renowned for being a warm-hearted "people person". But there's one thing that makes his blood run cold: when he hears opera being accused of being an art form that's only for a wealthy elite. "I get very offended by people who say we're elitist," he says passionately in a new documentary. This is "a misconception that totally distorts the image of opera," he adds. "The fact of the matter is, it's harder to get into a football game in London than it is to get into the [Royal] Opera House."
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This allusion to the beautiful game is not a frivolous one. When Pappano became music director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (ROH) in 2002, he spoke of his love for popular music by stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Joni Mitchell, and for musicals. "I like football too," he added. "Does that mean you can't like opera?"
Back then Pappano was 42, and the youngest conductor to lead ROH's orchestra. Some 700 operas later – with many productions of the French and Italian repertoires; a good part of the Russian; Wagner, Strauss and contemporary works – and he is the subject of A Time of Change, presented by Zeinab Badawi, and part of the BBC documentary series Take Me to the Opera.
The documentary follows him from his modest roots, as the son of Italian immigrant parents who came from southern Italy to the UK, who worked hard to make ends meet. They passed on their strong work ethic to him, and he learnt how to work with singers from his vocal coach father, flourishing as a musical talent in the "the family business". A Time of Change goes on to trace a career that includes assisting classical pianist Daniel Barenboim, through to a recent high, conducting the King's coronation service in May, featuring solos by Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel and South African soprano Pretty Yende.
The main focus of the film, though, is Pappano's mission to open up opera to everyone. "Opera shouldn't cater just to one audience, or be focused on just one corner of the repertoire," he says. "It must be open to the interests of many different people." While he asserts that the ROH, like every big opera house, wants to entice young audiences, he does concede: "I think you have to be honest and say, yes, but younger people can't afford very expensive tickets, can they?"
It's true that the price of opera tickets can seem too high to be anything but a rare luxury for most, especially young people. Halley Bondy, writing on the arts website Paste Magazine, describes herself as someone who has been to the opera many times "for a millennial". And although she loves opera – "from the hyper-real grandness to the unbelievable talent, to the septuagenarian, fur-hatted audience" – she finds it "easy to see why places like The Met [Metropolitan Opera House in NYC] are ailing in sales; young people just don't go. It's too expensive, too arcane, too massive… The onus is on the opera houses to do a better job of catering to the young."
Bondy has only managed to attend so often by being treated by a "ridiculously generous friend" or chasing discounted tickets. "Like everything else in the world, the opera is a lot of fun if you have gobs of money," she observes, but she concedes anyone could get in with the $25 [£19.40] rush tickets, student tickets or commercial offers – which make it "affordable, if you just dig a little".
In opera's defence, ticket prices are generally high because it is notoriously costly to produce. All the more reason, argued The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins in February, for adequate government funding. Discussing recent cuts to opera funding, she wrote: "If you starve something, run it down constantly, gradually reduce the provision of it so that few can afford it, it becomes 'elitist'… And if opera in the form that its creators imagine it becomes for toffs, that is nothing to do with opera itself… [it is] precisely the result of neglect and underfunding".
Pappano is also invested in bringing new blood to opera, via schemes like the ROH's schools matinees, which offer young people low-cost tickets to opera productions. Also, its Youth Opera talent development programme gives children aged seven to 13 the chance to try its "rigorous music and drama training".
"We make sure there's a real variety of socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities, and an even gender split,” says Tom Floyd, ROH senior opera manger, talking about its open recruitment system. Most of the young people who join them "come from families who probably have had no real experience of opera," he says.
Opera for all
Over at English National Opera (ENO), the company has stayed true to its egalitarian roots of the late 19th-Century, when theatrical producer Lilian Baylis and music director Charles Corri shared a vision of it as a place for "people's opera". ENO has "opera for all" in its mission statement. It does not assume knowledge of opera; its website has key figures of the organisation explaining what opera is and how it's made; and the site hints at how it skillfully reimagines crowd pleasers, like La Traviata (to be performed this October), in thrilling new ways, alongside daring new work, such as 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, by performance artist Marina Abramovich (November).
"We sing in English to be accessible to the widest possible audience," an ENO spokesperson tells BBC Culture. The company offers free tickets for under-21s; discounts for under 35s, and tickets from £10 for all. No surprise, then, that more than half its bookings last season were from opera first-timers.
Still, in order to survive the cuts to Arts Council England (ACE) funding, the ENO will next year move its main base from the London Coliseum to outside the capital and in so doing will qualify for £24m funding over three years.
Opera must change, ACE chief executive Darren Henley wrote in an article for The Guardian: "A new generation is embracing opera and music presented in new ways: opera in car parks… in pubs, opera on your tablet". In truth, most opera companies are not digital-age dodgers; they have presences on the popular digital platforms, while the hashtag #operaisopen invites new audiences to click through.
Streaming services – like Royal Opera Stream and Glyndebourne Encore – have dished up productions and events, both popular and esoteric, to reach a wider audience. And there's also opera at the cinema. At ROH, 2022/23 has been its biggest cinema season ever, with more than 1,300 cinemas worldwide having shown or showing 13 productions (opera and ballet), including Madam Butterfly, La Boheme and Aida. The latter, staged in May and June 2023, was conducted by Pappano.
Nurturing promising young talent – like soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha – is a passion of Pappano’s, and he's also a role model for young opera conductors, like Avishka Ederisinghe, who says that watching him talking on YouTube was what inspired him to explore the art form.
As he steps down from his music director roles – at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome after 18 years, and at ROH next summer, after 22 years – Pappano is looking forward to change. He will not be hanging up the baton yet: he will succeed Simon Rattle to become chief conductor at the London Symphony Orchestra, his "dream job".
He describes how he grew up in a council flat that was just "a four-minute walk to Westminster Abbey"; and that rising from his humble background to conducting the coronation at that same abbey was "not a bad gig". Jokes aside, there is a message there that he'd love to hand down to a younger generation: "If you have a vision for what you want to achieve in life, that spark and… the energy and resilience to keep pushing when you know things will get tough, you can make it in any walk of life."
Take me to the Opera: A Time of Change is on BBC News Channel and on BBC Reel
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Opera star Bryn Terfel emerged from an extraordinary cultural heritage and a nation renowned for its love of singing. "It's the air that we breathe," he explains in a new documentary.
Sir Bryn Terfel is pondering a question: what is it about Wales and the Welsh that produces a nation of singers? "I think it's the mountains, and the fresh sea air. And the language – that is very important," he says. "Then there's the hymns… You know, we just love to sing – it's the air that we breathe."
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The Welsh bass-baritone is the subject of Peak Performance, part of the BBC documentary series Take Me to the Opera. Presented by Zeinab Badawi, it follows Sir Bryn – as he has been known since his knighthood in 2017 – from his operatic debut with the Welsh National Opera in 1990, to singing at opera houses across the world, like London's Royal Opera House, where he is a regular star performer. En route, the documentary revisits his roots in rural Wales and looks at how he's nurturing the next generations of singing talent, as well as his invitation to sing at King Charles's coronation.
Sir Bryn is high on the list of great living Welsh opera singers, which also includes luminaries such as Dame Gwyneth Jones, Wynne Evans, Katherine Jenkins, and Aled Jones. (Added to which there are many popular non-opera Welsh singers, including Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Bonnie Tyler, Charlotte Church and Cerys Matthews.) But beyond these headline stars lies a whole nation renowned for its love of singing, especially choral. So where does this passion for song stem from?
In A History of Music and Singing in Wales, novelist and poet Wyn Griffith, who wrote extensively on Wales and Welsh culture, observed: "If you find a score of Welsh people, in Wales or out of it, you will find a choir. They sing for their own delight, and they always sing in harmony. They sing as naturally and easily as they talk."
"Wales is known as a nation of music – the 'land of song'," notes the Welsh National Opera (WNO). "Often connected with male voice choirs, it is… recognised for its choral traditions which are rooted in the culture."
Choral singing in Wales dates back to the 19th Century, and flourished with the Cymanafa Ganu (hymn singing) movement, at a chapel in Aberdare in 1859; it was rooted mainly in religious songs, though a steady body of secular songs were also produced. Soon after, a revival of traditional Welsh music began with the formation of the National Eisteddfod Society, a focus for the Welsh passion for singing and song. Any worthy list of classic Welsh songs might include Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (O Land of My Fathers); My Little Welsh Home by William Sidney Gwynn Williams; and the love song Ar Lan y Mor (recorded by both Terfel and Jenkins). Or the rousing We'll Keep a Welcome (In the Hillsides).
The male voice choir, along with the harp, are two of the most popular signifiers of Welsh music. Professor Gareth Williams traces the male voice choir's origins to the mid-19th Century industrial age: "We are reminded of what Aneurin Bevan once said: 'Culture comes off the end of a pick'," he writes, referring to Welsh coal miners. Choirs started in the 1920s, like Cwbach from the Cynon Valley, and Pendyrus, survive today. After a day's hard graft in a mine, says Williams, the joy and community found in singing with co-workers was "an assertion of working-class male bonding and identity expressed through that most democratic and inexpensive instrument, the human voice".
The Welsh Borough Chapel in Southwark, London, is host to Eschoir, a Welsh male choir of around 20 singers, aged 20 to 75. Singing together since 2009, they've performed at Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street, and the Six Nations rugby tournament. Eschoir founder and director Mike Williams, who grew up in south Wales, describes their appeal: "There's a humility to it, as Welsh choirs stem back to the coal mines and chapels. Many people enjoy singing in the pub as much as singing in a concert. There is no pomp… it unites us and keeps us connected to our Welsh roots." And the Welsh take choirs very seriously, he adds.
In tandem with a passion for choral singing in Wales, there has been a rise in popularity of the Eisteddfod. These Welsh singing and recital competitions date back to the 12th Century and today are a platform for public singing, especially for younger singers. It was at local Eisteddfods that the young Bryn Terfel first stood out, winning singing competitions that would lead him to study at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and to his first professional role in Cosi Fan Tutti at Welsh National Opera, soon after graduating in 1989.
A unique cultural inheritance
In the documentary, Terfel recalls competing in Eisteddfods in his rural north Wales, and how his "parents paid for a lot of petrol to drive me north, south, east and west to compete. They saw something in their son… the passion, how I loved singing. I think that drove them to encourage the singing within me." Eisteddfods are "a wonderful shop window", he says. One of his charitable initiatives is a scholarship to develop promising young performers coming up through Eisteddfods. Peak Performance visits one in Llanadog, near Swansea, as young singers of all genders, from the area and across Wales, prepare to get on stage and sing. "This is where it all starts for us Welsh singers," says one teenage boy in the documentary. "This is where we learn our craft." He believes when Welsh singers go to London to study, "you can see the difference… they’ve got some sort of… confidence."
Certainly, Terfel was swaddled in song and music from the cradle. Born in 1967 in rural north Wales, his father was a farmer, his mother a special needs teacher who used music therapy in her work. The whole family, including older relatives, sang together and in choirs. "My grandfather, my great-grandfather, had the love of singing," he says. "There was constant learning going on in the kitchen, words on the cabinets. A little bit of rivalry as well, which is quite healthy."
Eilir Owen Griffiths, a composer and Eisteddfod adjudicator, explains what he looks for in a great singer: "It's how the voice resonates, and the way it works with text." He describes Terfil's voice as "like a beautiful double bass" – but it's not just the incredible sound he generates: "It's also the control he has – he can sing the most delicate pianissimo as well. It's a unique voice, very special." That quality – and cultural diversity – was drawn on when Sir Bryn sang at the coronation of King Charles, who personally chose him to perform; he sang Coronation Kyrie, a first in the Welsh language at a coronation. "You have the rehearsals in the rooms… Then you have your fittings, and all of a sudden you're in your costume and make-up." And you're onstage, he says, "portraying a character. And that's when the fun really does begin!"
The documentary joins Terfel as he goes through his repertoire for a week in March: as well as the Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House, he sings the title role in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool; then travels to a studio near Cardiff in Wales, to record an album of sea shanties – the likes of Drunken Sailor, and traditional folk songs like Fflat Huw Puw, "about a sailor and his wonderful ship".
It's a voice that continues to thrill audiences, whether in lead roles such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House; or Tosca by Puccini at Paris Opera Bastille; or Verdi's Falstaff, at Grange Park Opera, Surrey. As well as big opera houses, he performs for new audiences in concert halls too. Gillian Moore is artistic director of the South Bank Centre, where in recent months he sang extracts from two of Wagner's great roles: "The fact he's passing that on to young singers makes total sense… When he's on stage, you cannot take your eyes off him."
Returning to that question of why the Welsh love to sing, Wyn Griffith suggests it's about an irrepressible spirit – and it's simply in the blood: "Whether they meet in tens or in thousands, in a small country chapel or in a vast assembly… they sing freely… It is not necessary to organise singing in Wales: it happens on its own."
Take me to the Opera: Peak Performance is on BBC News Channel on 10 June at 13.30 and also on BBC Reel
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A radical new wave of artists are sweeping the previously elite world of classical music – with a little help from Squid Game, Dark Academia and fashion. Daisy Woodward explores how classical got cool.
If asked to guess what under 25-year-olds are listening to, it's unlikely that many of us would land upon orchestral music. And yet a survey published in December 2022 by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) found that 74% of UK residents aged under 25 were likely to be tuning into just that at Christmas-time, compared with a mere 46% of people aged 55 or more. These figures reflect not only the RPO's broader finding that under 35-year-olds are more likely to listen to orchestral music than their parents, but also the widespread surge in popularity of classical music in general, particularly among younger generations.
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There are plenty of reasons for this, from the playlist culture spawned by streaming platforms that make it easy for listeners to discover new artists and types of music to fit their mood, to the solace it provided during the pandemic, not to mention the profusion of classical music in pop culture hits like Squid Game. But perhaps highest on the list is the global wave of Gen Z and young millennial classical artists who are finding new ways to be seen and heard, and – just as vitally – new means of modernising what has long been branded music's most elite and stuffy genre.
Unsurprisingly, social media has played a huge part in this, as a quick search of the popular TikTok hashtag "classictok" (currently at 53.8 million views) attests. There, as well as on Instagram, young classical artists have been making use of the digital realm's democratic potential to lift the heavy velvet curtains on their art form, presenting classical music and its storied history in ways that are accessible, unintimidating and, most importantly, fun.
For French violinist Esther Abrami – who has more than 250,000 followers on Instagram, more than 380,000 on TikTok, and was the first classical musician to be nominated in the Social Media Superstar category at the Global Awards – the journey to social media fame stemmed from a desire to share her passion more widely. "I was studying at a top institution and most of the time I was practising for exams, so the whole joy of sharing was taken away. Then, at the very few concerts I did play, there was a very specific type of audience that wasn't very diverse," Abrami tells BBC Culture.
She noticed that a handful of classical musicians had taken to Instagram to broaden their own reach, and decided to do the same. "I started posting a few things, and was stunned by the reaction that I got. Suddenly you have people from around the world listening to you and telling you it brightens their day to watch you playing the violin," she enthuses. "It opened this door to a completely new world."
Nigerian-US baritone and lifelong hip-hop fan Babatunde Akinboboye enjoyed a similarly swift and surprising rise to social media fame when he posted a video of himself singing Rossini's renowned aria Largo al factotum over the top of Kendrick Lamar's track Humble. "I was in my car and I realised that the two pieces worked together musically, so I started singing on top of the beat," he tells BBC Culture. He documented the moment on his phone and posted the video on his personal Facebook account, guessing that his friends would enjoy it more than his opera peers. "But I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and it had expanded to my opera network, and far beyond that," he laughs, explaining that within two days, his self-dubbed brand of "hip-hopera" had caught the attention of The Ellen Show, America's Got Talent and Time magazine.
Both Abrami and Akinboboye came to classical music in their teens, late by conventional standards, and cultivated their passion for the genre independently. This remains a driving factor in their desire to reach new audiences, which they've achieved on an impressive scale, largely just by being themselves. "I ended up becoming an opera influencer by sharing the parts of me I felt comfortable sharing, which is a lot," says Akinboboye, whose playful hip-hopera and opera videos and posts – taking viewers behind the scenes of a world still shrouded in mystery – have garnered him some 688,000 TikTok followers. "It's a lot about how I relate to opera; my musical background was from hip-hop, but I still found a relationship with opera and that resonated with people," he explains. "Almost every day I get a different message saying, 'I went to my first opera today'. I think it's because they're seeing someone they feel comfortable or familiar with."
'Complex and profound'
Abrami, a similarly enthusiastic content creator, agrees: "I think putting the face of somebody not so far away from them to the genre is a big thing. That's what I'm trying to do, to reach different types of people and create bridges, to show them that this music can really move you. It's complex and profound and yes, it might take a bit of time to understand but once you do, it's amazing."
British concert pianist Harriet Stubbs is another avid proponent of classical music for modern audiences who has been finding her own ways of drawing in new listeners. During lockdown, the musician, who usually splits her time between London and New York, performed multiple 20-minute concerts from her ground-floor flat in West Kensington, opening the windows and using an amplifier to reach listeners outside. "I gave 250 concerts," Stubbs, who was awarded a British Empire Medal by the Queen for this mood-boosting act of service, tells BBC Culture. "I did a range of repertoire from my upcoming album, and also things like All By Myself, which I chose ironically for that audience. And the thing is, people who thought they didn't care for classical music came back every day because of the power of that music."
The fusion of classical music with other genres is a major facet of Stubbs's practice and, indeed, that of many others among the new generation of classical artists (see also the React to the K YouTube channel, where classical artists frequently reimagine K-pop songs with ingenious results, or Kris Bowers' brilliant orchestral arrangements of modern pop songs for the much-buzzed-about Bridgerton soundtrack). Stubbs's innovative first album, Heaven & Hell: The Doors of Perception (2018), was inspired by William Blake and features musical icon Marianne Faithfull. "I always wanted to tie rock'n'roll and classical music together and put them in the same space, supported by literature and philosophy and other disciplines," she explains, adding that her next album, which she's making with pianist and former Bowie collaborator Mike Garson, will be a "Bowie meets Rachmaninoff" affair.
Interestingly, the current swell of enthusiasm for classical music has branched out to become as much of an aesthetic movement as it is a musical one. Digital microtrends Dark Academia and Light Academia – dedicated as they are to the romanticisation of a passion for art and knowledge through imagery – both make rousing use of classical music in order to create the desired ambience. Ascendant Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, meanwhile, uses atmospheric visuals as a powerful means of contemporising the baroque experience. Depressed by the lack of funding for music video production in the classical realm, he drummed up private sponsorship to make a 21-minute movie to accompany his 2021 rendition of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater. The resulting film conjures a compelling and suitably brutal scenario for the haunting 18th-century hymn, which The New York Times describes as "resembling a Polish remake of The Sopranos".
"I'm really interested in storytelling. I always build an entire concept for my albums – the narrative, the photography, the videos," Orliński tells BBC Culture. "I think now there is this whole new generation of people who really want to add to what classical music can be, to go beyond the singing and be challenged. You just have to know that the end product will be good, and that what you're doing will serve the story," he adds. This is certainly something Orliński has achieved in his own career: an accomplished sportsman and breakdancer, he wowed critics with his 2022 Royal Opera House debut, which found him pole-dancing in a spangled dress as Didymus in Katie Mitchell's production of Handel's Theodora. Other recent projects have included recording baroque tracks for forthcoming video games which, he says, was "an incredible experience" and is something he's being asked to do more and more frequently, as the Metaverse beckons. "Sometimes you need classical music to touch the strings of somebody's soul – a pop song won't work."
Classical music's ongoing and often powerful intersection with pop culture is being foregrounded as part of the burgeoning interest in the genre, both inside and outside its famously guarded gates. The all-teen members of the UK's National Youth Orchestra have just completed a mini tour that included a performance of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, replete with its opening symphonic sunrise eternalised by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Last August saw the BBC Proms launch its first gaming-themed programme whereby the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra took on some of the best-loved songs in video game history. While the recent autumn/winter collection from Acne Studios' younger sub-label Face offered up one of the most direct sartorial tributes to classical music to date, presenting crew-neck sweaters, T-shirts and tote bags embellished with the faces of Handel, Mozart and Bach in celebration of "the idea that a passion for classical music is the most left-field move imaginable for a modern-day teenager".
Orliński agrees that classical music has achieved an "almost hipstery" status of late. "It's cool to go to the opera, to know something, and that's because there are a lot of young artists delivering music on the highest level, while making it very entertaining," he enthuses. There is, he observes, a revived interest in classical music personalities such as Maria Callas and Pavarotti, as well as "people like Yuja Wang" who are selling out concert halls, all of which he feels bodes well for the art form. "We have a long way to go to grow as much as other genres of music, but we're moving forward." Akinboboye, too, is tentatively hopeful. "I think opera is definitely being a lot more bold, and I hope that it continues because I think we can catch up," he concludes. "[Classical music needs to] be brave, to do the scary thing. And it'll work out, because audiences are ready."
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A budding artist says he has taken more than 40 paid commissions for what he admits are "terrible" paintings - and it all began after gifting his wife an iffy portrait on their wedding day.
Jamie Lee Matthias presented his bride with a poster-paint canvas on their special occasion in May 2024, which sparked their guests into hysterics - as the piece was excellent, if the artist was five years of age.
Since sharing the painting online recently, he has received numerous orders from the public in what has been the "craziest, insane week" for the family.
"It's bringing a smile to people's faces," the artist said of his work. "For the people that get it, it's a joke - it's very funny because the art's so bad."
Mr Matthias, from Alsager, lives in a creative household, regularly painting with his step-daughter and daughter, but they often tease him about his own artwork skills.
And they aren't the only ones to make fun. It turns out everyone at home is an art critic.
“It's just the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen,” his wife Kate said of the wedding day "masterpiece".
“We've had so much fun laughing at his inability to paint.”
Amid such feedback, though, the not-so-tortured artist wondered whether he might be missing a trick.
“I made a joke, because of the poor quality of my art, that I might start trying to sell it to make money."
A social media post later and he has received dozens of paid orders for personalised portraits.
“It's been a week full of joy,” said Mrs Matthias, who is in charge of collating the orders. “I can't wait to see what he creates next.”
The rising artist has taken on the challenge of painting BBC Radio Stoke’s Lee Blakeman and has ambitions of painting local strongman, Eddie Hall.
"I think there's plenty of people out there that I could absolutely ruin a perfect picture of,” Mr Matthias said.
The creative dad has since been invited to run an art workshop at his step-daughter’s school, to "reassure" pupils their artwork "isn’t that bad", according to Heidi, 11.
But don't the critics of his unorthodox style sting, even a little bit?
Mr Matthias simply dismisses the naysayers. “They’re not my target audience,” he said.
Artists whose work focuses on poetry, storytelling, music or dance are being encouraged to apply for a Channel Islands cultural exchange with Puglia, a region in Italy.
ArtHouse Jersey, Guernsey Arts and Puglia Culture have joined together to offer six artists the chance to participate in a cultural exchange and artist residency programme.
Three artists will be selected from the Channel Islands and three artists from Puglia before the deadline of 9 February.
The event will take place in November and December with the artists tasked with working together for a 10-day residency.
'Shared medieval heritage'
Channel Islands' co-operation with Puglia began last year as the Channel Islands Brussels representative and the region of Puglia Brussels representative worked together to host a panel on sustainable economic development.
Deputy Kirsten Morel, Jersey's Minister for Sustainable Economic Development, said: "This cross-border artist residency project represents a unique opportunity to connect creative minds across cultures and borders.
He added: "The initiative will nurture artistic growth and collaboration while promoting further understanding of our shared medieval Norman heritage.
"It also builds on cultural discussions held in Jersey recently, when the UK's Italian ambassador visited the Island.
"I look forward to seeing relationships between Jersey and Italy develop further."
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An actor in the latest West End adaptation of Oliver! praised the production for how it represented women.
Buckinghamshire-born actress Shanay Holmes is playing Nancy in the Lionel Bart musical, staged at the Gielgud Theatre.
She said she played a powerful and vulnerable character who remained just as relevant as when Charles Dickens published the original Oliver Twist story in 1837.
The star said: "I challenge anyone to not know a Nancy; a strong powerful woman who self-sacrifices, brings joy to other people and depletes herself so entirely because she wants others to feel good".
"Playing Nancy has really shown me who I am as a woman and what woman are capable of," she added.
Bart, who could not read or write music, premiered his adaptation of Oliver at Wimbledon Theatre in 1960.
In 1968 it was turned into an Oscar-winning film starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Shani Wallis.
Holmes said the latest production, the first on London's West End since 2011, still feels just as current as it did when it first started.
She said: "I put my whole life experience into Nancy and make her honest and as truthful [as possible].
"I really try and pay the greatest respect to the aspects of her story that need the most serving [such as] the domestic violence, the abusive nature of her relationship to Bill and her self-sacrificing nature. I think by doing that you are making it current.
"The pure resilience of her, how powerful she is but also how vulnerable we as women can be. It's so relevant and prominent now. There's women in my life that are like that and I see myself in Nancy a lot"
Essex actor Simon Lipkin, who plays Fagin, said the story remains relevant because of Dickens.
He said: "The beauty of Dickens' writing is he truly held a mirror up to society and didn't let anyone off the hook.
"When you would read this stuff you would have no choice but to acknowledge your part of the puzzle and you would see yourself in some capacity. What's amazing is you would see yourself in people that were different to you."
He believed the musical still remained relevant as the characters from the story still exist in modern society even if now slightly changed.
"Of course there are Fagins, I'm literally basing my performance as Fagin on half of my family so yes there are Fagins, minus the criminal small child gathering.
"Those people absolutely exist, it's just time and society changes them and presents them in a different way."
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A teenage artist who has already sold works for £23,000 has just passed another milestone - her first ever painting lesson.
Makenzy Beard, 17, made waves back in 2020 when a portrait she painted of her neighbour went viral on social media.
The painting went on to appear at The Royal Academy of Arts, a prestigious London gallery.
She said she had learned "some quite important habits" after the lesson and was determined to continue refining her work.
"I've learned a little bit more about impressionism – so, not trying to make everything so realistic all the time, which I find difficult," she said.
"Up until now, I've taught everything myself – just what feels right, what I find easier, watching YouTube videos and stuff like that. I got to a point where I felt like I wasn't improving anymore.
"So, I went on this course and if I'm honest, I found it so difficult.
"I still had freedom and I could do what I wanted, but there were some things I was told… there is sort of a right and wrong way to do things, or at least, that's how to make it easier for yourself further down the line."
Ms Beard first took up painting canvases during lockdown in March 2020, using her mum's old paints from the comfort of a leaky garden shed.
At the age of just 14 she launched her career as an artist, with her work now being sold to fans across the globe.
Art enthusiasts in the Middle East, the US and the UK have expressed interest in her work.
Her recent exhibition at Blackwater Gallery in Cardiff included ten original artworks as well as a collection of six prints.
The originals attracted buyers paying up to £23,000 for her work.
Since then, Ms Beard has sought to develop her art further – she joined Millfield boarding school on an art and hockey scholarship in 2023, and began painting lessons to help develop her style and technique.
"I've picked up some weird little things, like understanding that it's better to use longer brushes when you want to paint something more freely," she said.
"These are things you would completely overlook had you not been told to do that.
"I've never understood colour theory or anything – I just did whatever I fancied, but it's helped me to understand that.
"How to mute things down, and more technical things that I was maybe doing intuitively to begin with. It helped me to understand what I was already doing and then making that better."
As well as improving her own technique, Ms Beard wants to help other young artists develop their craft.
She has donated three paintings to a charity auction taking place on 28 February at the Atkinson Gallery in Street, Somerset.
The pieces will raise money for Millfield's Discover Brilliance campaign – the very scholarship Ms Beard received to help her on her own artistic path.
"I really want other young people to be given the same opportunity I was, and so this is going to be my way of giving back," she said.
"I'm in a very fortunate position to be able to go to such a good school, and I wouldn't have been able to go had I not been financially supported.
"That's not a reason I want someone else to not reach their full potential."
Thousands of people braved sub-zero temperatures to watch an open-air spectacle starring magician Steven Frayne, formerly known as Dynamo, a 10-year-old rapper and a dozen aerial dancers to launch Bradford's year as UK City of Culture.
Frayne told the audience he started his career performing street magic in City Park, where the opening ceremony was held, and that his home city was "going to make its mark on the world" in 2025.
Organisers said about 10,000 people turned out to watch the show, which took place in temperatures of -3C (26.6F).
Bradford is the fourth UK City of Culture, a title that is awarded every four years.
The scheme is designed to boost the chosen city's visitor numbers, economies and reputations, and Bradford's year has received £15m government funding.
Other events will include the Turner Prize, a national drawing project inspired by Bradford-born artist David Hockney, and an exhibition about the parallels between boxing and calligraphy.
Frayne said headlining Friday's opening ceremony "means more than I could ever put into words".
"To be in a place where there's a massive stage put right in the centre for people to come and share in some amazement, that's a dream come true, it genuinely is," he told BBC News beforehand.
"I'm super proud to be from Bradford. It wasn't necessarily the easiest place to grow up... so to be a small, tiny part of this [celebration], it's just incredible."
The opening show, titled Rise, involved a cast of 200 including 10-year-old rapper Cruzy T plus poets, musicians and dancers alongside Frayne, with a theme of warts-and-all pride, unity, diversity and overcoming adversity.
On the two stages, scaffold towers formed stacks of boxes containing the performers, as slogans and visuals of the city and its people were projected onto the front.
Projections were also used to transform the towers into Frayne's childhood home, with a young actor playing Frayne as a boy before the real magician enlisted the crowd to take part in a series of tricks.
The show will be staged again on Saturday.
Other highlights will include a tribute to Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, a season of films by working-class northern women, the installation of a new 15m (50ft) sculpture in the city centre, and an exhibition of striking surrealist photos by Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh.
That exhibition will then tour to Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow, the first time a City of Culture event has travelled to all four nations of the UK.
Gulzar said winning the City of Culture title had also been instrumental in attracting a new Brit School, which has trained stars including Adele and Tom Holland. It is expected to open in 2027.
However, the title has not worked its magic on everything in Bradford's cultural scene.
The former Bradford Odeon, next to the site of Friday's launch event, had been due to reopen as a music venue for the City of Culture year after a £50m refurbishment.
But the NEC Group pulled out of running it last year, leaving it empty and leaving the council looking for a new operator.
The previous Cities of Culture - Londonderry, Hull and Coventry - saw increased attention and investment during their tenures, but there have been mixed outcomes and mixed feelings about the scheme's lasting impact after their years ended.
Bradford's cultural claims to fame
* The Bronte sisters - Emily, Charlotte and Anne lived in Haworth, in the Bradford district
* Frederick Delius - the composer was born in Bradford in 1862
* JB Priestley - the playwright wrote his most famous work, An Inspector Calls, in 1945
* David Hockney - Britain's greatest living artist was born in the city and studied at Bradford School of Art in the 1950s
* Andrea Dunbar - the playwright is best-known for 1982's Rita, Sue and Bob Too
* Zayn Malik - the One Direction heartthrob is a Bradford 2025 ambassador
* Bad Boy Chiller Crew - the bassline rap trio were nominated for the best group Brit Award in 2023
* Nia Archives - the jungle music producer was nominated for the Mercury Prize last year
* Zoe Thorogood - the graphic artist was nominated for five Eisner Awards, the "comic book Oscars", in 2023
* AA Dhand - the crime novelist's books about detective Harry Virdee are being turned into a major BBC One drama
A Sheffield artist has been nominated for creating the world's best street art in 2024.
Megan Russell, who works under the name Peachzz, painted for up to 12 hours a day for 10 days in a row to create the 25-metre tall artwork in the city centre.
Reverie, depicting a heron and a kingfisher, has been nominated for "best mural in the world" in Street Art Cities' best of 2024 awards.
She said working on the project, which overlooks Pounds Park, was the "biggest highlight of my career so far".
"I had free reign to be as vibrant and bold as I wanted. It's really refreshing when clients tell you that, it doesn't happen often," she said.
The piece, commissioned by Sheffield City Council, was voted the best of last June's entries in Street Art Cities' monthly competition.
"It's just been crazy. When June's votes came in, it blew my mind," Megan said.
"It was an amazing feeling to have such support from Sheffield, and it also showed how much Sheffield is interested in street art."
Now, it has been pooled with 50 other artworks, from countries including Argentina, Colombia, Russia, Spain and Denmark, for people to vote for the best of the year.
"Looking back 10 years ago, I would've never thought I could've reached this space where I am now," she said.
'An emotional January'
"I remember looking at those competitions and thinking I'd love to be nominated, and now I am. It's unbelievable."
The nomination came during "an emotional January" as Megan's grandmother Iris Reynolds, who inspired her nickname, died on Tuesday.
"She was a super creative person and inspired me a lot into being an artist. She had an iPad and was following my artwork. She seemed really proud," Megan said.
"She used to feed me tinned peaches and ice cream, and I ended up using Peachzz as an online pseudonym when I was young.
"I just never changed it, and people would call me it in person. It felt like it was a part of me."
Megan started spray painting a decade ago in old industrial buildings in Sheffield and has been working professionally for about seven years.
This year, she is working on launching a street art festival, Lick Of Paint Fest, alongside fellow artist Alastair Flindall.
The graffiti and street art scene in Sheffield has "quietened down", she said, so the festival hopes to give it a boost.
If Reverie comes in at, or near, the top in the Street Art Cities rankings, this would give the budding festival a platform, Megan said.
Voting takes place on Street Art Cities' website and is open until the end of January.
"There are so many incredible artists that are up there. It's an honour to be among such big names," she added.
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The National Gallery's Van Gogh exhibition is to stay open for 24 hours during its final weekend.
Poets And Lovers has already become the third most popular paid exhibition in the London attraction's history, with 283,499 visitors from its opening day on 14 September.
It is the gallery's first show devoted to Vincent Van Gogh, and is focuses on the artist's imaginative transformations.
It includes more than 60 works on loan from museums and private collections around the world.
Speaking about the overnight opening, Sir Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, said he was “delighted” that more than 200,000 people have seen the exhibition, and that members of the public will have the “rare and special” opportunity to experience Van Gogh's pictures during the night and early hours of the morning.
He added that those taking advantage of the event would be following in the footsteps of artists such as Freud, Bacon and Hockney, “who came here during those times to take inspiration from the gallery's collection”.
Tickets for the extra night-time viewing slots on 17 January will go on sale on Thursday, with the gallery opening overnight for just the second time in its history - with the first being for Leonardo da Vinci: Painter At The Court of Milan in 2012.
A 90-minute in-depth film called Exhibition On Screen: Van Gogh Poets And Lovers, directed by David Bickerstaff, will also show off the display in UK cinemas.
National Gallery members are able to visit the exhibition, which closes on 19 January, for free.
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Across the UK, a collection of natural marvels reveal themselves at this time of year, including some of the rarest and most spectacular phenomena that the country has to offer.
For many Brits, the winter months – particularly once Christmas and New Year have passed – are all about hunkering down at home and waiting for the freeze to thaw. Across the British Isles, though, a collection of natural marvels reveals itself at this time of year, including some of the rarest and most spectacular phenomena that the country has to offer.
From ghostly optical illusions to flocks of dancing birds, these British winter wonders are enough to encourage even the most ardent homebody to get their boots on, brush up on their photography skills and brave the big chill.
Mountain hares
Animals changing their coats in the winter is a phenomenon often associated with polar species: the Arctic fox, Peary caribou and Canada's collared lemming, for instance. Less well known is that the British Isles have an animal of their own that dons a dashing white winter coat: the mountain hare.
Although it is now vanishingly rare, this is Britain's only native hare – the brown hare, much more common today, was introduced to Britain by the Romans. England's only population of mountain hares lives in the Peak District, where the animal was reintroduced in the 1800s. They can be spotted in their snow-white winter coats between November and April, bathing in the pale sunlight in areas of moorland and heather. One of their favoured haunts is Bleaklow, a mountain along the Pennine Way atmospherically scattered with the wreckage of World War Two aircraft.
The largest concentration of mountain hares in the UK, though, is in the Scottish Highlands, where the animals can be spotted on sheltered slopes covered in thin snow, beneath which they dig for food. Mountain hares can be found all over the region, but a popular spot is the Monadhliath Mountains, southeast of Loch Ness. While you're there, look out for the mountain hare's avian equivalent: the ptarmigan. This plump, grouse-like animal is the only British bird that turns white in winter, and the UK's only population also lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Brocken spectres
Scotland is also one of the best places in the UK to spot another mountain phenomenon: the eerie Brocken spectre. Many a hillwalker has paused on a mountain trail and turned to admire a cloud-scattered view, only to be confronted with a huge, looming shadow figure, often with rainbow-coloured glory rings emanating from its head.
This creepy optical illusion is actually the walker's own shadow, magnified to enormous proportions. It appears when the Sun rises on one side of the walker and casts their shadow onto a blanket of cloud on the other side. As such, it is especially common during cloud inversions, when clouds gather in valleys below mountaintops, giving the impression of a soft white ocean. A light wind completes the spooky effect, making the spectre move as if it has a life of its own.
The Brocken spectre takes its name from the Brocken, a mountain in Germany where it is commonly observed, but it can be spotted in the right conditions in highland areas across the UK, from the Lake District to the Malvern Hills. The most storied spot to see it though is Ben Macdui, the highest peak in Scotland's Cairngorms Mountains and the second-highest mountain in Britain.
Sightings of Brocken spectres here are likely to have inspired the legend of the Big Grey Man (Am Fear Liath Mòr in Scottish Gaelic) of Ben Macdui. The Grey Man matches the description of the Brocken spectre – a tall, thin shadow figure obscured by fog – though he is accompanied by the eerie added elements of the sound of crunching gravel and a general feeling of unease.
Many people report feeling alarmed or unsettled by their experience of the Brocken spectre, and the symbolic quality of the phenomenon – its ability to terrify a person with nothing more than their own shadow – has been commented on by the likes of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
Starling murmurations
One of the best loved phenomena in the world of birdwatching – and often described as Britain's greatest natural spectacle – is murmuration, the species-specific word given to the flocking behaviour of starlings. These small birds are very social animals, often roosting together in their thousands, and during the winter months they flock together to fly at dawn and dusk in remarkable swirling formations, like a synchronised dance troupe casting morphing silhouettes against the twilit sky.
It's thought that the flocking behaviour, much like shoaling of fish, serves the purpose of confusing predators as well as sharing warmth and communication. The name "murmuration" comes from the murmuring sound generated by the collective flap of the birds' wings, which can be impressively loud as they pass overhead. There's much that seems mysterious about murmuration, not least how the starlings do it without crashing into each other. The birds move in unison, but in incredibly complex patterns, as if they are tapped into a hive mind – but in fact, it's their incredibly quick reaction times that keep them from colliding.
There's something awe-inspiring about witnessing this ancient avian dance, which takes place at sunrise and sunset across the UK between November and February. Although murmurations happen inland too, coastal areas are particular hotspots. Aberystwyth, in west Wales, sees murmurations take place over its Victorian seafront pier – a picturesque juxtaposition of human engineering and natural wonderment that is a favourite of photographers.
The dark night
Britain is a densely populated island, and really dark night skies can be hard to find in built-up areas. In fact, according to Kielder Observatory in the north-eastern English county of Northumberland, "85% of the UK population has never seen a truly dark sky or experienced the sense of wonder that a clear night filled with billions of stars can give."
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Outside the cities and towns, though, true darkness can still be found. Kielder Observatory sits in the second-largest area of protected dark sky in Europe, and holds several stargazing evenings each week in the winter months. The observatory is a remarkable construction in itself: a futuristic, boxy building made from local spruce and larch trees, looking like an organic spaceship that's crash-landed amid the dark conifers of Kielder Forest.
Nights at the observatory follow different themes, focusing variously on topics including the life cycles of stars, the planets of the solar system, and the night sky's great light show: the aurora. Traditionally, if Brits wanted to see the Northern Lights reliably, it meant booking a pricey holiday to the distant north: Finland, Sweden or somewhere else on the fringes of the Arctic Circle. In autumn 2024, however, the Sun entered a solar maximum, a period of heightened activity that brings the aurora out in vivid technicolour at more southerly locations than usual, including Britain. This period is expected to last for two or three years before gradually declining, and Northumberland – with its northerly latitude and dark night skies – is an excellent place to spot the Northern Lights.
Kielder is also home to one of England's only populations of red squirrel, the country's native squirrel, which is at risk of extinction thanks to the introduction of its cousin, the grey squirrel. Although red squirrels can be spotted year-round, they are very elusive, and the winter can be the best time to spot them, when their russet-coloured coats stand out more vividly against the blanket of snow.
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France has more than its fair share of flamboyant dishes – but the most elaborate of all is pressed duck, where a roast duck's bones are crushed to create a decadent "blood sauce".
Follow the loops of the River Seine that winds for 356km from Normandy to Paris, and there are subtle clues that point to the origins of one of French cuisine's most revered dishes, le canard à la presse (pressed duck).
As I stand on the riverside in the sleepy Normandy town of Duclair, set on one of those meandering bends just 20km from my first destination, the city of Rouen, I can see steep white cliffs towering above the waterway that once sheltered ducks who stopped to rest here on their migration south. En route, I passed the huge Christofle factory, the 200-year-old makers of exquisite cutlery and silverware – and the famous silver duck press that is key to the dish's great ceremonial service.
Le canard à la presse is an elaborate and macabre dish that is as much about ceremony as flavour. It involves dramatically crushing the carcass of a part-roasted duck in an ornate silver press that extracts the blood and juices, which are then used to cook the decadent "sauce au sang" (blood sauce) that is made tableside by the maitre d'. The sauce is immediately served with the tender ducks fillets, with the roasted legs brought out after as a second course.
However, for two years, this most decadent of dishes was absent from menus. In 2022 and 2023, avian flu ravaged the supplies of ducks for restaurants across France, but with careful administration of antibiotics, the poultry is now once again safe to serve across France, including in its homeland of Rouen, which was named a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy in 2021.
Eating this dish is a chance to experience the pomp and ceremony that set classic French cuisine on the global stage in the late 19th Century, and its tableside preparation offers diners a rare glimpse into the fine art of French cooking, which is usually done in the kitchen. It is still served in the some of the nation's most glamorous dining rooms, as well as specialist restaurants, and there are aficionados who travel the world to try it in new places. It even has its own Order of Canardiers, a kind of guild that protects its heritage. Yet its origins are altogether more humble and have much to do with a particularly fat and blood-filled cross-bred duck.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the most famous address to serve it – La Tour d'Argent – on the banks of the Seine, reopened in August 2023 after a two-year renovation, and guests are once again enchanted by the sight of their Premier Maitre de l'Hotel (number one maitre d', to you and me) preparing canard à la presse. The restaurant and its duck press is so revered that, back in 2016, La Tour d'Argent auctioned a 19th-Century press for the staggering sum of €40,000 (they have five other presses for use in the restaurant, including one currently on loan to Paris' Musée de l'Art Decoratifs for their Christofle exhibition, which runs until April 2025).
Yet for a dish that has such prestige, like many French dishes, it has its roots in the countryside. When I arrive at Rouen's smart Hotel de Dieppe for a rendezvous with Josette Cheval, a member of the Order of Canardiers, she tells me how it all started.
"The chalky cliffs make the climate slightly warmer along the banks of the River Seine and therefore the ducks migrating would stop to rest, meet the local ducks and," she claps her hands twice, laughing, "clack, clack, some little fat ducklings would then arrive!"
We're chatting in the lounge of the hotel, an important address in the history of the dish. Here, managing director Julien Marchal-Guéret, the grand-nephew of Michel Guéret who established the Order of Canardiers in 1986, joins us and takes up the story. "Everything started in the 17th Century, we think, when these ducks were hunted. This fatter, cross-bred duck [which became known as the Duclair duck] has very tender flesh, it's very red and very tasty," he says. "Hunters would make a meal from the ducks whereby they would put the heart and liver into a small bowl, flambée it with Calvados and make a sauce and then dip the fillets into it. It was a little feast in the forest."
From there, the recipe became a local dish in Duclair and Rouen, and later, in the late 19th Century, it became a speciality of the long-closed Hotel de la Poste in Duclair thanks to its owner Henri "Père" Denise, who bought ducks from the market across the river in the village of Anneville-Ambourville.
"With the wind and the rain of Normandy, the farmers would protect the ducks, perhaps by holding them under their cloaks and they accidentally suffocated," says Marchal-Guéret.
As gruesome as it sounds, the fact the ducks' blood remained in the carcass added to the tenderness of the meat, and the story goes that Père Denise was only too happy to take the suffocated ducks for a bargain price. From then on, this was how the ducks were slaughtered.
Marchal-Guéret's family's part in the story came in the 1930s when his great uncle, Michel Guéret, worked as an apprentice aboard the river cruise-liner, the Felix Faure. "He was given carte blanche by the captain one evening to cook for the passengers, and he made the dish, making a few changes such as replacing Calvados with cognac and port." At the Hotel de Dieppe, it is Marachal-Guéret who does the honours of serving the dish in the small dining room in the restaurant Café Victor.
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My own chance to taste the dish at the Café Victor that evening is foiled, however, as Cheval and Marchal-Guéret are both attending the initiation of the new members of the Ordre du Canardier, where 19 new members are due to don their medals, mounted on blue-striped ribbons. There are nearly 200 members for the Rouen chapter of the Order – and "around 3,000 to 3,500 around the world", says Marchal-Guére, proudly, noting that his customers also come from far and wide to taste the dish. "There are fans who come because they want to try all the different variations. And a lot of Parisians just come to Rouen for the day."
For a dish prepared with such ceremony, an impressive dining room is surely a must, and there are few that equal the majesty of La Tour d'Argent, a Parisian restaurant with a 400-year history. When I step into the restaurant's sixth-floor dining room, I can't help but gasp at the heart-soaring view – Notre-Dame Cathedral's spire is newly in situ after the fire and the River Seine parts either side of the Ile de la Cité. Light pours in through the full-height windows and reflects from the mirrored ceiling. Each table is laid with white linen and silver Christofle cutlery, charger plates and goblets.
Although La Tour d'Argent's version of the canard à la presse has its roots in Rouen, its importance is due to the restaurant's late-19th-Century owner Frédéric Delair who introduced the dish here and, in so doing, opened another chapter in its story. La Tour d'Argent began as an inn in 1582; later that century it is thought to have been the first place in France that the fork was used – adopted from Italy to save diners dropping food onto their enormous ruffs.
Where Rouen's version of the sauce, la sauce Rouennaise, has elements that are prepared in the kitchen beforehand, the sauce at La Tour d'Argent is prepared entirely in front of the guest. Premier Maitre de l'Hotel Olivier Jacquin is proud to share the process, explaining that it begins tableside with the carving of the roasted duck.
First, he says, the skin is intricately removed with tweezers and then the fillets are sliced from the breast. Next, the duck legs are removed and taken back to the kitchen to be roasted further for the second part of the dish. As I watch, Jacquin places the remaining carcass in the central cavity of the press and turns the wheel, its spout delivering a scarlet drizzle of blood. This is added to the heart and liver in a silver dish atop a silver stove. Next, in goes a glass of the finest cognac and a glass of Madeira wine, and Jacquin whisks it gently over the heat as it thickens – the blood serving as the emulsifier. Then the brown, velvety sauce is gently spooned over the fillets on their silver platter and served to the table alongside the lightest of pommes soufflées (French fried potatoes).
When I taste the duck, the fillets are so tender, I barely need to chew; the sauce is velvety smooth and rich with whispering aromas of cognac and Madeira; and the pommes soufflés are the perfect contrast – the light crispy puffed potato pillows crack on my tongue. This part of the dish would easily be rich and filling enough, but there's more to come. The second course is the roasted legs, which are so delicate that the meat falls apart on the fork. I take each bite with a soupçon of the accompanying tarragon-flecked, egg yolk-rich Béarnaise sauce, and I grin with the decadence of it all.
As I finish the meal, I am presented with a certificate: every duck served at La Tour d'Argent since 1890 has a number. Mine is 1,190,337, inscribed on a souvenir postcard, the restaurant's name is embossed in silver with a cartoon duck serving a silver cloche. With my waistline bursting, my gaze returns to the view of the River Seine. I conclude that the dish has had quite the journey through four centuries and along the rivers' loops from Duclair, when it was a hunter's feast in the forest.
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Jeremy Sewall has cooked at eateries around the world, but home in Boston, he's known for his clam chowder. Here are his top local bowls, from Neptune Oyster to Yankee Lobster.
New England Clam chowder – a stick-to-your-ribs cream-based clam and potato stew – is beloved all over the United States, but synonymous with the city of Boston.
Clear broth-style chowders or stews made by the New England region's Indigenous peoples date back hundreds of years, including tribes in what is now Massachusetts. Quahogs, a type of local clam, along with other shellfish, fish and native ingredients like corn and beans were primary ingredients in early-recorded renditions of the chowder, which later incorporated traditions brought by English settlers, who swapped corn and beans for potatoes. And since 1836, chowder – or chowdah, as it's often pronounced in Boston – has been proudly served at the city's Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in continuous service in the US. Over the decades, New England-style clam chowder has become woven into the very fabric of the city's culinary identity.
Though Boston's food scene has become world-class and international, clam chowder is still found on menus all over town, from the city's finest eateries to the concession stands at Fenway Park, the iconic Red Sox ballpark. But not all creamy clam chowders are made equal. To highlight Boston's most extraordinary bowls, we spoke to Jeremy Sewall, chef and partner of Row 34 in Boston's atmospheric Seaport.
While the hallmarks of traditional New England clam chowder are sacrosanct – a milky-white creamy base, chopped clams, diced potatoes and often bacon or salt pork – opinions vary on other elements and ingredients. Sewall himself thickens Row 34's chowder with a traditional roux of flour and butter, adding salty bacon fat to deliver a velvety taste. His secret ingredient is a subtle dash of green tabasco. "It adds a nice little bit of spice and acidity to it," he says. "[Chowder's] been a part of Boston culture for a long time and represents what New England is. It's a hearty, simple dish that, when done really well, is an iconic thing. That's why it's been around for hundreds of years and is still one of the most popular dishes in Boston."
Sewall adds that Boston's location on Massachusetts Bay, and by extension, the Atlantic Ocean, intrinsically lends itself to phenomenal just-caught seafood. "It's accessible here," he says. "It's just part of how we make things; certainly a simple thing like chowder. The chopped clams that everybody traditionally uses for chowder, they're all available, so it's just how we cook here."
Here are Sewall's favourite clam chowders in Boston.
1. Best classic chowder: Summer Shack
Summer Shack is a laidback restaurant in Boston's affluent Back Bay neighbourhood, just three blocks from the world-famous Boston Marathon finish line. This renowned spot is a casual outpost founded by the late Jasper White, an iconic chef best known as a pioneer in Boston fine dining. Summer Shack's menu promises a "classic New England clam chowder", and delivers a medium-thick, clam-packed creation. "I think they're really good about not letting it get too thick. Some places do a really thick chowder, which I don't love," says Sewall. "Summer Shack's is classic. It's oyster crackers and bacon and chopped clams and potatoes; that's exactly what I wanted today."
Most Boston restaurants serve their chowder alongside packs of Westminster Backer's Co oyster crackers – flaky, dime-size crackers that diners can add in at their discretion. But Summer Shack takes the liberty of serving their chowder with oyster crackers already on top. "Any chowder has to have some good pieces of stuff in there because it adds that texture," says Sewall. "It can't be all puréed. You've got to feel like you're seeing stuff on your spoon and chewing things. Anything that's too creamy or too puréed? No. Doesn't work."
Website: www.summershackrestaurant.com/location/summer-shack-boston
Address: 50 Dalton Street, Boston, MA 02115
Phone: +1 617-867-9955
Instagram: @jwsummershack
2. Best on "see-and-be-seen" Newbury Street: Little Whale Oyster Bar
"Little Whale's is another great version of a classic clam chowder; very straight forward," says Sewall, crediting the restaurant's chef Michael Serpa. "He does fresh clam, potato, bacon, celery and a little bit of fresh herbs in there. That's what chowder is supposed to be."
Though chef Serpa is otherwise known for creative takes on seafood classics, cherrystone clams are the cornerstone of Little Whale's chowder. These meaty but lean palm-sized hard-shelled clams are well-suited for chowder as they are sweet and mild, their briny tenderness emphasised by the creamy broth. Though native to the US's East Coast, many chefs in the US gravitate to cherrystones harvested from New England's cool waters. Serpa's menu specifies that their rendition of chowder includes smoked bacon and thyme, flavours that impart a subtle smoky punch and dash of earthiness.
Nestled in a 19th-Century brownstone, Little Whale is a petite, charming eatery on tony Newbury Street in Back Bay. A banquette lines the wall, but the marble-top bar is one of the best spots to belly up for a chowder bowl, unless it's warm out, when the patio reigns supreme.
Website: www.littlewhaleboston.com
Address: 314 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02115
Phone: +1 857-277-0800
Instagram: @littlewhaleoysterbar
3. Best for date night: Neptune Oyster
With cosy marble tables for two and a robust wine list full of celebratory bubbly, this tiny 37-seat temple to briny aphrodisiacs oozes romance.
Neptune Oyster, modelled after classic Parisian oyster bars, has been a staple in Boston's predominately Italian North End neighbourhood – an iconic culinary hub – for more than two decades. A queue promising an hour-long wait is common outside this shoebox-sized restaurant, which swells with accolades from sources like The New York Times and the James Beard Foundation.
"Neptune does an awesome job," says Sewall. "It's a classic oyster bar and they've done chowder in Boston for many, many years. It's consistent, and that can be hard to do."
Neptune's Wellfleet clam chowder, named after the coastal community on nearby Cape Cod where the clams are sourced, is the most brothy on Sewall's list compared to thicker renditions, but it offers hearty chunks of fresh clams and tender potatoes that stop just short of mushy and a savouriness derived from salt-cured pork belly. Topped with thyme and a sprinkle of paprika, Neptune Oyster's chowder is perfectly suitable on its own or as an idyllic prelude to the restaurant's iconic lobster roll.
Website: www.neptuneoyster.com
Address: 63 Salem Street #1, Boston, MA 02113
Phone: +1 617-742-3474
Instagram: @neptuneoyster
4. Best for chowder on the go: James Hook & Co.
"James Hook does a really good chowder," says Sewall. A family-owned lobster restaurant and Boston mainstay since 1925, James Hook earned its enviable reputation in the lobster business, catching the crustaceans in Maine and Canada then hauling the lot down to Boston for distribution. Today, the restaurant ships more than 50,000lb of lobster daily across the US, while their simple counter-service seafood shanty is just steps from Boston Harbor.
James Hook's menu boasts New England clam "chowda" with a consistency that is thick, but not enough to distract from the flavour of the sweet whole clams, punctuated by hearty thick-cut potatoes. It's twice been crowned champion of Boston's annual Chowderfest, a summertime competition of the best chowders in the region.
Website: https://www.jameshooklobster.com
Address: 440 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA 02110
Phone: +1 617-423-5501
Instagram: @jameshooklobster
5. Best seafood market chowder: Yankee Lobster
A Boston favourite since 1950, Yankee Lobster is run by the third generation of the Zanti family, who have made their living on the water. The restaurant is decidedly casual – diners order at a counter and are given a buoy with a number letting servers know where to deliver their grub. Yankee Lobster doubles as a seafood market, and its location in Boston's swanky Seaport lures locals and visitors alike.
The legendary "spoon test" for New England clam chowder is performed by inserting a spoon in the centre of the chowder to see if the consistency is thick enough to make the spoon stand straight up. Though Sewall says he personally prefers chowder not quite thick enough to pass the spoon test, he is a fan of Yankee Lobster's chowder. "It's traditional, it's creamy, it's hot and it's rich – all the stuff it should be," he says. "They do a great job."
Website: https://www.yankeelobster.com
Address: 300 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 02210
Phone: +1 617-423-5501
Instagram: @yankeelobsterco
BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
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Visit Jersey has launched a new campaign that aims to "challenge outdated perceptions" of the island.
It has announced its spring 2025 campaign called The Sea Meets Soul.
The organisation said its aim was for tourists to "discover what sets Jersey apart as a holiday destination like no other".
Tourism and hospitality businesses will be showcased throughout the campaign, it said.
Advertisements will feature images of Jersey's coastline and country lanes, bosses said.
Tricia Warwick, the organisation's chief executive, said last year's campaign "marked a fresh direction for Jersey".
"We are continuing to evolve Where Sea Meets Soul this year to further raise brand awareness and challenge outdated perceptions of Jersey," she said.
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While the tourism economy in the west is reported to be worth a record £2.46 billion, many businesses say they are seeing a trend of last minute bookings.
According to research from Visit West, the tourism industry is thriving and supporting 46,000 jobs.
But people working in the sector say they have to be creative to persuade visitors to book holidays during the off-season.
"We are working all the time to come up with new and innovative ideas," said Grace Harvey, marketing manager of Puxton Park in Weston-super-Mare.
The attraction has developed an experience called Pigs & Prosecco, where visitors can enjoy afternoon tea and a chance to pet some piglets.
It is one of dozens of ideas dreamed up to bring people to the park in winter.
"We're constantly engineering new ideas and coming up with new concepts," Ms Harvey said.
She explained that footfall dropped slightly during the winter season, due to fewer holidaymakers visiting the seaside town.
Lucy Green, who runs holiday cottages in Minehead, said it was "hard work" coming up with ideas to fill up her cottage in the off-season.
She said she decided to offer "micro weddings" - intimate events with only a few guests.
"I'm always looking at trends in hospitality and seeing what other people are doing in other countries and if there is something we can do here and adapt for the English market," Ms Green said.
"You have to be very creative. If it doesn't work, we just try something else.
"If we stay how we are, the business is going to shrink."
Prioritising experiences
Kathryn Davis, director of Visitor West, said businesses had become more creative in recent years.
"We've seen a huge amount of innovation in the experience - and that's really the buzzword of the last couple of years - it's about visitor experience," she said.
She said businesses were thinking of new offerings that were "slightly different to the norm", such as themed events and arts and crafts.
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A woman who "lost everything" when a fire devastated her home has said it gave her the "freedom" to live the life of her dreams.
A fire broke out inside Nicky Maidment's flat in Clifton, Bristol, on 4 February 2020 caused by an electrical fault. While no one was hurt, all of Ms Maidment's belongings were ruined by the smoke.
But the 65-year-old said that seeing her possessions as "just things" meant she was able to re-evaluate her life and work all around the world as a digital nomad.
"I just thought to myself, well, I've always wanted to travel, I've always wanted to do things and maybe this was a sign, an opportunity, to do that," she said.
Ms Maidment is one of a growing number of digital nomads who swapped a permanent office for a series of locations around the globe.
The term digital nomad generally refers to people who travel freely while working remotely using technology and the internet.
"Obviously, I was sad to move out of my lovely flat in Clifton," said Ms Maidment.
"It was just surreal. I was almost numb. But I was more grateful for the fact that we were all OK."
Ms Maidment was living in the flat with her son and grandson when the fire started.
She managed to retrieve some of her family heirlooms, which were under her bed, and moved into a flat she had been renting out, but which was vacant at the time.
"I spent that time in lockdown evaluating where I was, who I was, and what I wanted to do," said Ms Maidment.
"I found out that what I really wanted to do was to be free to travel.
"I just embraced the freedom that it allowed me to have."
Working as a Neuro-linguistic Programming Practitioner (NLP) - who works with people to help them overcome issues such as PTSD, panic attacks and traumas - Ms Maidment moved her business online.
When it was safe to travel, she decided to go to Malta, where she was born and had visited before.
As a single woman travelling, she felt that she needed to "find her tribe", so she moved to a co-living space in Malta with young people.
It was a pivotal decision for her, as she adapted to a new lifestyle of being a digital nomad.
She has since travelled to Australia, Bali and Thailand.
Currently back in Bristol visiting family, Ms Maidment said traveling has changed her, and that immersing herself in other cultures has made her realise she does not value material possessions as much.
"Your relationships and your connections are more important," she said.
"Once you let go of that, then it frees you up to go and explore and just be who you are."
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Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country's transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording.
The recorders were originally examined in South Korea, the ministry said.
When the data was found to be missing, they were taken to the US and analysed by American safety regulators.
The plane was travelling from Bangkok on 29 December when it crash-landed at Muan International Airport and slid into a wall off the end of the runway, bursting into flames.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, told Reuters news agency that the loss of data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested that all power, including back-up, could have been cut.
Many questions remain unanswered. Investigators have been looking at the role that a bird strike or weather conditions may have played.
They have also focused on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it hit the runway.
In Lithuania’s Dzūkija National Park, losing yourself amongst the pine trees while hunting for mushrooms is an occurrence so common it has its own word: "nugrybauti".
The thickening canopy of trees swallowed the last trace of sunlight, and with it, our sense of direction. Lifting our gaze from the forest floor, we noticed that the surrounding woods – minutes ago a familiar landscape of sun-dappled clearings and winding tracks – had been replaced by an expanse of dense brown shadows, suddenly foreign and disorienting.
Our guide Tom Baltušis, owner of the foraging tour company Dzūkijos Uoga, had noticed it too. "In Lithuania, we have a specific word for this sensation. Nugrybauti: lost in the forest whilst hunting for mushrooms."
To a nation so fixated with foraging, these woods in Djūkija National Park in southern Lithuania hold a particular allure. Just an hour's drive from the capital Vilnius, the park – Lithuania's largest – is blanketed by dense pine forests, concealing a sprawling tapestry of bogs, black alder swamps and smoky marshland. It's a protected landscape that supports an astonishing abundance and variety of edible mushrooms.
Foraging has long been a cornerstone of local life here, and the practice – once a necessity but now a beloved pastime – has shaped the region's living habits, cuisine and economy over the centuries.
Now, Djūkija's estimated 300 varieties of edible mushrooms draw mycophiles from around the world to this quiet corner of the Baltics, joining locals on the hunt for some of Europe's largest, rarest and finest fungi amidst unending tracts of pristine forest.
A haven for fungi
Djūkija's unique soil composition was shaped thousands of years ago when ice age glaciers left behind vast sand deposits across the region. The moist, well-draining ground conditions that resulted provide the ideal environment for extensive fungal networks (mycelium) to thrive underground, exchanging nutrients with the park's millions of pine trees in a process known as ectomycorrhiza.
"It's a paradise for mushrooms, but this sandy, infertile soil made agriculture impossible here," Baltušis explains. "We can only grow a small handful of crops, so the primary source of food and income has always been the forest. For centuries, families hunted, foraged for berries and collected mushrooms, which not only provided sustenance for themselves but also allowed them to sell forest produce to surrounding regions."
Historic mushroom trade
Remnants of Djūkija's booming mushroom trade remain in isolated villages like Zervynos (pictured above), where locals once sourced, dried and cured the region's fungi to be sent to chefs and Soviet elites in Vilnius, Warsaw and St Petersburg. Grūtas Park, located 40km to the west, is an exhibition of USSR-era monuments collected by Viliumas Malinauskas, Lithuania's "Mushroom Millionaire", whose business exporting Dzūkija's mushrooms to the rest of Europe made him, for a time in the 1990s, one of the country's wealthiest men.
Today, the dozens of cars dotting the highway, bonnets heavy with boxes of chanterelles, signal Djūkija's more modest mushroom trade. One roadside vendor, Agnė, tells me that "foraging was once a means of survival. Now, it's simply a way of life."
Local expertise
Grybautojas (mushroom hunters) here are among Europe's most discerning, closely tracking rainfall, humidity and even the lunar cycle, believed by some to stir up groundwater and influence the fructification of their favourite varieties. Most pick more than they can eat, selling the excess to passing travellers.
"Foragers in Dzūkija know exactly how to find what they're looking for," said Baltušis, as we picked our way through a clearing. "Porcini like to grow near white moss and oak trees; red-capped scaler stalks prefer birch groves; chanterelles enjoy growing among junipers."
"And of course, every local keeps their favourite spots a sworn secret. If you ask anybody in Djūkija where to find the best mushrooms, they'll simply reply, 'In the forest'."
A taste of variety
Baltušis tells me that an estimated 300 varieties of mushrooms are consumed across Djūkija's dozens of villages and hamlets, and he lists them off as we wind through the trees. "Chantarelles, milkcap, honey fungus, boletus, chicken of the woods." But pinning down an exact number is difficult, he adds, "as some species considered poisonous elsewhere are often enjoyed by the park's most experienced foragers".
Species like honey fungus, considered mildly toxic in countries like Norway, are parboiled by some in Djūkija to safely consume in soups; whilst false morels – deep brown, wrinkled and often deadly when eaten raw – are among the first spring mushrooms prized by seasoned grybautojas in Dzūkija, boiled intensively between three to five times to fully extract any toxins.
A destination for mycophiles
"The sheer abundance and variety of mushrooms here, along with the beautiful natural scenery, is what attracts enthusiasts from all over the world," says Regina Baltušienė, who co-owns Dzūkijos Uoga with Tom, her partner.
Specialising in eco-tourism, they lead foraging excursions from their traditional hamlet homestead and offer expert guidance in safely hunting for baskets of Djūkija's wild mushrooms, hosting foragers from around the world to help them uncover the region's very best.
"Many guests coming to Lithuania are fascinated by our leisure activity," says Tom. "In a globalising world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find traditions so specific to one particular region, but mushroom picking offers the perfect chance to experience Djūkija's culture and nature simultaneously".
Forest floor to fork
As mushroom season gets underway in late August, locals in Djūkija seize the opportunity to incorporate the park's fungi – whether dried, cured, crushed or powdered – into the country's most popular meat, fish and potato dishes before December brings foraging to an abrupt, frosty end.
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The flavorful bavarykas mushroom is stuffed into cepelinai (parcels of thick potato dough); while grybų sriuba (Lithuania's ubiquitous mushroom soup) and kugelis (potato pudding) take on Djūkija's abundant porcini and boletus. Butter-fried russulas, saffron milk caps and parasol mushrooms, with their distinctive meat-like flavour, are all popular appetisers.
Foraging freely
"Here, everyone can freely pick mushrooms and berries, except in state-protected areas and territories," says Regina. The country's "Right to Roam" laws, based on the principle of "everyman's right" – the legal concept that argues that the wilderness ought to remain open to all for recreational activity – allow citizens to access natural resources, such as Djūkija's mushrooms and berries, even on private property, so long as the privacy of homeowners is respected.
"Indeed, in Lithuania, forest owners are required to allow everyone to pick mushrooms on their land," she adds.
The next generation
"Mushroom picking is a part of life and identity for the residents of Dzūkija, who have been foraging since childhood, learning about every species from their parents and grandparents," says Regina. Education centres in the regional hub of Varėna, affectionately referred to as Djūkija’s "Capital of Mushrooms", and the town's annual Mushroom Festival are part of an effort to keep the park’s traditions alive, teaching younger generations about the cultural significance and lifestyle benefits of foraging.
"If our mushroom-picking tradition is not preserved, the region will lose its identity and future generations will miss out twofold," Regina says. "On both a wonderful pastime and the delicious dishes made from Djūkija's freshly gathered wild mushrooms."
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As you start to look at the year ahead, have you thought about how you will be travelling? The world's travel firms – from Airbnb to Booking.com – have.
Their predictions, gathered from survey data, user behaviour and forward bookings, function as an annual showcase for new ideas in the industry, from identifying future hotspots to considering how and why we will explore the world in the upcoming year.
"People are drawn to trends because they offer a sense of structure and understanding in an increasingly complex and fast-paced world," explains Jenny Southan, CEO of Globetrender, the world's leading travel trend forecasting agency. "When it comes to travel, trends provide clarity and a roadmap for how to engage with the world around us.
For cultural futurist Jasmine Bina, CEO of Concept Bureau and an experienced analyst of consumer behaviour, they are a signifier of our deepest longings. "Travel trends are a window into what people really desire when the rules of everyday life are suspended," she says. "Right now, what they really want is to feel transformed."
While the travel industry has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, economic uncertainty, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the change of presidency in the US is making 2025 feel anything but predictable.
"You could say that perhaps we are looking for new anchors," says Bina. "Travel trends like stargazing, holiday romance, nostalgia tourism, sleep tourism, digital detoxes and so on show us that people are searching to be reconnected to something bigger than themselves."
Southan agrees. "Trends create a shared narrative – a sense of collective discovery – where we are all participants in a global dialogue about what matters," she says. "Whether it's the allure of off-the-beaten-path destinations or the desire to 'travel with purpose', trends provide us with an anchor, making it easier to understand where we fit within the broader landscape of global travel."
Here are some of the top trends forecasted for 2025, as predicted by some of the world's leading travel brands and tour operators.
1. Noctourism
Noctourism – nocturnal + tourism – encompasses nighttime travel experiences, from late-opening museums to bioluminescent beaches to northern lights watching. Solar activity is going to be at its highest for decades in 2025, sending higher than average numbers of charged particles to interact with the Earth's atmosphere, creating dramatic aurora viewing opportunities. Award-winning UK travel firm Trailfinders tips Finnish Lapland and Norway's Lofoten Islands, plus Svalbard and Iceland as prime destinations to see them. Noctotourism interacts neatly with what's always been a key tenet of the travel industry: fostering connection with the wider world.
2. Calmcations
Calmcations – holidays purely focused on creating a sense of tranquillity – continue to be popular for 2025. Noise is in particular focus, following a report from the World Health Organisation that rates noise pollution, particularly from traffic, as the second most important cause of ill health in Western Europe.
Havila Voyages has created "quiet escapes" along the Norwegian coast that offer a chance to step away from the clamour of everyday life, featuring sound monitoring stations and a live noise forecast that compares the output in decibels against cities including New York, Paris and London. Alternatively, Unplugged offers tech-free cabins in the UK and Europe with a mission "to help the always on switch off"; while brand new retreat Majamaja in the Helsinki archipelago comprises of a series of architect-designed off-grid cabins that allow you to reconnect with nature. It's all a sign that right now, the escapism of travel includes escaping technology.
3. Travel meets AI
We can expect to see technology start to play a larger role in trip planning: travel tech company Amadeus found that almost 50% of its customers are planning to prioritise generative AI through 2025. The survey also noted, however, that many travel firms are still not quite sure how to use the technology; they could take inspiration from flight-free holiday firm Byway, which has created its own proprietary AI engine to take the complexity out of timetables and multi-country travel, solving a significant problem when it comes to European travel.
Other firms, including Trip Advisor, are employing generative AI to help build itineraries for trips, while a growing number of airports are ditching paper tags and using the technology to sort baggage more efficiently. At Hyatt hotels, an AI-powered bed can monitor your heart rate, movement and blood pressure to offer more comfort and a better night's sleep.
But it's not all positive for technology. According to research from ABTA association of travel agents and tour operators, a Gen Z traveller is now almost as likely to be flicking through a holiday brochure for travel inspiration as browsing the internet for ideas, hinting that the trend towards tech is not universal.
4. The return of the holiday romance
Going hand in hand with the rise in digitisation has been a rise in digital burn out, particularly when it comes to relationships. According to a 2024 Forbes Health survey, 79% of Gen Z feel exhausted from online dating. How to solve the problem? A travel trends report from Globetrender and Amadeus includes a section on meeting new people in real life as one of its five key predictions for the year.
Whether you have a holiday romance or not, it's easier than ever to find a trip where friendship can blossom with increasing numbers of group and solo travel opportunities. G Adventures and Flash Pack are just two firms offering expanded options for solo travellers seeking social adventures.
5. Off-the-beaten-track goes mainstream
After significant overtourism issues in 2024, off-the-beaten-track destinations are on the rise. As Byway notes in their travel trends of 2025, "people want to travel where they're welcomed wholeheartedly". The firm cites "destination dupes" – holiday locations that are similar to popular hotspots – as a trend to watch, where travellers may swap the likes of Cornwall for Norfolk, for example.
Other key destinations for the year are a little more off the traditional tourist map. Trailfinders names Uzbekistan as one of their top places to visit; while luxury tour operator Scott Dunn is tipping East Africa's islands, thanks to new hotel openings in Zanzibar and Madagascar and a new luxury yacht experience in the remote Aldabra islands.
At Airbnb, the top 20 hot destinations for 2025 include Milton Keynes and East Sussex. Their list was drawn from data including trending searches and wish-listed cities on the site. It also includes Rome, Tokyo and Milan, all cities that suffered from overtourism in 2024, showing that the issue is far from over.
6. Coolcations and off-season safaris
For those used to holidaying in southern Europe, the question has moved from "where's hot?" to "where's not". As temperatures in traditional summer holiday hotspots around the Mediterranean continue to break records, climate change is having an increasing influence on where we travel. Scott Dunn saw a 26% increase in bookings to Finland and Norway in 2024 and expects to see more tourists heading to northern Europe where summer temperatures are in the mid 20s.
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Seasonal change is not just affecting beach goers; it's also having an impact on those travelling to see wildlife. Peak safari travel month has shifted from December to March at Scott Dunn, thanks to shifting climate patterns and affordability. Climate change is a reality, and the industry and travellers are catching up to it.
7. Nostalgia travel
Will '90s music icons Oasis and Eminem follow Taylor Swift's lead and disrupt the travel industry in 2025? The pop star is credited with boosting travel and tourism around the world during her Eras tour, which concluded in December 2024. While music tourism is a rising trend, Eminem and Oasis' revival tours also speak to something else: the rise of nostalgia tourism.
Globetrender calls the trend "New Heydays" and notes that as millennials enter middle age, the holidays they loved as children will get a reboot. It expects to see adult summer camps in the US, a rise in interest in Eurocamp (camping holidays in continental Europe) and all manner of retro pop ups, like the Polly Pocket Airbnb of 2024, grow in number. It's perhaps an indicator that we want a little respite from uncertainty and are seeking a retreat to the more comfortable world of our childhoods.
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With TikTok tips to turn two days of annual leave into a five-day holiday and workers sneaking in meetings on the road, travellers are making their trips count – by making them last.
In August 2024, the director of a viral tourism advert for Oslo told the BBC he'd always prefer sitting at someone's kitchen table drinking milk to pit-stopping at tourist traps. This was, after all, the summer that tourism came back, and arguably the summer that tourism went too far, with bad traveller behaviour and troubling overtourism hitting many popular destinations. While the urge to get away doesn't seem to be dwindling, industry experts say travellers in 2025 are plotting longer stays and finding ways to stretch their time away from home and work to be as long as possible and further immerse themselves in a single destination.
According to Skift Research's 2025 Travel Outlook report, travel companies are anticipating a 24% rise in the number of trips people are planning for the year ahead compared to 2024. Globally, long leisure trips stand out as the most popular type of travel ahead of weekend getaways and road trips, with Skift's report calling 2025 "the year of long getaways". This is particularly true in China, India and Germany. In the US, one quarter of respondents said they expect to take a long international or cross-continental vacation this year, though slightly more expect to take shorter trips.
"Travellers are over the frenzy of taking photos in wildly packed tourist sites or iconic hotels just to say they've been there," explained Julia Carter, founder of luxury travel company Craft Travel. "Instead, they now increasingly recognise that when it comes to travel, a destination only really comes alive when you slow things down."
That slowdown is stretching to an average trip duration close to two weeks for luxury travellers, according to the Luxury Travel Report by Zicasso, another high end travel-planning company. Founder and CEO Brian Tan told the BBC, "[We've] noted a continued increase in average length of travel to 13.5 days, as well as more travellers preferring a single-destination personalised journey, where they can explore a culture more deeply, instead of multi-country trips." The trip duration increase has been a slow one (it's only up from 13.4 days average in 2024), but the report adds that 76.2% of respondents prefer single-country trips for 2025, which Zicasso has qualified as a "trend toward depth over breadth in travel experiences".
If seeking out a quiet café or a photogenic overlook between meetings counts as depth, Skift's report also hails an increase in "blended travel", trips that include both work and leisure, which are occasionally referred to by the mush-mouth portmanteau of "bleisure".
By far the most respondents in India plan to travel this way (92%) then China (84%). Next on the list for work-and-play travel comes Germany (79% of respondents there aim to blend in 2025), followed by the US and the UK (both at 72%).
As for travel in general, the top global destinations on US travellers' bucket list this year, according to Skift, include England, Japan, Paris, Italy and Mexico. UK residents hope to visit Dubai, Paris, Italy, Spain and the US.
One way they may create time for longer trips to those shores is through the viral trend of "PTO [Paid Time Off] hacking". Strategic holiday planning to tack paid time off on days that surround federal holidays has surged in popularity on TikTok, where videos explain the best days to travel in 2025 to maximise trip length. Doing so allows travellers to extend their time off, a trick that's particularly useful in countries like the US, where the average full-time worker is allotted 11 days of paid vacation per year. One such TikTok went viral in late-2023, and copycats are a mainstay of the app heading into this year's travel-planning season, with search-friendly articles following suit. Travel & Leisure shares how to turn those 11 days into 44 travel days, and Forbes helps workers with 15 days of annual leave spend 55 days away.
"Many [people] are looking at when the public holidays are, and then taking their vacations around those holidays, such as Labor Day," says Paul Charles, CEO of The PC Agency, a PR and travel trade marketing consultancy. "Airlines are also offering better deals if you travel internationally around public holiday dates, encouraging Americans to travel overseas and not just within the US [during these times]." This chimes with another trend in Zicasso's report: an increase in travellers favouring shoulder seasons in 2025, spring (perhaps including the four-day week of Memorial Day) and autumn as opposed to prior years' summer peak.
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One such traveller, Colombia-born Carolina Santos, who owns a wellness business in the US, treasures the long trips she's taken in Nepal and India. "Longer trips give me the time to truly immerse myself in the culture, to have deeper conversations with locals about their lives, customs and traditions," she tells the BBC. "It allows me to explore at a slower pace, without the rush or a fixed itinerary. The days unfold naturally, revealing the authentic rhythm of daily life in the places I visit."
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They combine outdoor pursuits and mental health support for anyone who wants to improve their wellbeing, with or without a diagnosis.
At the top of a hill in England's Peak District, life coach Zaidha Roscoe leads our group in an exercise to ground us in the present moment and find a sense of calm. "Focus on five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste," she says. I notice cheery-neon hiking clothes against a cornflower-blue sky. Brush my fingers along the feathery grass. Tune in to a duet of chirping birds. Smell the crisp autumn air. And bite into nutty trail mix.
It's the first of several mindfulness and nature connection activities we will do on this six-mile hike through Chatsworth Estate with Mind Over Mountains. The organisation hosts free wellbeing walks and low-cost weekend retreats led by mountain guides and qualified counsellors or coaches at national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty across the UK. It's one of a few organisations – including Blackdog Outdoors in the UK and Hiking My Feelings in the US – that combine outdoor pursuits and mental health support for anyone who wants to improve their wellbeing, with or without a diagnosis.
These organisations fill a canyon-sized gap in the outdoor and wellness spaces. Half of the world's population will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. But while many places offer self-care activities such as yoga or forest bathing, these programmes rarely foster an atmosphere that encourages confiding to your instructor about your depression or chatting with fellow participants about grief. So, many people may feel isolated and unsupported in these settings.
Organisations like Mind Over Mountains create a space where discussions about emotions and difficulties are welcome. At our first stop on the walk, Rob Kenning, a member of the wellness team, tells our group, "Today, I've brought confident leader Rob, but there's also a more vulnerable Rob that might be more difficult for me to bring because it challenges the more masculine side of me. I invite you all to bring as much of yourself as you would like to bring – physically, mentally, emotionally. You know how much of yourself it's safe to bring."
We follow the trail through a woodland and emerge at a 16th-Century hunting tower. Kenning invites us to share how we're feeling now compared to when we started. Three participants admit they nearly cancelled because they were nervous about meeting new people, or because this place reminds them of outings with a loved one who recently died. But they're all glad they mustered the courage to come.
I thought the mood on a mental health walk might be heavy but the conversation is convivial, open and supportive. As we ramble through a beech forest and lunch by a lake, we delight in photographing red and purple mushrooms and feeling the fuzzy moss on gnarled trees. If someone needs a private word with Roscoe or Kenning about issues they're dealing with, they hang back a bit or walk to the side, and the rest of us give them time and space. It's like a casually choreographed dance of compassion and care.
Several participants and guides tell me that strolling side-by-side in nature makes it easier to share their struggles or delve into deep discussions than when they're indoors, staring into the eyes of a family member or a psychotherapist. "Being in nature relaxed me and helped me open up," says Matt Heaton, who participated in a Mind Over Mountains retreat in 2022. "It just felt free because it's such a beautiful place. And there were a couple of moments where I really felt connected with nature and the world."
A rising tide of research shows that people who feel more connected to nature report happier and more meaningful lives. They also tend to have lower levels of depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. In my own life, connecting with nature through foraging, wild swimming, hiking and intuitive nature communication has done wonders for my mental health and sense of purpose.
Andy Higson, a civil engineer who started Blackdog Outdoors, had a similar realisation in a hut atop Mt Elbrus in Russia. As he chatted with other mountaineers about what brought them to the peak, they described nature as their therapy – a way to get out of the fast pace of life, to challenge themselves and find balance. "That got me thinking," Higson says. "If I know nature is really good for me, and these people I've never met before from different parts of the world all think the same thing, then why are more people not using the outdoors as a coping mechanism for mental health?"
When Higson researched the question, he found that many people face barriers to taking part in outdoor pursuits, including anxiety, lack of skills and costs. To help people overcome those hurdles, he founded Blackdog Outdoors. The group holds around 120 free hiking, climbing and paddle sport daytrips each year, plus low-cost mountain skills training.
Blackdog Outdoors' events are geared toward newbies or people who have engaged in outdoor sports in the past but have lost the confidence or desire to do so on their own. The trips are led by outdoor professionals and trained mental health first aiders, not professional therapists. And though the organisation doesn't include mindfulness exercises, the mental health supporters can help with everything from chatting about relationships to easing anxiety about a nerve-wracking activity.
Through surveys, both Blackdog Outdoors and Mind Over Mountains have found that more than 90% of participants experience a lasting mental health benefit from the events. Heaton was so inspired by his retreat with Mind Over Mountains that he trained to be a mental health first-aider and walked a marathon to raise funds for the organisation. "I still, to this day, say it's the best weekend I've ever had," he says.
Ruth Israel, who participated in a Mind Over Mountains retreat, says, "The walk was a catalyst for hope and personal growth. With hindsight, the lasting impact is more than you can imagine from just one walk. I'd never been part of such an accepting, non-judgmental community before… I've become a lot more open about sharing my own struggles so that others can be encouraged and supported."
When I join a Blackdog Outdoors hike in the Peak District, one of the guides remarks that it's the kind of day he would normally stay in. We pull on our waterproofs and woolly caps to block the drizzly wind and squelch through a primordial soup of mud. Even a participant's shepherd dog, who began the hike with characteristic canine enthusiasm, looks at us like we're crazy as we hoist him up rain-slicked rocks by a steep waterfall.
Surprisingly, it's fun. On both these mental health hikes, I've realised that the conversations feel connecting and the guides are supportive, but our main group therapist is the great outdoors. Nature seems to hold a mirror up to different aspects of ourselves and whisper metaphorical messages.
During a Mind Over Mountains exercise to find a tree that spoke to us, a woman and I are drawn to a rowan whose silvery trunks diverge, then intertwine. She reflects on the choices she's made and the twisting path her life has taken. As we sit by a river, Roscoe asks us to muse on the things it is time to release and let flow away.
On this Blackdog Outdoors hike, the chilly rain, slippery boulders and precarious slopes urge us to find our inner resources, persevere through challenges and reach out for helping hands. Then the sun emerges, electrifying the clouds and shimmering across Dovestone Reservoir. And I am reminded of the poem Wild Geese by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, who found solace for her sadness in nature. Like the geese, everything in this glorious, gleaming landscape seems to call out through loneliness and despair, "announcing [our] place in the family of things".
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While Tolkien's stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are closer than you might imagine.
The first book in J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released 70 years ago, in the summer of 1954. However, that's not the only recent milestone for Tolkien's legendarium: the second season of the epic TV series, The Rings of Power, was released on 29 August 2024.
As befits the ultimate epic fantasy series, the settings are gorgeous, ranging from bucolic, rolling countryside to plunging valleys and desolate deserts. And while Tolkien's stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are not as otherworldly as you might imagine. Many of them are based on real-world locations and visiting them brings to life both the landscapes themselves and the imaginary worlds they inspired Tolkien to create.
The Tolkien Trail: Lancashire, England
While writing The Lord of the Rings in the 1940s, Tolkien lived for a while at Stonyhurst College, a prestigious boarding school in Lancashire where his son was a teacher. The elder Tolkien was known to walk often through the woodlands and rolling hills of the surrounding Ribble Valley, and is thought to have taken inspiration from the place while creating the Shire, the rural homeland of the hobbits.
Today, fans can explore the area on the Tolkien Trail, which opened in 2002 and takes hikers through the very landscapes that inspired the author. The route starts in the village of Hurst Green at the atmospheric 17th-Century Shireburn Arms pub, where Tolkien was a regular. It then winds for around seven easy miles through undulating farmland, past the grand buildings of Stonyhurst College, and across historic landmarks like Cromwell's Bridge, an overgrown packhorse bridge once used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War.
Although Tolkien didn't directly document the influence of places along the trail, there are several sources of likely inspiration. The route passes the stately home Hacking Hall where, during Tolkien's time, there was a wooden ferry barge, the Hacking Ferry, that carried people across the River Ribble. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the Bucklebury Ferry (also outside a stately home, Brandy Hall) carries the hobbits across the Brandywine River in similar fashion while they are fleeing a fearsome spectral horseman.
The local landowning family near Stonyhurst, meanwhile, were called the Shireburns – and the similarly named River Shirebourne appears in Tolkien's geography of Middle-earth. Tolkien's maps, meanwhile, depict the convergence of three rivers – the Shirebourne, Withywindle and Brandywine – in a way that exactly mirrors the meeting of the Hodder, Ribble and Calder rivers here in Lancashire. In addition, St Mary's Church in the nearby village of Newchurch-in-Pendle bears an unusual feature: an eye-shaped carving halfway up the tower, known as the Eye of God, which resembles the all-seeing Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings books and movies.
Cheddar Gorge: Somerset, England
Most of the real-life places associated with Tolkien's imaginings of Middle-earth are based on educated guesswork, but there is one place that the writer himself confirmed as a real-life inspiration for The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien and his wife Edith married in 1916, and honeymooned in the Somerset village of Clevedon. While they were there, they paid a visit to one of the most jaw-dropping landscapes in Britain: Cheddar Gorge, a sheer limestone valley, pockmarked with caves whose walls are bejewelled with intricate rock formations, stalagmites and stalactites.
The honeymooning author – always married, at least in part, to his work – was taking notes, and in 1971 he confirmed in a private letter (published in 1981 as part of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) that the caves of Cheddar Gorge inspired the Glittering Caves of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings.
Visit Gough Cave, the most famous of the caves at Cheddar, and you'll likely recognise elements of Tolkien's description of the Glittering Caves: "columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose … fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms".
Denize Bluffs: Waitomo, New Zealand
LOTR mega-fans will instantly recognise Denize Bluffs, an area of soaring rock formations and wild bush on New Zealand's North Island. In the films, this landscape features in the prequel movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as the Trollshaws, a hillside forest where Bilbo Baggins encounters some hostile trolls. In the TV show, meanwhile, Denize Bluffs serves as part of the highland home of the Harfoots, the series' hobbit protagonists.
In reality, Denize Bluffs sits on a privately owned sheep and cattle farm that has been in the same family for three generations. Current stewards Warrick and Suzie Denize are very proud of the Lord of the Rings association, and now run Hairy Feet Waitomo: tours of the property that take in the various locations seen in the films and TV shows and bring them to life with showbiz tales from the production. Tours must be booked in advance. The farm can be found around eight miles west of the town of Piopio.
Stow-on-the-World: Gloucestershire, England
Tolkien was a deeply religious man, and although he always refuted the theory that The Lord of the Rings was a Christian allegory, the work is infused with spirituality. Tolkien spent his professional life as a professor at the University of Oxford, and he was known to have often visited the nearby Cotswolds, a picturesque area of golden-stone villages, gently rolling hills and seriously photogenic churches.
One of those churches, St Edward's Church in the market town of Stow-on-the-Wold, has long been earmarked as a likely source of inspiration for Tolkien. Its north door is among the most photographed doors in the country: carved from heavy, studded wood, crowned with an arching architrave and hung with an oil lamp. Its most striking feature is the two yew trees that flank the doorway, planted three centuries ago and now huge, twisted and gnarled, having grown into the structure of the church itself.
Tolkien accompanied his writings with beautiful hand-drawn artworks, one of which depicts the Doors of Durin, a hidden entrance to the inside of a mountain that harbours the Dwarf city of Khazad-dûm. Tolkien’s drawing, although stylised, is almost identical to the north door of St Edward's Church, from the trees that bookmark the entrance to the lamp that hangs above it – giving rise to the longstanding rumour that this is where he found inspiration for his mythical mountain doors.
Teide National Park: Tenerife, Spain
The moon-like deserts of Tenerife feature prominently in the new series of The Rings of Power, as a barren wasteland through which the mysterious Stranger, a wizard who has lost his memory, is travelling with two hobbits. Tenerife's Indigenous Guanche people traditionally believed that Teide was the gateway to the underworld domain of malevolent deity Guayota – and it's not hard to see why, with its fierce winds, searing heat and dusty plains dotted with gnarled, skeletal trees. It's unsurprising that Teide was chosen as the real-life setting for the realm of Rhûn, which, in Tolkien's works, is a mysterious region of moral corruption and dark sorcery.
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Mount Teide is an active volcano (it hasn't erupted since 1909) and volcano treks are a popular activity in the park – although there is also a cable car if you're feeling less adventurous.
Fiordland: South Island, New Zealand
The entire The Lord of the Rings film series was famously shot in New Zealand, the homeland of director Peter Jackson. The rivers and woodlands of Fiordland – a region of green-sloped, snow-capped mountains that plunge to glacier-carved inlets, known as "sounds" – feature prominently in the movies. This is New Zealand's most unspoilt and biodiverse region, so it's no surprise Jackson chose it to represent some of the wildest parts of Middle-earth.
The woodlands of Fiordland doubled as Fangorn Forest, home to the mysterious Ents: giant talking trees who help the hobbits in their fight against the dark wizard, Saruman. Other Fiordland locations that appear in the films include the Waiau River, which stood in for Tolkien's River Anduin, the longest river in Middle-earth, that appears in the very first aerial shot of The Fellowship of the Ring.
To explore Fiordland, most visitors base themselves in the lakeside town of Te Anau, home to a wide range of hotels, restaurants and tour operators leading hiking and boating trips into the Fiordland National Park.
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Tracing a medieval trade route through the Swiss Alps and valleys, the GoldenPass Express isn't just one of the world's most scenic train rides; it's an engineering marvel.
As I sink into the plush, cream-coloured leather recliner, a glass of Champagne in hand and hiking boots raised, I'm ready for a three-hour spectacle where nature takes centre stage. But the stage isn't just in front of me – it's all around.
I'm not in a theatre; I'm in Switzerland aboard the GoldenPass Express: a state-of-the-art panoramic train where floor-to-ceiling windows reveal stunning views of the Swiss countryside – from turquoise lakes that mirror towering mountain peaks to rolling meadows dotted with storybook chalets – that rival the grandest cinematic experiences. Sitting in the nine-seat Prestige Class carriage in a specially designed heated, swivelling chair feels both private and personal – as if I've got the snowcapped Alps, wildflower-laced pastures and bell-adorned cows to myself.
Opened in December 2022 and fully relaunched in June 2023 after addressing problems with track wear, The GoldenPass Express (GPX) is one of Europe's newest (and most luxurious) high-tech trains. Its 115km journey follows a medieval trade route connecting Interlaken's glaciers to Montreux's terraced vineyards, and thanks to a technological innovation, the GPX allows travellers to take one of the world's most scenic train routes without transferring, as passengers did previously.
The GPX is one of five premium panoramic trains within the Swiss Travel System. Individual tickets range from 56-145 Swiss francs (roughly £50-130). It's also included in the Swiss Travel Pass (starting from 244 Swiss francs – roughly £219 – and children under 16 ride free of charge) which offers unlimited access to all public transportation (trains, trams, buses and passenger ferries), 50% off mountain railways and gondolas, and free admission to more than 500 museums.
The train's midnight-blue exterior and classic design evoke the bygone era of the original Orient Express that still connects Paris to Istanbul. Inside, the interior is crisp and cutting-edge, the Prestige Class specially designed chairs are by Ferrari-designer firm Pininfarina and are the only such rail seats in Europe. Need lower back support? There's a button for that. Tired feet? Elevate your legs. Feeling chilly? Just press the seat warmer. Want a different view? Simply pivot your seat to face the direction of your choice. Just don't fall asleep!
But what truly sets the GPX apart from other luxury trains is something you can't see: it can seamlessly jump between tracks of different gauges and voltages.
Built by Montreux-Oberland-Bernois Railway (MOB) in collaboration with BLS AG (BLS) in Bern, the train winds its way down from the heights of the Bernese Alps, passing the luxurious town of Gstaad, beloved by A-listers for its exclusivity and isolation, and Château d'Oex, famous for its hot air balloon festival (25 January-2 February 2025), before snaking through vineyards as it makes its dramatic descent towards the Vaudois Riviera. Finally, it reaches sun-soaked Montreux, where palms sway on the glistening shores of Lake Geneva.
In 1905, when MOB set out to build the GoldenPass line, the aim was to connect Francophone Montreux to German-speaking Interlaken – two big touristic and economic hubs – with a single trainline. But somewhere along the way, MOB noticed the rail wasn't the same width; the gauges varied. It took 120 years to find a system bridging the gap.
The world's railroads use a patchwork of varying gauges – mainly broad, standard and narrow. Railway development lacked industry standards in the 19th Century, leading to varied gauges to suit terrain, transport purpose and political influences. This is one of the main reasons why we often need to change trains when we're travelling.
As Trains magazine senior editor David Lassen tells the BBC, "countries slow to settle on a single gauge paid the price with operating challenges". Case in point: Switzerland.
The idea of directly connecting Lake Geneva to Lakes Thun and Brienz in Interlaken dates to the late 1800s. Since 1916, the Lucerne-Interlaken-Zweisimmen-Montreux route, known as the GoldenPass line, allowed travel between these destinations, but required two train changes because of the tracks' differing gauges. In 1928, the concept of adding a third rail was discussed.
"That would have required building tunnels," said MOB product manager Fanny Moix. She explained that this was "technically impossible" because of a combination of bureaucracy and the complexity of building dual-gauge tracks through a busy, complicated junction.
Still, as Interlaken Tourism markets manager Celina Finger maintains: "Changing trains is a huge hassle for tourists." It's also a reason why the GoldenPass line hasn't been as popular as its panoramic counterparts, like the Glacier Express.
Now, instead of requiring travellers to change trains in the middle of the journey, the GPX can make the three-hour-15-minute journey directly, thanks to the revolutionary "variable gauge bogie". The technology, developed in 2022 after 15 years of research and costing 89m Swiss francs (£80m), was publicly funded by the cantons of Vaud, Bern, Freiburg and the Swiss Confederation. This innovation facilitates seamless transitions between narrow and standard gauges and voltage changes within seconds, effectively enabling a train to jump tracks while moving. It's a groundbreaking new standard in rail travel – not just in Switzerland, but globally.
"[The GPX] is a link to our past and our future," said Frédéric Delachaux, MOB marketing director, explaining that it realises the centuries-old dream of linking Switzerland to Europe by rail via the Alps.
As I made the historic journey for the first time, approaching Zweisimmen station, I hesitated to leave the comforts of my warm seat where I was nibbling on local cheeses (there is no full-service dining on board but there are local snack options). I stretched my legs and peered out the window as we briefly paused for the locomotive change, which allows the train to adapt to the electrical voltage change. A few minutes later, we were travelling towards Schönried, a ski resort town neighbouring Gstaad, and as the train carried on, I barely felt a thing.
Meanwhile, as the train's elevation shifted ever so slightly (rising about 200 mm) to accommodate the gauge attrition and platform height, an engineering marvel was happening right below my feet – even if only a discerning train aficionado would notice it.
"It's a big frustration for us in marketing because you don't feel anything!" lamented Delachaux. Perhaps the engineers did too good a job. Because of this, the gauge change is displayed on a screen to passengers as it's happening.
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While there are other trains in France and Japan that can move a few centimetres, "this is the only train in the world that moves 43cm", said Delachaux.
It's perhaps no surprise that the Swiss were able to pull off this engineering feat. Living in a landlocked nation that's 70% mountainous and filled with some 1,500 lakes, people here have long had to negotiate the obstacles posed by their challenging terrain – and along the way, exemplified a certain determination and ingenuity that is decidedly Swiss.
As Clarence Rook wrote in his 1907 book Switzerland and Its People: "There are bigger mountains in the world than may be found in Switzerland. But you will nowhere find in so small a space so many triumphs of engineering. The Swiss roads and railways stand as a monument to the victory of human skill over physical obstacles."
And so, I wondered, are there plans to connect the entire GoldenPass line from its origin at Lucerne to Montreux?
"That's the new dream," said Moix, laughing. "It's also a technical issue because between Lucerne and Interlaken we have a cog railway. That means we'd need to add a cog system to the GoldenPass Express, and that takes a lot of time – another lifetime."
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From Colombia's upcycled sewer pipes to spheres suspended in the sky in Canada, capsule hotels have been reinvented for a new generation of travellers.
By night, the world's first capsule hotel (founded in Osaka, Japan in 1979) must have looked like a morgue, with neat rows of narrow sleeping capsules each containing a recumbent body. But the following day, the occupants – mostly businessmen who had worked late - would rise up and head back to the office, grateful for this efficient sleep solution that had saved them a commute home in the early hours.
As the concept spread, tourists happy to sleep in a room no bigger than its bed began to bunk up alongside them, eager to sample this unusual aspect of Japanese culture. Fast-forward to today, and high hotel room rates, fuelled by years of rising real estate prices, have supercharged this typically low-cost concept, which offers budget travellers priced out of traditional hotels more privacy than a hostel dormitory and more comfort and connectivity than camping. The capsules, which are predominantly single-occupancy, also answer the current boom in solo travel, with single-sex capsule hotels providing additional security.
With the global capsule hotel market projected to reach $327m by 2031, curious hybrids have emerged to sustain the trend and attract new customers. They're tempting the TikTok generation with increasingly outlandish forms, from upcycled sewer pipes in the Colombian desert to space-age pods with a dashboard of ambient controls in downtown Sydney, Australia – all promising a unique experience and shareable stories for social media. Meanwhile capsule-cum-bookstores invite book lovers to snooze among the shelves, and boutique versions bring luxury to a traditionally no-frills market with fancy decor or promises of fluffy duck-feather duvets.
As the concept continues to reinvent itself, here are eight of the most extraordinary examples.
A sleep laboratory
Nine Hours, a chain of 13 hotels across Japan, from Fukuoka in the west to the north-east island of Hokkaido, has an unusual by-product: sleep data. In the Shinagawa Station (men only) and Akasaka branches, guests can sign up for a "9h sleep fitscan" service, where sensors detect everything from breathing to facial expressions to generate a sleep report that tracks their heart rate, identifies sleep apnea and even monitors snoring. In a sector where a novel or low-budget stay is often prioritised over comfort, Nine Hours' interest in how well its guests are sleeping sets it apart.
Across the franchise, the white, minimalist decor continues this clinical theme, while its rows of sleek, shiny sleeping pods would not look out of place on the set of a science-fiction movie. The name refers to the hotel's cost-cutting concept that reduces room rental to the essential nine hours, allowing seven hours for sleep and an hour on either side for washing and dressing. Just need a nap? Hourly rates are also available.
Climb to the sky
A night in a transparent sleeping pod clinging to a cliff face above Peru's Sacred Valley is not everyone's idea of a relaxing stay, but for adrenaline-lovers, it's hard to beat – not least for the incredible 300-degree views of the surrounding mountains and the formidable condors that inhabit them.
A near-vertical climb of 400m is the only way to reach the Skylodge Adventure Suites, but climbing experience is not necessary – only good health and a head for heights – and descending is speedier thanks to a series of zip wires. Each capsule includes a private bathroom ensuring that night trips to the toilet are not life-threatening, and when the sun rises, you can enjoy a cup of tea on your private deck. Looking for a little more luxury? A little further down the Urubamba river, sister site, Starlodge, adds hillside hot tubs to the capsule hotel experience.
A desert oasis
The Tubo Hotel, La Tatacoa is just a 10-minute drive from Colombia's second-largest desert, the eponymous Tatacoa, famous for its clear starry skies. When you've taken in the giant cacti and curious rock formations of the Tatacoa's cinnamon-coloured sands, this rainbow of tiny, air-conditioned rooms with a shared swimming pool offers a welcome oasis. The 37 capsules are fashioned from concrete sewer pipes painted in candy colours, providing just enough room for a double bed. Almost half of the rooms have a shared bathroom, but the room rate is a snip and you've a shady garden, bar and restaurant on your doorstep. "This innovative and colourful place offers you a unique experience," says Ambar Quintana, the hotel's administrator. "It has everything you need to rest in a natural environment of fresh air and vegetation."
Immerse in nature
Suspended among the conifers like oversized Christmas baubles, the Free Spirit Spheres on Vancouver Island, Canada, feel "like you are floating in the canopy among the sleeping birds", according to owner Tom Chudleigh. The first sphere was introduced 25 years ago, driven by a desire to promote ecotourism and preserve Canada's ancient forests.
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There are currently three spheres, each based on the principle of biomimicry and shaped with a giant seed pod or nutshell in mind: light but with a strong shell. "Eryn" is fashioned from Sitka spruce and has a dining area, sink and slightly undersized double bed inside; while more recent additions, "Melody" and "Luna", are fibreglass and have similar amenities but with full-size double beds that can be stowed. Each sphere is accessed via a spiral staircase wrapped around a tree, and is available to rent in temperatures as low as -20C, when even a trip to the composting toilet at the accommodation's base will feel intrepid.
The shape makes bespoke fittings a prerequisite, and every little detail has been meticulously crafted by Chudleigh, from walnut fold-out furniture that maximises the space, to door handles cast from bronze.
Small but soothing
Inside a Brutalist building in Singapore's Chinatown lies a surprisingly serene interior. Opened in 2021 and based on an aesthetic it describes as "soft minimalist", KINN Capsule offers a Zen take on the capsule concept with walls painted in calming peachy tones and pale wood sleeping chambers fitted with crisp white bed linen. Even the smell of the place seems an antidote to its urban location as a special house fragrance designed to evoke the wildflowers of a Nordic forest hangs in the air. There are 72 capsules in total, sealed off with blackout blinds and spread across seven rooms, but the vibe is more boutique than bunkhouse.
A book at bedtime
A traditional mud and wood farmhouse in eastern China's Zhejiang Province got a prize-winning makeover in 2019 when it reopened as a capsule hostel, bookstore and community library, sleeping 20 in tiny single bed-sized compartments concealed between bookshelves made of local bamboo. A smattering of small landings are connected by zigzagging stairways that recall the serpentine paths of the surrounding forests of Tonglu. It's hard to know which is more dramatic: the remote building's transparent floor-to-ceiling panels that light it up like a cathedral at night, or the lush mountainous scenery that's visible through them.
Cupboard love
In Oud Zuid, one of Amsterdam's most upscale neighbourhoods, guests are paying to sleep in cupboards. The quirky De Bedstee Hotel draws on the 17th-Century tradition of the Dutch bedstee (box bed), a bed concealed behind cupboard doors to create a cosy sleeping nook. The hotel's Art Deco features and acid-coloured wallpapers downstairs give way to a shabby-chic design in the first-floor dormitories, where the bedstee windows are framed by red gingham curtains and little wooden ladders lead to the capsules above. Relax in the hotel's small terrace garden or take a half-hour stroll to the Rembrandt House Museum in the city centre to see several historic box beds in situ.
Pristine and comparatively posh
Another hotel with a signature smell is the Resol Poshtel in Tokyo's Asakusa district – the Resol Hotel chain's first venture into capsule sleeping. The aroma, which includes orange, chamomile and neroli, is said to induce "a feeling of gentle calm" – of benefit, perhaps, given the communal sleeping arrangements. At bedtime, there's nothing but a curtain between you and fellow visitors, but few one-star establishments can match this hotel's cleanliness and functionality, with hairbrushes, slippers and razors included in the freebies. The Edo-era styling − such as the sleeping cubicles' arched entrance reminiscent of tea ceremony rooms, and the traditional Japanese murals surrounding the bed − add a hint of heritage to the hotel's modern lines. The city's oldest Buddhist temple, Sensō-ji, is a five-minute walk away, as is the lantern-lined Nakamise-dori street, home to a parade of colourful shops selling souvenirs and street food.
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Elina Mäkinen was the first Finnish woman to complete the Ice Mile. Here are her top ice bathing experiences, from plunges under the Northern Lights to paying homage to Arctic gods.
From the technicolour sky dance of the Northern Lights to freely roaming reindeer, Finnish Lapland is a true winter wonderland. Its frozen Arctic landscapes, pristine natural waters and rich sauna tradition also provide the ideal backdrop for ice bathing – the traditional holistic practice of submerging the body either fully or partially in ice-cold water.
We spoke with Finnish ice swimmer Elina Mäkinen to learn more about this hallowed self-care ritual. Though Mäkinen is renowned for breaking records in distance ice swimming, she stresses that ice swimming – and ice bathing – are a personal, not competitive experience. "I only have the need to compete with myself," she says. "The ice hole is a place to learn about yourself and your reactions."
Finland's sauna culture, part of Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, dates back thousands of years, and ice bathing has always gone hand in hand with wintry sauna sessions. In recent years, the practice has become more mainstream and its health benefits have become better known.
"Its popularity surged during and after the Covid-19 pandemic," says Mäkinen. "While many once practiced it to relieve from ailments like rheumatism, today, no specific reason is needed to take the plunge. Ice bathing now stands alongside yoga, meditation and other practices focused on self-discovery. People use it for various benefits – some to improve sleep, others to wake up in the morning."
In cities like Helsinki or Tampere – the sauna capital of the world – many saunas offer ice bathing, with both traditional public saunas and modern lakeside spas providing safe environments for taking your first dip in frozen waters. In more remote locations, such as Lapland, many hotels and cottages offer the unique experience of pairing a steamy sauna session with a frosty plunge into an ice hole.
Here are Mäkinen's top five Arctic winter wonderland spots for ice bathing.
1. Best for ice bathing under the Northern Lights: Särkitunturi fell and Särkijärven Majat
Due to very little light pollution, Finnish Lapland – a sparsely populated region with about 176,000 inhabitants in an area roughly the size of Scotland and Wales combined – is one of the best places in the world to see the Northern Lights. And according to Mäkinen, home to wonderful lakes for ice bathing.
"I start my ice bathing season in Särkitunturi, because the small lakes up on the tiny mountain freeze faster," says Mäkinen. "I have often swum here under the Northern Lights."
Särkitunturi is a 492m-tall mount with sweeping views of the gently rounded slopes of the Pallastunturi fell; recognised in 1994 as one of Finland's top national landscapes. Arriving is relatively easy – by Lapland standards. A drive from Muonio takes 20 minutes with parking available along Route 79 to begin the hike up.
Mäkinen often makes her own ice holes in the Arctic wilderness using an ice saw, a drill, tongs, ice pick or rope in case the ice block has to be lifted on top of the ice – and a motor saw on very special occasions. But she also has a tip for a more easy-going dip: "If you prefer a sauna and a ready-made ice hole, just call to Särkijärven majat [lodges]." These rustic lakeside cabins offer accommodation and a wood-fired sauna by the lakeside – borrow the provided woollen socks to stay warmer while dipping in the water.
Website: https://sarkijarvenmajat.fi/
Address: Särkijärventie 40, 99300 Muonio
Phone: +358 400 905 863
Instagram: @sarkijarvenmajat
2. Best wilderness feel for beginners: Isokenkäisten Klubi
Kuusamo, a city of about 15,000 inhabitants with an airport near Finland's eastern border, lies just below the Arctic Circle and is home to some of the country's most dramatic scenery scenery, featuring canyons, waterfalls and vast forests that create a sense of limitless wilderness. "It's very [impressive], and you get away from the hustle and bustle of city life," says Mäkinen.
Just a 50-minute drive north-east from here, to an area even more remote, you'll find Isokenkäisten Klubi. "It is a wilderness lodge," says Mäkinen. "A fabulous log cottage in the middle of nowhere."
Originally built as a winter retreat for Finnish presidents and prime ministers, the lodge combines tradition with modern comfort, offering both a traditional smoke sauna heated up with birch logs and a modern electric sauna. Naturally, there is an ice hole for a refreshing Finnish experience. The club is also part of the Sustainable Travel Finland (STF) programme, a framework of sustainable tourism establishments in Finland.
Isokenkäisten Klubi was featured in the documentary Cold, as this is where Mäkinen built a 10m-long practice pool for her Ice Mile swim.
Website: https://www.ikk.fi/en/
Address: Heikinjärventie 3, 93800 Kuusamo
Phone: +358 400 972 260 /+358 40 706 6839
Instagram: @isokenkaistenklubi
3. Best for dips in sacred scenery: Jeris Arctic Sauna World
"The Arctic Sauna World is the paradise of the north," says Mäkinen, describing the cluster of four saunas by the scenic shores of Lake Jerisjärvi, close to the Pulju Wilderness Area in northern Lapland. Jerisjärvi is a sacred lake for the indigenous Sámi people of Finland, with a sacrificial and burial ground close by, and is known for its abundance of fish.
Jeris Arctic Sauna World hosts various types of saunas, from smoke sauna to a sauna with an upper floor for viewing the Northern Lights, all named after Finland's traditional gods: Tapio (the revered god of forests), Ukko (god of weather, harvest and thunder), Ilmatar (goddesses of the air) and Vellamo (goddess of water). From the saunas, it’s an easy – yet chilling – dip into the ready-made avanto (ice hole), just a few steps away.
"You can see the Olos fells [in] the background, and many stunning sunsets and golden hours in January happen especially here. This might be the world's most beautiful ice hole," says Mäkinen.
There are hotels in the area, and even if your accommodation is further away, a bus will connect you to the site. "In the Ylläs-Pallas-Levi-Olos region, everyone can get here," says Mäkinen. "Even if it takes an hour to drive, in these regions, that's a short trip."
Website: https://harriniva.fi/en/arctic-sauna-world/
Address: Jerisjärventie 91, 99300 Muonio
Phone: +358 400 155 100
Instagram: @arcticsaunaworld
4. Best for adventurous travellers: Lake Hietajärvi in Ylläs-Pallas National Park
For a winter hike, Mäkinen calls Lake Hietajärvi in the northern parts of Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park a "hidden gem" and "worth the adventure" with its crystal-clear water and outdoor fireplace – a "laavu" – to warm up after a swim, with firewood on-site provided by the Finnish government. "For us Finns, lakes with clear water are magnificent as our lakes are often very humic," says Mäkinen. "The light-coloured sandy beach makes an impression. It's a real reward just to find this place."
The lake is far from any habitation and somewhat difficult to reach, although there are route signs for hiking from the Ketomella bridge parking spot. However, you are likely to spot many of the furry, hooved locals during your hike here. "You have to pass reindeer roundup sites and you might encounter a lot of reindeer," says Mäkinen. Fun fact: there are more reindeer (around 200,000) living in Finnish Lapland than there are people.
Mäkinen notes that this experience is for advanced ice swimmers as you need your own equipment, such as an ahkio (a long sledge for snowy conditions) and an ice saw, to create the ice hole. "Whenever you go for a hike to find ice bathing spots, you need to make sure of safety and warm up after [the plunge]," she says. "But for sure, you'll be the only person in winter to make up an ice hole here."
5. Best for the magical Lapland feel: Lake Kilpisjärvi and Mount Saana
In the northernmost reaches of Arctic Lapland, Lake Kilpisjärvi and Mount Saana, the 1,029m mountain rising on its shore, form a revered landscape, lauded in songs and paintings.
"I lived in Kilpisjärvi (village) one winter for three months," says Mäkinen. "Normally, there are about 100 inhabitants. It's a very communal place and immensely beautiful – you'll also get a little piece of the Swedish and Norwegian mountains. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be here."
For those planning to visit these Arctic reaches of Finland, there are accommodation options that make it a breeze to take a dip in lake Kilpisjärvi. "In case you don't have your own gear to cut an ice hole, you can visit Kilpisjärvi Lapland Hotel's sauna and their ice hole, which is kept open with pumps," Mäkinen says.
However, Mäkinen tends to cut her ice holes herself, and made more than 10 of them here last year.
"While you can cut an ice hole in the middle of an Arctic lake, you should always pay attention to locals moving with snowmobiles, make sure the ice hole is properly marked and that no ice blocks are left on the lake," warns Mäkinen. When asked if she's ever met other ice swimmers on her trips to Arctic lakes, Mäkinen laughs: "No, not swimmers. But ice hole fishers, yes. They walk over and say that I've made quite a big hole for fishing."
Website: https://www.laplandhotels.com/FI/lapin-hotellit/kilpis/lapland-hotels-kilpis.html
Address: Käsivarrentie 14206, 99490 Kilpisjärvi
Phone: +358 16 323 300
Instagram: @laplandhotels_kilpis
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Australian actress Melanie Zanetti, the voice behind Chilli Heeler, knows exactly what makes Brisbane so special. Here are her top picks for families in Queensland's capital.
Brisbane has quietly reinvented itself in recent years, shaking off its once-sleepy reputation to become one of Australia's most exciting cities. Long overshadowed by Sydney and Melbourne, the Queensland capital now hums with a creative energy that feels distinctly its own. Spots like the revitalised Howard Smith Wharves and vibrant laneway bars prove that this subtropical city isn't just growing up – it's thriving. And with the 2032 Olympics on the horizon, Brisbane is ready to take its place on the global stage.
Adding to Brisbane's shine is Bluey, the hugely popular children's show that's produced and set here; capturing hearts worldwide and offering a window into Brisbane's sun-drenched, easygoing lifestyle. From the show's lush parklands and characteristic veranda-wrapped Queenslander homes to its playful focus on family life, Bluey – and the city's new interactive Bluey's World experience – captures the essence of what makes Brisbane special.
"It's like the fabric of Bluey is in Brisbane," says Melanie Zanetti, the voice of Chilli Heeler, Bluey's beloved TV mum, noting that the city, like the show, has something special to offer families everywhere: a reminder to slow down, play and find joy in the everyday. "It's a gorgeous place to raise children. It is such a warm and friendly city, climate-wise, but also just the general energy of the place."
Zanetti's connection to Brisbane isn't just professional – it's personal. She grew up in Brisbane with her five siblings, and while she now splits her time between the US and the Queensland capital, she loves returning to her hometown. "When I've been in LA and New York and then come back, it's like I can breathe," she says. "The sky is different here; it's a clearer, crisper blue. There's not the pollution you get in other big cities. It's really beautiful in that way."
We asked the actress – whose voice will also feature in the just-announced Bluey movie – about the best things to do, eat and see in Brisbane, for kids and adults alike.
"Brisbane has really got into its stride," she says. "The city is having a moment. We've got the Olympics coming up, and there's an energy in the air that things are getting exciting. Whenever I come back, I'm shocked by how many incredible new restaurants have opened and amazing, delicious, world-class dining. [For families] there are so many gorgeous bushwalks, and then there's hinterland and beaches not that far away. And now Bluey's World sweetens the deal – I know people in the US whose kids are obsessed with coming to Brisbane, which blows my mind."
Here are Zanetti's favourite family-friendly ways to enjoy the sunny Australian city.
1. Best place to experience everyday life: New Farm Park
The phrase "for real life" in Bluey has become a heartfelt mantra, celebrating the beauty and importance of everyday moments. It's a tribute to the authentic connections between family and community, inspired by Brisbane's down-to-earth lifestyle.
For Zanetti, the best place to experience this laid-back spirit is New Farm Park, a heritage-listed riverfront park that features in the Bluey episode Spy Game. "It's a staple of Brisbane life," she says. "It's all the things. It's a green space. There's a playground. There's these huge old fig trees. It's on the river, there's barbecues. It's an all-in-one wonderful place to be."
Located on the banks of the Brisbane River, New Farm Park is a community hub that's perfect for everything from lazy Sunday picnics to brisk morning jogs. Visitors can enjoy barbecues under the shade of century-old trees, people-watch from the sprawling lawns, admire the famed rose garden and take in the sweeping city views. "I went there a lot in my childhood, there's great places to run around and ride bikes," says Zanetti. "It's central and a great place to congregate."
Next door, the Brisbane Powerhouse, a former 1920s power station reimagined as a cutting-edge arts venue, hosting theatre performances, exhibitions and a weekly farmer's market, as well as free outdoor events and plenty of space for kids to roam. After immersing yourself in the arts, grab a meal at the Powerhouse's riverfront restaurants or explore the Brisbane Riverwalk, a scenic pedestrian path linking New Farm to Brisbane's central business district.
Website: https://newfarmpark.com.au/
Address: 1042 Brunswick St, New Farm QLD 4005
Phone: (07) 3403 8888
Instagram: @newfarm_park
2. Best cultural experience: GOMA
Nestled within Brisbane's vibrant Cultural Precinct in South Brisbane, the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) is a must-visit for families and anyone keen to soak up Brisbane's cultural energy, says Zanetti. As part of a connected hub that includes QPAC for theatre and music, the Queensland Art Gallery and the State Library, GOMA stands out as a modern architectural masterpiece on the Brisbane River.
"It's a wonderful gallery. The space is beautiful and so well constructed to have incredible international exhibitions," says Zanetti, who grew up visiting the neighbouring Queensland Art Gallery before GOMA was built. "When GOMA arrived, it meant we could host these enormous shows we couldn't have before – like the Iris van Herpen exhibition, which was astounding."
GOMA, Australia's largest gallery of modern and contemporary art, has become renowned for hosting major international exhibitions. It's also home to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, a groundbreaking event that Zanetti has attended since its inception. "I think I've seen every one of those," she says, reflecting on the gallery's ability to connect local audiences with global perspectives.
GOMA offers free admission to its permanent collection and hands-on programmes and activities. "They always have great kids' activities tied to the exhibitions," Zanetti notes, "to the point where I think, 'Am I allowed to come here if I don't have kids?'."
After exploring GOMA, Zanetti recommends checking out the rest of the Cultural Precinct. "The galleries and museums might have a fee for a special exhibition, but most it is just open and free to everyone," she says. "It's very kid friendly; there's lots of things for kids, especially over the holiday season."
Website: https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/
Address: Stanley Pl, South Brisbane QLD 4101
Phone: (07) 3840 7303
Instagram: @qagoma
3. Best place to eat: One Fish, Two Fish
Brisbane's food scene strikes the perfect balance between sophistication and family-friendliness, making it easy to dine out with kids while enjoying top-notch cuisine.
Zanetti says that a standout for families is One Fish, Two Fish in Kangaroo Point, a seafood restaurant that delivers adult-worthy dishes alongside fun options (and colouring books) for kids. "What's great about it is that it has food that you that's more adult, but then definitely fun things for kids. And it has a great vibe," she adds. From fresh oysters and seafood risotto to crumbed fish fingers perfect for little hands, "it's a great spot to enjoy together".
For more adventurous palates, Zanetti suggests heading to James Street in the Fortitude Valley neighbourhood for a variety of options, including sAme sAme, a modern Thai fusion restaurant where bold flavours meet a buzzing atmosphere. "I feel like Brisbane in general is welcoming and kid-friendly in most spaces" says Zanetti – though she notes that for a more relaxed meal, the city's parks and year-round balmy weather make it perfect for a picnic. Her top picks for dining al fresco? Roma Street Parklands, New Farm Park and the Botanic Gardens.
Website: https://www.onefish-twofish.com.au/
Address: 708 Main St, Kangaroo Point QLD 4169
Phone: (07) 3391 7680
Instagram: @_onefishtwofish
4. Best for city views: Mount Coot-Tha
Brisbane's highest peak, Mount Coot-Tha, is a favourite destination for locals and visitors seeking breathtaking vistas of the city and the surrounding Moreton Bay region. "You can see all the lights of the city at night – it's so beautiful," says Zanetti, adding that the iconic lookout features in the Bluey episode The Sign.
Just a 15-minute drive from the city, Mount Coot-Tha offers activities for everyone. Hike or mountain bike through native bushland on its well-maintained trails, and reward yourself at the top with a coffee or ice cream from The Summit Cafe, served up with Brisbane's best views. You can also stroll along the observation deck to soak in the panorama and read a historic timeline of the destination.
Afterwards, make some time to visit the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at the foot of the mountain. This sprawling 52-hectare sanctuary is filled with native plants, serene walking trails and wholesome activities. Kids will love the Hide 'n' Seek Children's Trail, tucked within the shady rainforest, while the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium is a treat for astronomy enthusiasts. "I remember going as a kid – it was really gorgeous," says Zanetti, noting that you can explore the Cosmic Skydome to chart Brisbane's night sky and tour the Display Zone on a journey through space and time.
5. Best neighbourhood: South Bank
South Bank is Brisbane's all-in-one riverside playground and ultimate day-out destination, according to Zanetti. Nestled along the Brisbane River, this vibrant precinct combines green spaces, cultural attractions and endless entertainment, all with an emphasis on accessibility. "That's what's amazing about South Bank – it's free for everyone," she says.
For kids, the undeniable highlight is Streets Beach, a man-made beach complete with swimming pools and a water park, perfect for cooling off in Brisbane's subtropical heat. "It's really somewhere to take your kids for a day out, hang in the sunshine, swim and get an ice cream," Zanetti says. (Fun fact: the famous Bluey episode Ice Cream was set here.)
A stroll through the bougainvillea-covered arbour, one of South Bank's most picturesque features, leads to restaurants, ice cream stores and playgrounds. The area is also home to the city's Cultural Precinct, with its many galleries and museums; as well as the Piazza, a multi-purpose amphitheatre that hosts year-round events "There's even a cinema," says Zanetti. "Southbank really is an all-in-one stop."
If you're in Brisbane over a summer weekend, Zanetti recommends checking out Sunday Social on the Green, a Sunday afternoon event in South Bank Parklands where you can listen to live music with the Brisbane skyline as a backdrop. "All the kids can just run around and play, everyone's got picnic blankets, you can bring food or drink. It's such a great time."
Website: https://visit.brisbane.qld.au/places-to-go/inner-city/south-bank
Instagram: @visitsouthbank
6. Best wildlife experience: Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is a must-visit for visitors wanting to experience Australia's unique wildlife up close. Located in the suburb of Fig Tree Pocket, the world's oldest and largest koala sanctuary is also a nostalgic draw for locals who often visited as kids on family outings or school excursions. "It's been there forever, and it's just a really sweet day out for a small human," says Zanetti.
The sanctuary is home to more than 70 species of Australian animals, including kangaroos, wombats, echidnas and dingoes ("When you're overseas, you forget how particular our flora and fauna is," says Zanetti). But it's the koalas – more than 100 of them – that steal the show. "Koalas are probably the main attraction," she explains.
For little ones, it's an enchanting day spent learning about native animals, feeding kangaroos, braving the 60-degree crocodile viewing dome and going behind the scenes in a platypus encounter. "It's perfect for anyone coming from out of town who's never really seen Australian animals," says Zanetti. Even better is knowing that your money is going to a good place, with the sanctuary putting research and conservation at the forefront of their work.
Website: https://lonepinekoalasanctuary.com/
Address: 708 Jesmond Road, Fig Tree Pocket Qld 4069
Phone: (07) 3378 1366
Instagram: @lonepinekoala
7. Best day trip: Moreton Island/Mulgumpin
There's no shortage of natural wonders surrounding Brisbane, from pristine islands to lush hinterland rainforests. A favourite for Brisbanites is Moreton Island/Mulgumpin, just 75 minutes by boat from the city. The island's centre is dominated by Moreton Island National Park – which covers 95% of the landmass – and the coast is blessed with endless beaches, sand dunes, surfing spots and crystal-clear lagoons. "I was astounded by how beautiful it is," says Zanetti. "The water is that sharp blue-green, gorgeous aqua colour."
The island is a haven for marine life, with the Tangalooma Wrecks offering snorkelling among sunken ships teeming with fish in crystal-clear waters. If you prefer to stay on land, the island's sand dunes are perfect for tobogganing, and the beaches invite endless hours of relaxation. If you can, Zanetti suggests staying overnight at Tangalooma Island Resort, which offers a range of activities from hand-feeding wild bottlenose dolphins to underwater sea scooter safaris. "The resort is really magical and very family friendly."
For those drawn to the hinterland, Springbrook National Park is a spectacular rainforest retreat just 90 minutes south of Brisbane. Home to towering waterfalls, dramatic rock formations and lush tropical foliage, coming here feels like stepping onto another planet. "When you first walk in, there's this wall of dark rock and a huge waterfall. The area is filled with butterflies and dragonflies – it's really magical," says Zanetti. "You won't see things like this anywhere else in the world."
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Chris Davenport is a born New Englander who learned his craft on the region's best slopes. Here are his favourite places to ski in the North-East US, from Jay Peak to Stowe.
With its frigid winters, jagged peaks and less consistent snowfall, the US East Coast is frequently outshone by the West Coast as a ski destination. After all, the Rocky Mountains feature the tallest mountains peaks, the deepest powder and the gnarliest terrain.
But the East Coast's rugged topography and icy conditions are precisely why many New England locals proudly display "Ski the East!" bumper stickers on their vehicles. These challenging conditions have given rise to a number of excellent ski towns and produced some of the most decorated skiers of all time, including Mikaela Shiffrin, Bode Miller and extreme skiing champ Chris Davenport.
Though Davenport made history by skiing all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000ft peaks in the span of one year and has lived in Aspen for decades, the daredevil actually cut his teeth in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where he grew up. Even today, Davenport has fond memories of the landscape that shaped him; particularly of the cabin his grandfather built in the town of North Conway in the 1940s, where generations of Davenports have learned to ski.
Davenport had just stepped off a helicopter while guiding a skiing trip in Northern Canada when we caught up with him to ask for his New England skiing tips.
"I've always believed that it's not the size of the mountains or the quality of the snow that makes the skier, it's how much access you have," Davenport tells the BBC. "New England skiing is so accessible. You can find cool, affordable ski towns, incredible ski clubs and great coaches. New England is a hotbed of cultivating passionate skiers."
Here are Davenport’s top recommendations for skiing the east.
1. Best introduction to the region: North Conway, New Hampshire
When it comes to accessible adventure, Davenport's childhood stomping grounds of North Conway in the White Mountains is where it's at.
This village of just more than 2,000 people is ringed by 800,000 acres of national forest, including Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in New England, making it an ideal jumping-off point for skiing.
"You can go ski Cranmore and then jump over to Attitash and maybe go up to Wildcat or Black Mountain," says Davenport, referencing the ski areas that dot the region. "And if you are more proficient and want to explore the backcountry, you can head to Tuckerman Ravine" – a glacial cirque carved into Mount Washington known for its steep descents and propensity for avalanches.
North Conway is a four-season destination, whether it's for skiing in the winter, biking in the spring, hiking in the summer or leaf peeping in the autumn. As such, it has the amenities to support the constant influx of visitors. Moat Mountain Brewing Company is a popular spot for an après-ski beer and burger; Zeb’s General Store is so well stocked and nostalgic it can have a line down the block during peak summer; and White Birch Books is the perfect place to pick up some local adventure inspo for when you are cosying up by the fire.
Website: https://cranmore.com/
Address: 239 Skimobile Rd, North Conway, NH 03860
Phone: 1-800-SUN-N-SKI
Instagram: @cranmoremountain
2. Best for families: Stowe, Vermont
Nestled at the base of Mount Mansfield – the tallest mountain in Vermont – is the quaint town of Stowe. Davenport has a personal connection; his wife is from the area, and her mother was a ski instructor at Stowe Mountain Resort. "It’s a super authentic and historic ski town with a welcoming vibe and incredible summer recreation," he says.
His own ties aside, the skiing at Stowe is top notch, offering runs for beginners and experts alike – especially those with children. The resort features more challenging trails and 2,360ft of vertical drop on Mount Mansfield, and family-friendly runs on Spruce Peak. There is a fun gondola that connects the two mountains, and at the base of Spruce Peak is Spruce Peak Village, which has a skating rink, shops and restaurants.
Beyond the resort, the town of Stowe has plenty to offer for adults and children. Davenport is a fan of Piecasso, a skier-friendly pizza joint. And for premier New England brewery destinations, it doesn’t get much better than The Alchemist, a local institution that makes one of the most in-demand IPAs in a region known for them. "That’s become a kind of religion up there," says Davenport. That and skiing, of course.
Website: https://www.stowe.com/
Address: 5781 Mountain Rd, Stowe, VT 05672
Phone: +1 (802) 253-3000
Instagram: @stowemt
3. Best powder: Jay Peak
For those looking to sample the deepest East Coast powder, it doesn’t get any better than Jay Peak Resort. Just south of the Canadian border in Jay, Vermont, the snow comes early and often to this part of the Green Mountains. Jay Peak averages 350in of snow a year, which is the highest total in New England.
"Jay has a more adventurous, off-piste spirit," says Davenport. "It has a pretty core local skier community than some of the bigger industrial mountains."
At four hours from Boston, getting there is a hike, but that doesn’t stop people from chasing the pow. "I know families in Massachusetts that drive to Jay every weekend because it’s so awesome, but it’s a commitment," says Davenport. The copious snow and the 2,153ft of vertical drop make it well worth the pilgrimage.
Website: https://jaypeakresort.com/
Address: 830 Jay Peak Rd, Jay, VT, 05859
Phone: +1 (802) 988-2611
Instagram: @jaypeakresort
4. Best après-ski spot: Red Parka Pub
North of North Conway in Glen, New Hampshire, is Davenport’s favourite spot for hanging out after a big day in the mountains: the Red Parka Steakhouse and Pub. "It’s one of the most famous ski bars in the Mount Washington Valley," says Davenport.
"The Parka", as it is known to locals, has been family-owned for 53 years. "Our parents would pick us up at Attitash and on the way home we'd stop at the Parka and they would get beers and we would have wings," Davenport recalls. "That was pretty foundational. There were always ski movies playing on the screen. It just has a really cool ski town vibe." The bar's interior is peppered with ski paraphernalia and there is a patio for summertime dining. After a cold day on the slopes, the famous French onion soup is a definite crowd pleaser.
Website: http://www.redparkapub.com/
Address: 3 Station St, Glen, NH 03838
Phone: +1 (603) 383-4344
Instagram: @theredparkapub
5. Best dual-purpose destination: Burke, Vermont
In Vermont's Northeast Kingdom – a 2,000-sq-mile area comprising three counties and ample lakes and mountains – sits the town of Burke and Burke Mountain Ski Resort. "Burke’s fantastic," raves Davenport. "What a transformation from a sleepy little ski area to this unbelievable destination."
The resort still maintains a homely feel. What it lacks in size it more than makes up for with its reliably enjoyable and challenging runs, sparse crowds and fantastic views, including the distant Willoughby Gap. a glacier-carved notch between Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor.
It is also the home of the Kingdom Trails, one of the premier mountain biking destinations in the world. This makes it a great spot to visit in the summer, or for taking a break from skiing and renting a fat tyre bike in winter. Davenport’s sister Ashley, herself an alum of the US Ski Team, taught at nearby Burke Mountain Academy for a decade (a boarding school for ski racers that has sent 37 alums to the Olympics, including Mikaela Shiffrin), and like many locals, her property borders the extensive trail network, meaning she can get out on a world-class ride from her backyard. For post-ride refreshments it’s hard to beat The Hub Trailside Beer Garden, an idyllic spot on Darling Hill connected to the Village Sport Shop, where you can rent bikes and hit the trails.
Website: https://skiburke.com/
Address: 223 Sherburne Lodge Rd, East Burke, VT 05832
Phone: +1 (802) 626-7300
Instagram: @burkemountainofficial
6. Best region for gnarly terrain: The 93 Corridor
Route 93, a highway which travels from Boston directly into the heart of the White Mountains, cuts through an inordinate amount of steep runs and thrilling terrain. "I like the variety of being able to go to Loon Mountain one day, Waterville Valley the next and then Cannon Mountain," says Davenport. "Growing up, Cannon always felt big and wild and up in the alpine. It has a tram to the top and tight trees."
The Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway opened in 1938, and still offers year-round rides to the 4,080ft summit, making it the highest ski area in New Hampshire. Another bonus of travelling Route 93 is the town of Littleton, New Hampshire. Not only does it feature Lahout’s, the US oldest ski shop, it has Schilling Beer Co, a riverside destination for delicious pints and exquisite charcuterie boards; and Chutters candy store, home of the world’s longest candy counter.
What's Davenport's ideal rest day in New England? "You shouldn't take a rest day," he says "New England is known for the nature, the mountains, the rivers, the trails, the history. Just keep skiing, because that's why you're there in the first place."
Website: https://www.cannonmt.com/
Address: 2650 Profile Rd, Franconia, NH 03580
Phone: +1 (603) 823-8800
Instagram: @cannonmountain
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Canadian freeski champ Mike Douglas stands at the vanguard of his hometown's ski culture. Here are his local favourites, from schussing down Peak to Creek to ahi poke at Sushi Village.
Cradled in British Columbia's magnificent Coast Mountains 120km north of Vancouver, the town of Whistler is a snow-sports haven. It's also home to Whistler Blackcomb, North America's largest ski resort.
Biggest isn't always best, of course. But Whistler Blackcomb's terrain – more than 8,000 acres of endless cruisers, adventurous glades, steep bowls and backcountry possibilities – is revered for good reason. The diversity at the bottom of the hill is similarly impressive. Boosted by its role in hosting the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Whistler boasts an array of restaurants, cultural experiences and high-profile events.
Named after the twin peaks looming above, Whistler Blackcomb has long been a bucket-list destination and stomping ground for the planet's best skiers – including freeskiing legend Mike Douglas. Douglas – aka: "the godfather of freeskiing" – arrived from Vancouver Island at just 18 years old, back when Whistler's ski scene was dominated by the Whistler and Blackcomb resorts (they merged in 1997) and the population was just around 3,000. Within two years Douglas made both the BC and Canadian freestyle teams. He has stood at the vanguard of Whistler and wider ski culture ever since.
Does he long for those early days?
"I actually don't think I'd want to go back," he says, explaining that Whistler is now a much more holistic community, with excellent amenities and cultural programming. Unlike other famous ski towns, Whistler still feels like a thriving hometown. From daycares to gymnastics programmes, "raising a family here has made me appreciate the community even more". Ultimately, Douglas reflects, "how this [amazing] community is what kept me here. People are really progressive and forward thinking. Everything is possible."
Not that paradise is perfect; even Whistler's hallowed powder is vulnerable to climate change. Douglas remembers how "thick and full" Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb peak once was. "It was hard to imagine that in my lifetime I would see that essentially completely disappear," he says. Observing these changes first-hand helps motivate his work with Protect Our Winters to mobilise the snow-sports community and get climate-positive policies on the national agenda. "Outdoors people who participate in these sports have an obligation to try and protect these environments."
Here are Douglas' favourite ways to enjoy Whistler.
1. Best for a pre-ski coffee: Rockit Coffee Co
Skiers seeking a shot of energy before hitting the slopes will find Rockit Coffee Co by the base of the Creekside Gondola (one of the resort's original lifts) at the end of Peak to Creek; one of Douglas' favourite runs. Rockit is actually in Whistler Creekside, 4.2km south of Whistler; you can travel between the two by ski and ski lifts. "[It's] my go-to coffee shop these days," he says.
Rockit's big draw is its ambience. "It's got a fully committed retro-music vibe and feels warm and cosy inside," says Douglas. "Always good tunes, great coffee and tasty food." The walls are festooned with '70s-style posters, art, gadgets and curios; one wall is simply a Tetris jumble of old-school speakers and subwoofers. Visitors can warm up by the wood stove, hang out on window stools or get comfy in an egg-shaped capsule chair.
Given most tourists stay in the main village, Creekside is a great spot to soak up the local atmosphere, says Douglas. He doesn't live far away himself. "Now that I've got an e-bike, I've been using that to go skiing sometimes," he says. "I'll ride over to Rockit and just lock it up, riding wearing my ski boots!"
Website: https://www.rockitcoffee.ca/
Address: 2063 Lake Placid Rd #227, Whistler, BC V8E 0B6
Instagram: @rockit_coffee
2. Best signature ski run: Peak to Creek
Descending 1,529 vertical metres over seven miles, Peak to Creek is one of North America's longest continuous ski runs – without a single flat section requiring ski-pole pushing or binding unclipping.
It starts on Whistler peak, offering a sensational 180-degree view of the southern Coast Mountains, and winds all the way down (with diversions aplenty) to the base of the Creekside Gondola. "[It's] a classic," says Douglas.
The run is a leg-burner in the best snow conditions, but a particular challenge when it hasn't been groomed all the way – which is often. "It can get pretty gnarly down at the bottom there!" Douglas says. "It's a good all-rounder, a big challenge – and something that people often come here and want to try and do by the end of the week." Thankfully it finishes next to Dusty's, a beloved pitstop serving beers and massive BBQ plates on the terrace or by the fireplace. "The pulled-pork sandwich is always a fave there," says Douglas.
Douglas also recommends Whistler's Harmony Ridge and Blackcomb's Cloud Nine as similar runs offering sweeping vistas and epic cruise potential.
3. Best for a post-ski surprise: Vallea Lumina
Vallea Lumina Night Walk is an immersive, after-dark, multimedia forest adventure. Following clues and cryptic radio transmissions in search of two lost hikers, participants proceed through a mystical storyline rendered with holograms, lasers, music and more. It's designed in collaboration with Moment Factory, which has staged Cirque Du Soleil events.
"Honestly, I remember that when I first heard about it, I thought it sounded cheesy as hell," Douglas admits. "I didn't really have much interest – until I started hearing from people that went to it." The reviews were so good that he had to check it out, and "it's world class!" he says. "I've probably been six or eight times. If I have friends here from out of town for a week, it's always a recommendation."
If visiting with children or people with access requirements, note that Vallea Lumina requires a kilometre of self-guided walking along snow-cleared but uneven winter terrain.
Website: https://vallealumina.com/
Address: Sixteen Mile Creek Forest Service Rd, Whistler, BC V0N 1B8
Phone: +1 833 800 8480
4. Best for dinner: Sushi Village
"Sushi Village – all time fave!" Douglas says when asked to name a Whistler culinary highlight.
The Japanese Hawaiian fusion menu at this local mainstay is full of delights: "way ahead of the whole poke craze," says Douglas. He recommends the Tangy Agedashi Tofu (deep-fried tofu on a bed of bean sprouts with a soy-based sauce) and the Ahi Poke. The atmosphere – always fun, sometimes raucous – is also key.
Sushi Village is also a sentimental place for Douglas, given he worked there for four years shortly after moving to Whistler. "One of my local claims to fame is inventing the modern recipe for the Strawberry Sake Margarita on a hilarious drunken night with owner Miki Homma when I worked there in the early '90s," he reminisces.
But the true magic of Sushi Village lies in its legendary role in Whistler's history. "It is the cultural heart of Whistler, in my opinion," Douglas says. And, when asked whether his friends would agree, he says he "can't think of a single one that wouldn't".
Sushi Village was Whistler's sixth-ever restaurant, opened in December 1985 by three Vancouver friends who simply wanted to ski every day. It soon became a storied hangout for the outdoor community. "It seems most of the celebs that roll through Whistler make a stop," says Douglas. "Check out the 'Wall of Fame' on the 'five-mile' walk to the restroom."
Website: https://sushivillage.com/
Address: 4340 Sundial Crescent, Whistler, BC V0N 1B
Phone: +1 604 932 3330
Instagram: @sushivillagewhistler
5. Best for a rest day: Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre
The area today known as Whistler is located on the unceded territories of the Lil'wat and Squamish First Nations. European colonists – mostly prospectors and fur trappers – only started settling there in the late 19th Century as part of a long process of displacement and oppression of Indigenous communities.
Engaging with and learning about this Indigenous heritage is essential for an authentic experience of Whistler – or anywhere in modern-day Canada. And the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre is the perfect place for it. "Especially for people that haven't been to Whistler, or haven't been exposed to our Indigenous culture, I think it's pretty well done and a really cool thing to check out," says Douglas. "There are thousands of years of human history in this region that were never properly acknowledged until this century. It's nice to see the record finally being set straight."
The centre is a museum, art gallery and event space promoting and exploring First Nations culture and history through diverse and ever-changing exhibitions, activities and events. Visitors can connect with Cultural Ambassadors, join an interpretive forest walk, participate in Indigenous craft workshops and more.
Website: http://slcc.ca/
Address: 4584 Blackcomb Way, Whistler, BC V8E 0Y3
Phone: +1 604 964 0990
Instagram: @slccwhistler
6. Best for sore legs: Scandinave Spa
Scandinave is a sumptuous spa on the north edge of town, surrounded by old-growth forest. With dry saunas, hot pools, thermal waterfalls, cold plunges and massage therapies available, there is no more luxurious way to recuperate after hard days of skiing.
"I'll go into an hour-and-a-half rotation of hot tub, cold plunge, sauna, relaxation room," says Douglas. "I prefer it in winter, and I prefer it when the weather isn't good… when the skiing is crappy." He recommends either booking ahead or going early in the day to ensure a spot and avoid the crowds.
Website: https://www.scandinave.com/whistler
Address: 8010 Mons Rd, Whistler, BC V8E 1K7
Phone: +1 888 935 2423
Instagram: @scandinavewhis
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As the world turns its gaze to Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo as one of the hosts of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, veteran Olympic skier Kristian Ghedina shares his hometown picks.
Nestled between the jutting spires of Italy's Unesco-listed Dolomites mountain range, the small town and ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo (altitude 1,224m), is often called the "Queen of the Dolomites". Located in a valley near the rainbow-hued Cinque Torri mountain, Cortina's distinctive Tyrolean architecture has remained mostly untouched by modern developments.
This jewel-like ski resort is also one of Italy's favourite wintertime destinations, luring local jet setters and professional skiers for the settimana bianca, or "white week" – the Italian custom of taking a weeklong winter ski retreat. The resort has become so synonymous with style that designer and athletic labels like MC2 Saint Barth and Kappa have used its name to sell a myriad of clothing items. And yet, Cortina d'Ampezzo has been largely unknown overseas – until now.
This sleepy ski town is about to attract a global audience as one of the hosts of the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. But 2026 will hardly be its first Olympic foray; Cortina d'Ampezzo was also the host of the 1956 Winter Olympic Games. It's further known for being the birthplace and home of retired Olympic downhill skier Kristian Ghedina.
"In Cortina, every youngster skis," says Ghedina. "I've travelled the world… but I'm attached to my land, my town. It's a very strong bond that [you have] with snow and skiing."
Ghedina has spent his life on the slopes; his mother, Adriana Dipol, was the town's first female instructor. After qualifying for his first national competition at age 16, Ghedina won 13 World Cup gold medals and has become an ambassador for the sport and his hometown.
We asked this veteran ski champ about the best things to do, eat and see during a settimana bianca in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
"It's a fantastic place. It's in a beautiful, open valley," says Ghedina, noting Cortina's status as a luxury resort. "It's earned its image… It's a brand name by now, a bit like saying Venice or Monaco."
But the town also has a demure charm, one that Ghedina particularly loves – especially in the quieter months. "I prefer Cortina in the off season, in the autumn," he says. "It has fantastic colours, there are fewer people".
Formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Cortina is multilingual – in addition to Italian and German, many locals speak Ladin, a local language similar to Romansch – and the region's culture in many ways more closely mirrors that of nearby Switzerland and Austria than what many consider quintessentially "Italian".
Here are Ghedina's favourite ways to enjoy Cortina d'Ampezzo.
1. Best ski slopes: Le Tofane
Skiing is impossible to escape in Cortina d'Ampezzo; a town whose fortunes were built upon the sport. Affluent tourists flooded into the town by the end of the 19th Century, leading to the development of some of Cortina's main landmarks — including its distinctive neo-Gothic belltower, known in Ladin as el Cianpanín. The town opened its Ski Club in 1903 and hosted the winter games 53 years later. Over the decades, it has developed the infrastructure for many winter sports – including bobsleighing and figure skating – and pistes of different levels, which can be reached from the centre via cable car.
"The slopes are steep here," says Ghedina. "People from the neighbouring valleys [Val Gardena and Val Bardia] come to ski in the winter. They enjoy our slopes more, they have remained the same. You can ski better here. You have smaller crowds, which is a plus."
As for the best ski slope? "Olimpia delle Tofane," says Ghedina. One of Italy's most famous downhill descents, having gained renown after the 1956 games, Le Tofane stands at 1,778m high and allows skiers to schuss right to the centre of town amid stunning scenery of the surrounding Cinque Torri and rugged mountains. It will host the Olympic women's and Paralympic Alpine skiing competitions during the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
2. Best restaurant for local cuisine: Rifugio Scoiattoli
Outside Italy, the catch-all term "Italian cuisine" is overwhelmingly associated with Bolognese, Roman and Southern Italian dishes like lasagna, pasta cacio e pepe and pizza. But up in snowy Cortina and the neighbouring regions, typical dishes are hearty, buttery and calorie-dense: the perfect fuel for any wintry excursion.
While visitors will indeed find pizza and pasta at most of the area's restaurants, traditional local recipes have a decidedly more Austro-Hungarian flavour.
"Here, you can eat casunziei, ravioli made with potato and red or white turnip, served with melted butter and poppy seeds," says Ghedina. "Game also makes for a popular secondo (meat dish)."
Amongst Cortina d'Ampezzo's best-known local specialties is the aptly named bombardino: a brandy and eggnog mixture served with whipped cream. A true "hyper-caloric bomb", says Ghedina.
All of these can be savoured at Ghedina's local culinary pick; the Rifugio Scoiattoli. Opened in 1969, the chalet is a local institution, and is reached by skiers and hikers venturing up to the Cinque Torri mountain range.
Great food – from casunziei and polenta to deer fillet – aside, Ghedina points out the chalet's scenery. "There's a fantastic panorama of the [mountain range], it'll leave you speechless," he says. "A true 360° view."
Website:https://www.rifugioscoiattoli.it
Address: G24W+VJ, Loc. 5 Torri, 32043
Phone number: +39 333 814 6960
Instagram:@rifugioscoiattoli
3. Trendiest place for après-ski: Chalet Tofane
For the many devotees of the settimana bianca, unwinding with a few drinks after a day of skiing is just as important as the sport itself.
As the sun sets, snow chasers head to bars to mingle and unwind, making après-ski the social highlight of the winter calendar.
While post-ski socialising has a relatively recent presence in Cortina d'Ampezzo, the town's association with the shenanigans of the fashionable elite is certainly not new.
"[Already] at the beginning of the 1900s, you had wealthy gentlemen coming for their holidays," says Ghedina.
In the following decades – prompted by the 1956 Winter Games and post-war Italian economic boom – winter tourism began to accelerate, with well-to-do Italians from northern regions flocking to the Alps to ski.
"They shoot Christmas films here. Many businessmen have bought their homes and bring friends… it's a true hub, especially in the high season," says Ghedina.
But tourism has not gone entirely unscathed from local disapproval: "Some traditionalists criticise the [wealthy] who come, spend and build, don't respect nature."
So to experience the hippest après-ski and the most fashionable scene Cortina has to offer, Ghedina suggests heading to Chalet Tofane.
"It's a fun place," he says. "There's a nice facility, a great open space."
The Chalet opened a mere six years ago – the brainchild of Michelin-starred chef Graziano Prest and expert sommelier Kristian Casanova – and has become a sought-after spot for parties and outdoor aperitivi (pre-meal drinks and light bites), famed for its stunning mountain-top views of the town.
Website: https://chalet-tofane.it
Address: Lacedel, 1, 32043 Cortina d'Ampezzo BL
Phone number: +39 351 8562956
Instagram: @chalettofanecortina
4. Best mountain hike: Sentieri della Grande Guerra
Apart from skiing, the Dolomites – with their mesmerising mountain peaks and ancient trails – offer spectacular hikes. Few visitors come to Cortina d'Ampezzo hoping for a history lesson, but the Sentieri della Grande Guerra – or "trails of the Great War" offers a double whammy of spectacular views and a less charming past.
Back in World War One, the site was the battleground for Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops. After the former managed to occupy Cortina, soldiers blew up the "Castelletto" rock to finally be able to attack Habsburg troops.
More than a century later, the fields are no longer the site of bloody battles but rather a bucolic pathway that encircles Cortina d'Ampezzo and offers breathtaking views of the Marmolada and Tofane mountains. Over at the Lagazuoi area, remnants of the battles – including trenches – can still be found, much to the satisfaction of history buffs as well as nature lovers.
The appeal of the Sentieri della Grande Guerra isn't strictly seasonal, as Ghedina notes. "They're very picturesque, and great to visit in the summer."
The 20km-long trail is just part of Cortina's cobweb of pathways, which extend approximately 300km.
5. Most beautiful viewpoint: Rifugio Faloria
For Ghedina, choosing a specific panoramic spot in Cortina d'Ampezzo is quite the challenge, as the area is not short on natural beauty.
Indeed, Cortina boasts one of the crowning jewels of the rugged mountain range: the Cinque Torri ("Five Towers"), a cluster of five jutting rocks made up of the area's distinctive grey limestone, which have an almost rosy glimmer at sunset.
But when pressed to answer, Ghedina says that the views offered by the Rifugio Faloria are the area's best.
A rustic cabin sitting on the Faloria mountain, the Rifugio Faloria's terrace reveals the full breadth of Cortina's valley and surrounding mountains.
"You have a terrace with a panoramic view of the entire village," says Ghedina. "The advantage of having this wide-open valley is the stunning mountain frame, offering a view of the basin."
Surrounded by the idyllic, quiet grandeur of Cortina's surroundings, it's not hard to imagine why Ghedina fell in love with the slopes that took him to peaks of success.
Website: https://faloriacristallo.it/parliamoci/
Instagram: @faloria_cortina
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Just in time for the holidays, stylist to the stars Erin Walsh shares her insider recommendations for getting to the heart of New York City's vast shopping scene.
New York City's shopping scene is undeniably iconic. The nation's undisputed retail capital since the late 1800s, its shimmering concrete streets teem with luxury flagships, historic department stores and edgy indie boutiques. And yet, few out-of-town visitors venture past the chain stores of 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center and Herald Square.
"If you only go [there], you're missing the special gems," said Erin Walsh – long-time New York resident and stylist to flawless Hollywood celebs like Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez. Walsh is a passionate shopper, and equally passionate about New York City. "I love New York so much," she said. "I feel like when you live there, it becomes not just a part of your identity, but energetically, your heart starts to beat with it."
Walsh's approach to shopping in New York City is simple: "Get lost. The only way you get surprised and inspired is when you just wander around." But for Walsh, getting lost means meandering through laser-focused "pockets" of her favourite neighbourhoods to create ultra-niche experiences that don't stop at shopping. "I always think of the restaurants around it," she said. "Things that feel cosy… it just makes it more fun."
Here is her expert guide to "getting lost" in New York City's shopping scene.
1. Best for women's fashion: SoHo between West Broadway and Broadway
Walsh's "pockets" often span mere street blocks, carving up a neighbourhood into unofficial micro-nabes, like the cobblestoned stretch of West Broadway and Broadway in SoHo that's her pick for women's fashion.
Artsy SoHo – famed for its tony boutiques – is teeming with "so many options", she said, naming The Webster, Kate Spade and Chloé as her go-to luxury brand stores in the area.
Walsh also likes combing the streets to uncover surprising indie boutiques, like Kirna Zabête on Mercer Street, which offers highly curated selections from both legendary and up-and-coming designers.
While in this stretch of SoHo, Walsh likes to make a stop at "special places", like La Mercerie. "It's not only a restaurant," she said. "It's clothing, a showroom. Everything that's in the restaurant is for sale. They even sell flowers… and then you go to Balthazar [restaurant and bar] at the end of the day."
2. Best for men's shopping: The Bowery
When it comes to shopping for her male clients and loved ones, Walsh heads to the industrial Bowery neighbourhood in downtown Manhattan – a stretch of gritty city blocks she fondly calls "woodsy" and "underrated, absolutely".
Her favourite Bowery neighbourhood shops are found in the pocket near The Bowery Hotel, including [upscale home decor store] John Derien on 2nd Street, which Walsh calls her "Christmas problem solver". She also always makes a stop at Dashwood Books on Bond Street. "It's my husband's favourite bookstore," she said. "Just that little stretch there. It's so cosy and wonderful. They put the Goop shop there, too. It's a special collection of little shops."
3. Best for traditional holiday shopping: Midtown
New York City shopping is always otherworldly, but never more so than during the winter holidays (blame Miracle on 34th Street). The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade down 5th Avenue draws hordes of spectators each year, the ritzy shops at Rockefeller Center are almost as much of a draw as the plaza's massive Christmas tree, and the high art holiday window displays of 5th Avenue's historic department stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Saks are nothing short of legendary.
Locals generally avoid the tourist-thronged madness of Midtown during the holidays, but Walsh always makes it a point to visit. "You have to go to Midtown and do all of that," she said. "It's just so special. Even with my kids, taking them to the Christmas tree [in Rockefeller Center] when there's so many people you can barely move. It's great."
4. Best for home interiors: Tribeca, the West Village
Walsh, who studied theatre at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, is just as passionate about interiors as she is about fashion, finding joy in layering textures and materials in New York City's tiny spaces. "If you're living an aesthetic, it's the spaces that you allow into your energy that really impacts how you feel," she said.
She hits sophisticated Tribeca and the skewed streets of the historic West Village when she wants to snap up beautifully designed homewares and surprise gifts, from mirrors to candlesticks. "I've given rugs, I've given furniture pieces, trays, books. I think a robe [dressing gown] makes a beautiful gift," she said. "I like that idea when you give someone a present… you want them to feel held and seen."
She also enjoys visiting candle stores and shopping for fragrances, which she thinks are a "surprising gift". "People always say don't do that," she said. "But I always feel like the best gifts, you take a risk."
5. Best for kids: SoHo, between Thompson and West Broadway
Whenever she needs to shop for children, Walsh heads back to artsy SoHo but narrows her focus even more tightly to a two-block stretch on SoHo's westernmost edge, citing Bonpoint on West Broadway as the touchstone for children's designers in the area. "There's so many cute little kids shops there, and you only find that when you're wandering around," she said.
Another of her favourite stores for children is Makie on Thompson Street: "The most beautiful kids clothes... It's Japanese but feels a little bit Scandinavian somehow." And a final stop at Ladurée [café] on West Broadway for their signature macarons in a beautiful box will delight adults and children alike.
6. Best for quiet luxury: the Upper East Side, around The Mark Hotel
Walsh's favourite shopping pocket in uptown Manhattan is the swanky stretch of Madison Avenue surrounding The Mark Hotel. But before even venturing to the boutiques, Walsh recommends visiting Georgia Louise Atelier on 71st Street for a "reset" facial and a luxe beauty haul of high-tech face tools or products from Louise's own skincare line.
Afterwards, she suggests hitting the avenue's stretch of luxury shops like Sidney Garber jewellery, Ralph Lauren and La Ligne clothing boutique, which she loves for its sweaters. "I could give probably everyone I know and that I don't know, a sweater from La Ligne and everybody would be thrilled," she said. Rounding out Walsh's Upper East Side luxe shopping experience is a visit to the Gagosian art gallery and finally winding down at the end of the day with a drink at The Mark.
7. Best for making a whole day of it: SoHo, between Lafayette and Crosby Streets
Walsh recommends another ultra-niche pocket of SoHo with a tight concentration of enough fun businesses to tie up an entire day. "There's some great furniture and jewellery shops on the corner of Crosby and Howard," she said."You get your nails done [at Paintbox nail salon]. And then you get your man a present and coffee at Saturdays [NYC]."
Of the area's handbag and jewelley stores, Walsh enjoys visiting Prada and Dinosaur Designs, then exploring the smaller, up-and-coming boutiques in the area before meandering one block east to Lafayette Street, where she zeroes in on Santa Maria Novella (the NYC branch of the luxe Italian fragrance line) and the McNally Jackson indie bookshop. Afterwards, she makes a point to stop by the Sant Ambroeus bar for a refreshing Campari spritz. "Always feels good," she said. "It's about getting lost, right?"
8. Best new kid on the block: Dover Street Market (Flatiron/Madison Square Park)
As much as Walsh loves shopping in Manhattan's classic downtown neighbourhoods, she keeps her eye on up-and-coming shopping areas, too, like the Flatiron district's Dover Street Market. The Flatiron District – home to the striking wedge-shaped Flatiron building and Madison Square Park – "has really exploded in the past few years", said Walsh. "They have a unique and diverse selection and there's so many cute little coffee shops and restaurants… there's great jewellery, a more international selection of designers."
Walsh notes that the area is becoming a foodie magnet as well, with Eataly and Cecconi's locations, as well as several hotels like Ace, where shoppers can rest their bags – and their feet – as they take a cocktail break. "Enjoy it," recommended Walsh. "A lot of times people feel like they're in a crazy rush, and that's when you get bad presents."
This article was originally published on 23 November 2023, and updated on 11 December 2024.
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Tess Ledeux grew up on the slopes of La Plagne and now she's a world-class freestyle champion. Here are her picks for her home slopes, from après-ski to otherworldly Alpine views.
The ski resort of La Plagne in Savoie, France, might be primarily known as a family-friendly Alpine destination, but it has serious Olympic cache: in 1992, it was a bobsledding venue for the Albertville Olympics, a feat it hopes to repeat in 2030 when the French Alps is in line to host the Winter Olympics. It's also the home of French ski prodigy Tess Ledeux; an Olympic medallist with a record 16 freestyle World Cup victories under her belt.
Ledeux took a break from her heavy training and competition schedule to chat with the BBC about the best spots to eat, drink and ski in La Plagne. "I grew up in La Plagne so for me it will always be unique," says Ledeux, fresh off a big air win at the FIS Freeski World Cup in Beijing and one of France’s biggest hopes for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympics. "I would get home from school and build little jumps for my skis or sledge in front on our apartment. The ski resort is really big, but it is the slopes that make it so important. They have everything: runs for beginners and professional skiers, a glacier, a forest…"
La Plagne, the concrete vision of French Brutalist architect Michel Bezançon, was designed very specifically for alpine skiing in 1961, hence the prevalence of functional ski-in-ski-out apartment blocks at snow-sure altitudes and an aggressively modern lift system. The resort might not be a place of obvious natural beauty, but families love it for its bounty of affordable, predominantly self-catering accommodation and flush of brilliant outdoor activities – for all ages and abilities, on and off the slopes.
Here are Ledeux's top ways to explore La Plagne.
1. Best panorama: La Grande Rochette
Bezançon ensured that his resort in the then-untouched Tarantaise Valley scaled great heights; 11 interconnected villages in La Plagne spider spectacularly up the mountainside from the town of Aime on the valley floor to the resort-village of Aime 2000 at 2,100m, climaxing with a monumental zigzag of urban residences. Resembling ocean liners, the 50m-high, 250m-long, pyramid-shaped apartment blocks were spawned by the Pompidou government’s controversial Plan Neige (1964-77) that championed the construction of new, fully serviced mountain "towns" on virgin high-altitude sites.
Ledeux's favourite viewpoint across this utopian creation? "Grande Rochette – the 360-degree view from the summit is just amazing" she says. "You can see Courchevel, Méribel and most of the Les Trois Vallées, the Grande Motte [3,453m] peak, the glacier in Tignes and all the slopes in La Plagne." Ledeux recommends taking the Grande Rochette cable car from Plagne Centre any time of day. "It’s always beautiful". Early birds hungry for fresh corduroy can also join the ski patrol at sunrise for first track skiing from the 2,500m-high summit and panoramic views sans le ski crowd.
Website: www.skipass-laplagne.com/en/first-tracks
2. Best downhill slope: Colorado
With 225km of downhill slopes in La Plagne, and another 200km in the neighbouring resorts of Les Arcs and Peisey-Vallandry to form the world’s second-largest interconnected ski area known as Paradiski, Ledeux is hard-pushed to single out just one slope.
"I really love Colorado," she says. "It's just so fun for everyone, beginner to advancer skier. It is fast and offers such a lot of options." From the top of the Colorado chairlift, a continuous 1.5km descent down to Plagne Centre reveals rousing views of Mont Blanc, Europe’s mightiest 4,805m peak and children squealing with delight on the sledge run through the Colorado Canyon. "Under the lift, next to the trees, there are lots of secret small spots with great views to discover," says Ledeux. "Mostly off-piste, but completely accessible and only known by local skiers."
For advanced riders, Ledeux recommends the largely ungroomed red and black pistes on the partly mogul-pocked Bellecôte glacier. The legendary off-piste terrain on its north face must only be tackled with a guide. More off-piste opportunities and steep gnarly black runs preside in the Biolley ski sector above Aime 2000, where, explains Ledeux, high avalanche risk means slopes like Le Morbleu are only open on sunny, bluebird days. "Le Morbleu is a risk slope," she says. "It is normally just too scary for me, but when the weather and snow conditions are good, it is perfect."
3. Best affordable dining spot: Chez Marie
In keeping with the resort’s retro spirit, many dining options are tucked away alongside sports shops, bars and other services in covered galeries or malls – 2.4km snake around Bezançon’s landmark 1971 residences up at Aime 2000.
As the daughter of restauranteurs from the south of France, Ledeux is accustomed to dining well and Chez Marie is a longstanding favourite. Inside the main galerie in Plagne Centre, rustic wooden tables, a toasty wood burner and the occasional vintage ice axe or sheepskin as wall decoration transport hungry skiers into a cosy Alpine "chalet". Alongside pots of fondue Savoyard (mixing equal parts of Beaufort, Gruyère and Comté) tangy raclette melted on burners at the table and other traditional cheese dishes from the region, Marie’s kitchen cooks up sweet crepes and savoury galettes (savoury crepes)made with Breton buckwheat flour.
"I suggest the classic complète with ham, Gruyère cheese, mushrooms and an egg," she says. "For dessert it can only be a crepe with caramel beurre salé (salted butter caramel)."
Website: https://chez-marie-la-plagne.eatbu.com/
Address: Rue de la Gaité, Plagne Centre
Phone: +33 4 79 00 22 12
4. Best adrenaline rush off the slopes: A bobsleigh descent
The sensational speeds that freestyle skiers hit while executing their feather-light tricks is incomparable to the extreme g-force experienced on La Plagne’s adrenalin-charged bobsled track, Piste de Bobsleigh de La Plagne. ‘It’s completely different – the feeling is incredible!" says Ledeux. "It’s definitely the activity to do in La Plagne. It is like being in a very fast car."
A thrilling legacy of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, the 1.5km-long descent in La Roche remains the only bobsled track in France. In the early 19th Century, off-duty miners from the local silver- lead mine – operational from 1810 until 1973 – raced down the mountain on sleds and later created a bobsled club in the hamlet, leading to the site being selected as an Olympic venue.
Outside of high-level competition periods, visitors can rollercoaster down the ice tunnel with 124.5m vertical drop, either alone in a custom-made self-braking bob or in a four-seater bob with a professional driver. The ride lasts little more than one minute. Speed peaks at 120km/h on bend No 10, one of 19 numbered curves crafted to gravity-defying precision by a small team of specialists who water, plane and care for the extraordinary 6,800 sq m of ice.
Website: https://en.la-plagne.com/
Address: Piste de Bobsleigh, La Roche
5. Best zone for soaking up freestyle action: Riders Nation
Ledeux whisks friends visiting La Plagne for the first time straight to Riders Nation, the resort’s superlative snow park accessed by the Arpette chairlift from Plagne Bellecôte then the blue Replat piste. Jumps, rails, kickers and walls of varying difficulty beneath the Bellecôte peak are marked XS to XL, while a "spectator route" allows those watching to move safely between the 36 modules and freestylers flipping in the air.
"I don’t train in the snow park because it's too small for me," explains Ledeux, who was the first female athlete to ever execute her now-signature "double cork 1620" aerial trick and actually spends 60-70% of her intensive training time off the snow, in gyms, on airbags, dry slopes, bikes and hiking trails. "But just for fun? Yeah! It's a really new thing in La Plagne and it has everything. There is a fun slope and a chill zone with sun loungers and big poofs."
For locals, the chill zone is clearly the indisputable crème de la crème of La Plagne picnic spots. "If the weather is good, there is often a barbecue in the chill zone," says Ledeux. "You have a great view from here too, of all the snow park and the surrounding mountains."
Website: https://www.skipass-laplagne.com/en/riders-nation
Address: Le Bijolin 2200 73210 Montchavin-les-Coches
6. Best bar for après-ski drinks: Le Brix
Traditional après-ski drinking, dancing and merrymaking spills across all 11 villages, making the infamous post-ski party in La Plagne something of a diluted, fragmented affair. In her native Plagne Centre, Ledeux recommends Le Brix for its notably chill, laidback vibe.
"Le Brix is a beer bar with a real freestyle spirit," she says. "There is always some freestyle skiing on the TV and everyone is very friendly, supportive of each other." With eight beers on tap and 120-odd bottled labels, the bar is as much about tasting artisan beers brewed by local microbreweries as wolfing down mixed platters of Savoyard charcuterie and cheesefrom farms and dairies in the surrounding Tarantaise Valley. Beers to look out for include the award-winning Lost in the Woods IPA brewed by Sapaudia in Aime, and the aptly named Free Rider bohemian-styled pilsner from Brasserie du Petit St Bernard in Bourg Saint Maurice. Hardcore craft-beer aficionados may also enjoy a fiery shot of eau de vie de bière (beer "brandy"), distilled locally at the artisanal Distillerie de Chantemouche.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100037207910669
Address: 118 Rue de Refuge, Plagne Centre
Phone: +33 9 52 55 24 47
Instagram: @le_brix_bar
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Actor Ekin Koç called seaside Antalya home before conquering the world of Turkish film. Here are his picks, from hiking the Lycian Road to catching a concert at the Aspendos Theatre.
Though its name may be less familiar to overseas travellers than Istanbul, the Turkish resort city of Antalya is no stranger to visitors. Founded by the Ancient Greeks as Attalia in the 2nd Century BCE, Antalya has since been occupied by the Romans, the Seljuk Sultanate and the Ottomans; even withstanding a brief Italian occupation after World War One before Turkey claimed independence. Today, Antalya – the crowning jewel of the Turkish Riviera and, along with Istanbul, one of the world's most visited cities in 2023 – attracts both families and A-list celebrities with its 2,000-year-old Old Town and stunning turquoise waters.
Sometimes, the celebrity strolling Antalya's spectacular seashore is actually a native. We caught up with Antalya-born film star Ekin Koç (best known to English-speaking audiences as Turkish business advisor Kadir in HBO's Succession) to get his take on his beautiful hometown, studded by the Taurus mountains and cradled by the Mediterranean sea.
"If you're from Antalya, you have a special connection with the sea," says Koç. "The sea is everywhere. We eat from the sea, we swim, we sit next to the sea. I've always loved being in connection with the sea."
Koç relocated to Istanbul for university and his film career but returns to Antalya whenever he can. "Istanbul is so stuffed," he says. "It's crowded. People are in a hurry. And you're never alone. [But] in Antalya, because of the heat and the Mediterranean culture, people are more relaxed."
When Koç is home, his presence inevitably spurs hordes of fans, but he loves strolling the Old Town's streets and taking advantage of the city's balmy shores and snowy mountain peaks. "You can literally go up to the mountain and ski and go back to the seaside and swim in the same day, if it's a sunny day," says Koç. "It's very unique."
Here are Koç's favourite ways to experience Antalya.
1. Best culinary experience: Piyaz, fresh Mediterranean seafood and meze
Antalya's rich cultural history has created a delicious culinary legacy, inspiring local dishes like yanıksı dondurma – a "burnt" ice cream made of Maltese goat's milk, which boils at a higher temperature, producing a frozen treat with a uniquely delicious burnt flavour.
Whenever Koç is in town, he immediately notes the regional differences in traditional Turkish dishes, such as piyaz, a Turkish white bean salad typically made with tahini, eggs, parsley and onions. "[But] in Antalya, it's not a salad," explains Koç. "It's hot. People in Antalya usually prefer it with grilled meatballs."
Antalyan piyaz is distinctive for the tangy tarator (Lebanese tahini) sauce poured directly over the beans. Several restaurants in the city are known for their spins on the dish, like Piyazcı Ahmet in the beautiful Muratpaşa district and Antalyan mainstay 7 Mehmet, famed for its chic industrial-meets-opulent Ottoman decor and massive 650+ dish menu.
"[7 Mehmet is] very popular," says Koç. "I haven't been in a while, but it's been at the top for many years. People don't want to miss it when they're in Antalya."
Koç himself is a pescatarian, which he says can be a challenge in meat-loving Turkey. But Antalya's coasts teem with fresh fish: "Calamari and shrimp are very popular. Seasonal fish and meze. Of course, when you're here, you have to try meze."
Meze, enjoyed throughout the fertile crescent, are hot and cold starters like hummus, olives and sarma (stuffed grape leaves) served on small plates at the beginning of a meal. "There's a spectrum of meze," says Koç. "So what you would call a traditional dinner, if you're a pescatarian, you will order mezes, which are very, very delicious, and some shrimp, calamari and then a grilled seasonal fish with a nice Mediterranean salad."
Website: https://7mehmet.com/EN
Address: Meltem Mahallesi, Atatürk Kültür Parkı, Dumlupınar Bulvarı No:201, 07030 Muratpaşa/Antalya
Phone: +90 4440707
2. Best outdoor experience: The Lycian Way
Mountainous, coastal Antalya has no shortage of thrilling outdoor experiences, from taking the cable car up the 2,365m Tahtalı Dağı (Lycian Olympos) Mountain – home of Yanartaş, the eternal flame – to scuba diving off the city's coasts. But, "if you're looking for an adventure, like a real experience, there is the Lycian Way," says Koç, citing a popular trekking trail tracing Turkey's southern coastline. The trail, carved out in the mid-1990s by British expat and amateur historian Kate Clow, was designed to connect 18 ancient cities in Antalya's vicinity, including the Unesco-listed Letoon and Xanthos.
The mammoth trail spans 540km and takes approximately 35 days to complete. "You don't have to go all the way from the beginning to the end," says Koç. "You can choose a part of it and finish that path. But you're going to see ancient cities, ruins, Roman, Greek and Byzantine theatres. You're going to see traditional Turkish villages, some local people. You're going to be able to swim anywhere. You're going to see some stunning views. You're going to be able to camp. You're going to be able to go on a hike, climb, whatever you want. And it will definitely be a very good outdoor memory for you."
Due to Antalya's soaring summer temperatures, it is recommended to tackle the trail in spring (February-May) or autumn (September-November). Following the red and white path markers along the trail's four sections, trekkers will find a network of inns and restaurants along the way that punctuate the sprawling expanses of turquoise sea, ragged cliffs and sky.
Website: https://www.lycianway.org/
3. Best cultural experience: Aspendos Theatre
Antalya boasts a healthy calendar of cultural events – including music and gastronomy festivals, and the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, held each autumn – but when it comes to local entertainment, Koç finds himself drawn to more ancient ground: Aspendos Theatre.
"It's a theatre where people thousands of years ago watched plays," he says. "You can still go there today and watch concerts, dance shows or plays."
This exquisitely preserved Roman theatre is located the ancient city of Aspendos on the banks of the Eurymedon River, approximately 47km east of Antalya's city centre. Built in the 2nd Century BCE during the reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the 15,000-seat, semi-circular theatre was dug out of the slope of the city's acropolis and features a magnificent 100m-wide façade. The theatre made the Unesco Tentative Heritage list in 2015 and along with daily visiting hours, hosts a regular series of musical concerts and dance performances, bolstered by its flawless acoustics.
"You can literally sit where people sat a couple thousand years ago," muses Koç. "I mean, imagining that literally somebody was sitting where I sit right now. It's pretty remarkable."
Address: Belkıs, Aspendos Yolu, 07500 Serik/Antalya
4. Best way to experience everyday life: Kaleiçi
For a taste of everyday, modern life in Antalya, Koç's recommendation is not without a hint of irony: "Going to the Old Town would be a good idea," he says. "It's called Kaleiçi. A bit touristic, but you're going to be seeing history, and you're going to be very close to the daily life of the local people, while also being around nice cafes, bars and restaurants."
Antalya, like many modern cities with ancient roots, has repurposed the ancient dwellings of its Old Town into fashionable contemporary businesses, turning the 2,000-year-old walled port area of Kaleiçi into one of Antalya's liveliest neighbourhoods. "I spent a lot of time there during my teenage years," Koç reminisces. "Whenever school let out, we used to get together there in cafes, bars; go to restaurants to eat fish. We would go to the port to take a little boat tour. We loved it there."
Kaleiçi's marina is a hive of yachts and boat companies offering tours of the marina – and has amazing views of the city and the coast. "It's very beautiful," says Koç. "First of all, you're looking at the cliff. The cliff is, for me, the soul of Antalya. And when you're closer to it with the boat, you look up and you're like, 'wow'. It's very crazy."
Apart from shops and bars, Kaleiçi's labyrinthine streets are home to picturesque red-r