News
World’s largest coral found in the Pacific
Why Canada could become the next nuclear energy 'superpower'
Trump has full control of Washington - but he won't always get his way
Will Elon Musk be able to cut $2 trillion from US government spending?
Charles Manson spoke of more killings in prison tapes
Trump's pick of Huckabee and Witkoff a clue to Middle East policy
Brazil Supreme Court evacuated following blasts
Authorities say US man faked kayaking death and fled to Europe
Zuckerberg records 'romantic' cover of rap hit
Trump's 'anti-woke' defence pick shocks Washington - here's why
Where does America's secretary of state nominee stand on key world issues?
What are recess appointments and how will Trump administration picks be vetted?
What Trump could do on day one in the White House
Who has joined Trump's team so far?
Families reunite with bodies of missing British soldiers 70 years on
'I'm offered sex as a favour because I'm disabled'
'Nowhere is safe': Concerns grow as Israel strikes new areas of Lebanon
Inside the secret summit that tried to stop deadly rap wars
Menopause, the other menstrual taboo for Indian women
'I missed you very much': China's social media darling returns
French headteacher describes spiral of events that led to teacher's beheading
Zendaya: Working with Tom Holland is 'second nature'
Apple accused of trapping and ripping off 40m iCloud customers
Maori haka in NZ parliament to protest at bill to reinterpret founding treaty
US Election
Why is Elon Musk becoming Donald Trump's efficiency tsar?
Trump names Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary pick
John Thune elected new Republican Senate leader
Jack Smith plans to step down before Trump takes office
Susie Wiles: Who is Trump's new chief of staff?
How will Trump's new 'border tsar' approach immigration?
Who is Elise Stefanik, Trump's pick for UN ambassador?
How small gains delivered Trump a big win
Republicans close in on House. Here are races still to watch
Seven states expand abortion protections as Florida ballot fails
Unconventional Trump brings openings and perils for Africa
No guarantees Trump will give Netanyahu all he wants
What Trump's win means for Ukraine, Middle East and China
Trump win provokes trade-offs and dilemmas for UK
The view from countries where Trump's win really matters
Trump wins another delay in New York case. Will he ever be sentenced?
Why Tesla, crypto and prisons are Trump trade winners
How US election fraud claims changed as Trump won
Republicans win House in major boost for Trump's agenda
Biden and Trump promise smooth transition in White House meeting
Business
Inflation progress stalls in US in October
VW launches $5.8bn tie-up with Tesla rival Rivian
'Too small' pension funds hold back growth - Reeves
Will Trump's victory spark a global trade war?
How Japan's youngest CEO transformed Hello Kitty
'The nicest place on the internet': How an Australian business is trying to transform mental health at work
The Guardian stops posting on Elon Musk's 'toxic' X
Bali flights cancelled due to dangerous volcanic ash
‘Adults buying kids' toys to escape global turmoil’
Shell wins landmark climate case against green groups in Dutch appeal
Seven wild moments from the turbulent story of Bitcoin
DNA-testing site 23andMe to lay off 40% of its workers
Unemployment rises as pay growth slows again
Gold, prices, and jobs: What's at stake in Ghana's elections?
Airlines suspend Haiti flights after plane hit by gunfire
An energy efficient home - why is it so difficult?
Bitcoin tops record $80,000 as Trump nears sweep of US Congress
Mattel 'deeply regrets' porn site misprint on Wicked dolls
India's luxury airline Vistara flies into the sunset
'I went from being a cleaner to building a warship'
Innovation
Liver patients with no symptoms diagnosed in NHS first
Stressed? Writing down a to-do list might help
Are there health benefits to eating turmeric and other spices?
Why coffee could be good for your health
How online photos and videos alter the way you think
Daylight savings: What happens to baby sleep when the clocks change
The 'bias machine': How Google tells you what you want to hear
The weird way AI assistants get their names
'Hospital robot helps me feel like a mum again'
NatWest blocks staff from using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger
New study on moons of Uranus raises chance of life
'I was moderating hundreds of horrific and traumatising videos'
DNA firm holding highly sensitive data 'vanishes' without warning
Somebody moved UK's oldest satellite, and no-one knows who or why
Culture
Glastonbury 2025 first tickets to go on sale
Why does Pharrell's biopic sidestep Blurred Lines?
'A film that only Japan could have made': Seventy years on, why Godzilla is the darkest monster movie of them all
How everyday clothing is becoming more luxurious
Glastonbury 2025: 11 tips for getting festival tickets
Sweeney says female solidarity in Hollywood is 'fake'
John Lewis, Tesco, Amazon go for tear-jerkers, as others find Christmas fun
Wicked to Gladiator II: 12 of the best films to watch this November
11 of the best TV shows to watch this November
Wag the Dog to All the President's Men: 10 of the best films about US presidential elections
These five bizarre Surrealist artworks are not what they seem
Gladiator II review: 'By far the best popcorn film of the year'
'That was the greatest day of all our lives': The migrants who passed through Ellis Island
'The most noble scenes are made desolate': The climate warnings in 19th Century paintings
The Substance to Gladiator II: The 10 films getting the biggest early Oscar buzz
'Weird things can happen in the countryside': Britain's creepiest new horror stories
'It's rather different from selling an ordinary book': How Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned – and became a bestseller
'It was a much more interesting character': How Arnold Schwarzenegger became the bad guy in The Terminator
'A social commentary about what was really going on': How Easy Rider revolutionised Hollywood
'We almost didn't do it because it was too dirty': Doris Day and Rock Hudson on Pillow Talk, the risqué romcom
'It is a kind of marriage': When Denmark held the first ever same-sex civil unions
'It tanked at the box office': Frank Darabont and Morgan Freeman on The Shawshank Redemption's path from flop to classic
Town agrees to reward band with unbelievable honour
BBC Introducing's Artist of the Year is surpassing own expectations
Artists announced for Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2025
Charity music studio 'transforming' young lives
Final surgery for 'Nurse Tash' as BBC's Doctors ends
Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin to miss 2025 tour
'They call this their second home'
British Museum given its most valuable gift ever
Midwife eliminated from GBBO 'gave it my all'
Arts
The bear who was a private in the Polish army
AI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement?
Michelangelo's David and 10 artworks that caused a scandal
The rare blue the Maya invented
The colour that means both life and death
The shady past of the colour pink
The toxic colour that comes from volcanoes
The mysterious painting that changed how we see colour
The insect that painted Europe red
'An unmistakable stab at the USSR': Could Amadeus be the most misunderstood Oscar winner ever?
Paul McCartney's missing bass and other mysterious musical instrument disappearances
How opera is aiming for net zero amid worsening climate change
Antonio Pappano: How opera can be 'open to everyone'
Bryn Terfel: The nation that is the 'land of song'
Gen Z and young millennials' surprising obsession
Ceiling fall forces Christmas show's cancellation
Frank Auerbach, artist who fled the Nazis as a child, dies aged 93
Rembrandt's Night Watch: Major restoration begins
'Magical' light and sound show back at cathedral
Artists with Huntington's disease create exhibition
Italian authorities bust 'Banksy forgery ring'
Urgent repairs to begin on Theatre Royal roof
Wiltshire in pictures: Remembrance and light shows
Travel
A two-Michelin-star chef's guide to the best dining spots in Istanbul
The spectacular dance contest that brings nations together
Europe wants you to travel by train. But why is it so complex and expensive?
Woman, 79, met by armed police after Jet2 tuna row
Eurostar marks 30 years of cross-Channel service
Dublin flights return for Aurigny summer schedule
Aberdeen and Glasgow airports sold in £1.53bn deal
Jet2 opening new base at UK airport
A unique way to see a hidden side of Venice
A 210km drive through 'the most beautiful place on Earth'
Nordhavn: The Danish 'city' that's been designed for an easy life
Booking your next holiday? Consider these six trailblazing travel firms making the world a better place
The world's adventure capital's massive gamble
The curious appeal of haunted hotels
Eight of the world's most extraordinary tiny hotel rooms
A dancer's guide to Seville's best flamenco experiences
A Oaxacan chef's guide to the best of Oaxaca City's street food
A Scotch whisky lover's guide to Edinburgh and beyond
F1 driver Sergio Pérez's guide to a weekend in Mexico City
An Irish banjo virtuoso's guide to the best traditional Irish music experiences in Galway
Gabriel Luna's weekend guide to Austin, Texas
Swizz Beatz's guide to AlUla, Saudi Arabia
How to experience Winnipeg's Indigenous culture
Kamikochi: Japan's car-free town that autumn hikers love
'It was a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea': The US homes made from waste materials
Norway's simple answer to greener, cleaner living
Spain's spectacular wine region navigated by boat
Is the future of French cheese at stake?
Kamayan feasts: The 'hands-only' meals that bring Filipinos together
The mystery of one of Italy's most iconic pastas
Trdelník: The Czech food that's not Czech
An epic croissant that's the star of a Polish parade
A journey 400,000 years back in human history
The changing face of Mongolia
Is Ireland's County Meath the true birthplace of Halloween?
Five of the most haunted places in Britain
Whose döner kebab? Why the beloved late-night snack is at the centre of a meat-fuelled food fight
Hebden Bridge: The surprising 'lesbian capital of the UK'
New Zealand's 'vanished world' of ancient megafauna
Are you really helping when you join an 'expedition tour'?
Earth
The mountaineers and hikers collecting data in extreme environments that scientists can't reach
New solar farm inches closer to approval
Proposed solar farm could power 140,000 homes
Government admits new oil field approved unlawfully
The decoy ploy to save Scotland's elusive capercaillie
'Sin City could be called Solar City': How Las Vegas is going green
How fences affect the world's wildlife
A famous climate graphic is running out of red
Cheap fix floated for plane vapour's climate damage
Oil and gas are a 'gift of God', says COP29 host
How a Soviet swamp rat scheme for Azerbaijan went horribly wrong
Climate fight 'bigger than one election', says Biden’s top envoy
The people cracking the world's toughest climate words
Spies, bikes and smuggled ink: Fighting pollution and the Stasi in the shadow of the Berlin Wall
The largest coral ever recorded has been found by scientists in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
The mega coral - which is a collection of many connected, tiny creatures that together form one organism rather than a reef - could be more than 300 years old.
It is bigger than a blue whale, the team say.
It was found by a videographer working on a National Geographic ship visiting remote parts of the Pacific to see how it has been affected by climate change.
“I went diving in a place where the map said there was a shipwreck and then I saw something,” said Manu San Felix.
He called over his diving buddy, who is also his son Inigo, and they dived further down to inspect it.
Seeing the coral, which is in the Solomon Islands, was like seeing a "cathedral underwater", he said.
"It's very emotional. I felt this huge respect for something that's stayed in one place and survived for hundreds of years," he said.
"I thought, 'Wow, this was here when Napoleon was alive'," he added.
Scientists on the expedition measured the coral using a type of tape measure under water. It is 34m wide, 32m long and 5.5m high.
Globally coral is facing severe pressures as oceans warm with climate change.
Often described as an “architect” of the seas, corals can join together to form vast reefs where fish and other species live.
Coral reefs also underpin the livelihoods of one billion people including by supporting tourism or fishing, according to the World Economic Forum.
This specimen was found in deeper waters than some coral reefs, which may have protected it from higher temperatures at the sea surface.
The discovery was announced at the same time as the UN climate talks COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan that are trying to make progress in tackling climate change.
Mr Trevor Manemahaga, climate minister for the Solomon Islands at the summit, told BBC News that his nation would be proud of the newly-found coral.
"We want the world to know that this is a special place and it needs to be protected," he said.
"We rely mostly on marine resources for economic survival so coral is very, very important [...] And it's very crucial and critical for our economy to make sure our coral is not exploited," he said.
Small island nations like the Solomon Islands are extremely vulnerable to climate change.
Mr Manemahaga said he’s seen first-hand the effects of global warming on his nation, as it causes more powerful cyclones and erodes the coastline causing homes to fall into the water.
Many developing countries at the talks are calling for more cash from richer nations to help them pay for their strategies to tackle climate change.
Mr Manemahaga said that more finance for the Solomon Islands would help the country create more varied jobs that would mean fewer people worked in industries that damage coral reefs.
Currently logging is a major part of the country's economy - between 50-70% of the country's annual export revenue - but it cauuses high levels of water pollution that damages coral in the area.
Eric Brown, who is a coral scientist on the National Geographic research trip, says that the health of the coral was "looking pretty good".
“While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope," he said.
The coral is a species called Pavona clavus and provides a home to shrimp, crabs, fish and other marine creatures.
The age of the specimen also means it acts like a window into the history into oceanic conditions in the past. Scientists hope to study it to learn more about how it has grown.
A report this week found that 44% of corals living in warm waters are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. That is an increase of a third since the species were last assessed in 2008.
Uranium is making a comeback thanks to a renewed focus on nuclear energy as a climate crisis solution. Canada, rich with high-grade deposits, could become a nuclear “superpower”. But can its potential be realised?
Leigh Curyer had been working in uranium mining for nearly two decades when he noticed a striking shift.
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan badly damaged the world's view of nuclear power, and the price for the heavy metal - a critical component for nuclear fuel - cratered.
But the last five years has seen a reversal, with the global price of uranium spiking by more than 200%one of this year's top-performing commodities.
Mr Curyer, an Australian-born businessman, credits this to a changing attitude that began soon after Microsoft founder Bill Gates touted nuclear energy as “ideal for dealing with climate change” in 2018.
Four years later, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed forward a policy of generating at least 25% of the country’s energy from nuclear.
Shortly after, the European Union voted to declare nuclear energy climate-friendly.
These events were “catalytic” for the uranium industry and a turning point for Mr Curyer's company NexGen, which is behind the largest in-development uranium mine in Canada.
His phone began to ring with calls from investors worldwide - something that “had never happened in my previous 17 years in the industry”, he said.
NexGen, whose project is located in Canada's remote, uranium-rich Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan, is now worth nearly $4bn (£2.98bn), despite the fact that the mine won’t be commercially operational until at least 2028.
If fully cleared by regulators, NexGen’s project alone could push Canada to become the world’s largest producer of uranium over the coming decade, knocking Kazakhstan out of the number one spot.
Other companies have also rushed to Saskatchewan to capitalise on the boom, starting their own exploration projects in the region, while existing players re-opened dormant mines.
With its rich resources, Canada’s mining companies see the country playing a major role in the future of nuclear energy, meeting a demand for uranium that is poised to rise after nearly two dozen countries committed in COP28 climate conference to tripling their nuclear energy output by 2050.
Nuclear energy is often hailed for its low carbon emissions compared to other sources like natural gas or coal.
The World Nuclear Association estimates that 10% of power generated worldwide comes from nuclear sources, while more than 50% is still generated by gas or coal.
At this year's COP29, the focus has been on ramping up funding for nuclear projects in the wake of a recent UN report indicating that current policies and investments fall short of what is needed to slow global temperature rise.
Canada’s role in supplying the commodity is made more urgent by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, particularly for the US, which had relied heavily on Russian-supplied enriched uranium to fire up its commercial nuclear reactors.
Mr Curyer believes his mine could prove to be “absolutely critical” to America’s nuclear energy future, as the US is now hunting for alternatives to Russia, including by ramping up exploration on its own soil.
Uranium can be found around the world, though it is heavily present in Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan.
But what makes Canada’s Athabasca Region unique is that its uranium is especially high grade, said Markus Piro, a professor of nuclear engineering at McMaster University.
Canada has set strict rules for the sale of its uranium to other countries, Prof Piro said, and mandates it only be used for nuclear power generation.
The country is also referred to as a “tier-one nuclear nation”, he said, due to its capability to produce nuclear fuel from the mining to the manufacturing stage.
Once mined, uranium is milled to produce what is called calcined yellowcake, and then enriched, either at facilities in Canada or overseas, to create fuel for nuclear reactors.
“We’ve got a one-stop shop here in Canada, not every nation’s like that,” Prof Piro said.
Canada is currently the world’s second largest producer of uranium, accounting for roughly 13% of the total global output, according to the Canadian government. NexGen anticipates that once its mine is operational, it will boost that to 25%.
Meanwhile, Cameco, which has been mining uranium in Saskatchewan since 1988 that supplies 30 nuclear reactors around the world, re-opened two of its mines in late 2022 to increase output.
CEO Tim Gitzel told the BBC that he believes “Canada could be a nuclear superpower around the world”.
But enthusiasm around nuclear energy is not without its critics.
Some environmental groups worry nuclear projects are too costly and come with timelines that do not meet the urgency of the climate crisis.
Data from the UK-based World Nuclear Association shows that 60 nuclear reactors are under construction across 16 countries, most of them in China, and a further 110 are in the planning stages.
Some are expected to come online this year - others won’t be ready until at least the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, more than 100 nuclear plants have been closed in the last two decades around the world, including New York State’s sole nuclear power plant, which was retired in 2021 due to high operating costs and environmental and safety concerns.
Plants were also shuttered in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Quebec, Canada.
And not all of Canada is on board with the country’s uranium industry.
British Columbia sits on its own supply of uranium but has not allowed any nuclear plants or uranium mines to operate in the province since 1980.
Critics have also expressed concern about radioactive waste nuclear reactors leave behind for future generations.
Others fear another Fukushima-scale disaster, where a tsunami disabled three reactors, causing the release of highly radioactive materials and forcing mass evacuations.
“The risk is not zero, that is for sure” though t can be reduced, said Prof Piro.
“Even though amongst the general public there are mixed feelings about it, the reality is that it has produced very safe, very reliable and affordable electricity worldwide.”
The industry maintains the technology is both promising and viable.
Mr Gitzel of Cameco said the industry has learned from past safety errors.
“And the public is buying on,” he said. “I can tell you that we have in Canada great public support for nuclear power.”
A 2023 Ipsos poll indicates that 55% of Canadians support nuclear energy.
Still, past uranium booms in Canada have turned into dramatic busts.
North of NexGen’s proposed mine stands Uranium City, once home to 2,500 residents in its mid-20th Century heyday. In 1982, a major local mining firm shuttered operations over high costs and a soft market for uranium.
Now, Uranium City’s population is 91 people.
But investors argue that there is a true global burgeoning demand for the commodity that poses a golden opportunity for Canada.
NexGen anticipates that construction on its mine - which is awaiting clearance from Canada’s federal nuclear regulator - will begin early next year.
Mr Gitzel says around 100 other companies are now actively exploring Saskatchewan for deposits.
As to when it will be on the market remains unclear.
Mr Gitzel cautioned that some companies have started explorations in the past that never reached production stage. The timeline to get mining projects approved in Canada can also be lengthy.
“Building a mine is going to take five to 10 years, and so far, the only ones in operation are ours, so we will wait and see how it plays out,” he said.
For Mr Curyer, it is crucial that his project and others are realised in the next four years, for both Canada and the world.
“Otherwise, there is going to be a shortage in uranium, and that will subsequently impact power prices,” he said.
On election night, Donald Trump repeated the phrase: "Promises made, promises kept."
Now Republicans have officially taken control of Congress, his "promises" got a whole lot easier to keep.
In Washington political parlance, it's called "a governing trifecta", when the president's party also controls both chambers of Congress - the House of Representatives and the Senate.
That control is what Donald Trump's Republican Party now has.
Single-party control was once common, but in recent decades it has become rarer and shorter-lasting. Often, the party in power loses seats when mid-term congressional elections roll around two years later.
Both Trump and Joe Biden enjoyed trifectas for their first two years in the White House, and both saw having such control is no guarantee a president can get their way.
Even with a healthy majority in the Senate this time around, Trump will not have the magic 60 seats that would allow him to overcome any opposition attempts to delay legislation.
And on Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate selected John Thune as their majority leader over Florida's Rick Scott, the clear favourite in the Trump camp, in a sign some lawmakers may be reasserting their independence (Trump did not officially endorse Scott).
That said, a trifecta, if astutely managed, does open the way for the possibility of major legislative initiatives.
Trump's power advantage could be key in pushing through his big promises such as the largest deportation of migrants in history, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, and the rolling back of environmental protections.
Using legislation to achieve these ends will make such plans much harder to overturn in the courts - something Donald Trump was plagued by in his first term when he extensively used executive orders that were regularly and often successfully challenged.
The judicial landscape has also changed in Donald Trump's favour.
The signature achievement of his first term was putting three conservatives on the Supreme Court - cementing a two-thirds majority for possibly decades to come.
He also put more than four dozen judges on the federal appeals courts, flipping several circuits to a more conservative bent.
The majority the Republicans have in the Senate also provides another key advantage.
Trump will be able to get his nominees for administration posts approved more easily, something he struggled with back in 2017 when internal resistance to him in the Republican Party was still a significant factor.
All this bodes for a busy and possibly turbulent next two years. But, as recent history indicates, these trifectas don't last all that long. The incoming administration will want to get a move on.
The boss of Tesla and the social media site X, Elon Musk, suggested last month at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City that it would be possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” from US government spending by eradicating “waste”.
Musk has now been appointed to co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency by the incoming US president, giving him an opportunity to try to put his plans into action.
In the most recent fiscal year (from October 2023 to September 2024) the US federal government spent $6.75 trillion (£5.3 trillion) according to the US Treasury.
This means Musk’s proposed cuts of $2 trillion would represent around a cut of around 30% of total federal government spending — also known as national spending in other countries.
How realistic is that proposal?
To answer that, it’s helpful to break down the total spending figure.
Around $880bn (13% of total US government spending) goes on interest payments on the national debt, which means that line of expenditure cannot be reduced without putting the US government in default.
Around $1.46 trillion (22%) goes on Social Security, which primarily means pensions for Americans over the retirement age. This is a line of spending which is “mandatory”, meaning it must be spent by law on those eligible.
Other large mandatory lines of government expenditure include Medicare - a government-funded health insurance program primarily serving Americans aged over 65.
So-called “discretionary” US government spending - outlays that are not permanently enshrined in law but have to be voted on annually by US lawmakers - includes defence ($874bn, 13%), transportation ($137bn, 2%) and education, training, employment and social services ($305bn, 5%).
Altogether, discretionary spending accounted for around 25% of the total in the 2023 financial year according to the Congressional Budget Office, with more than half of that going to defence.
In theory, discretionary spending would be easier for the incoming Trump administration to cut than mandatory spending.
Donald Trump has said that Musk - and his co-head at the new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy - will achieve the savings from dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations and restructuring government agencies. In an interview with the BBC in April 2023 Musk claimed to have reduced the staff of Twitter (now X) from 8,000 to 1,500 after acquiring the social network in 2022.
Yet if all of the $2 trillion in US government expenditure savings now being targeted by Musk were to come from discretionary spending, analysts calculate that entire agencies - from transport, to agriculture, to Homeland Security - would have to be entirely closed down. Discretionary spending accounted for only $1.7 trillion in 2023.
Musk did not specify if he would aim to deliver $2 trillion in savings in a single year, or over a longer period, but many US public finance experts, including those who are in favour in principle of reductions in US government spending, are sceptical savings on such a scale can be found in the near term without either a collapse in the delivery of important government functions or sparking major public resistance.
After taking control of Congress in 2022, Republican lawmakers have struggled to pass legislation to deliver considerably smaller cuts of $130bn in discretionary government spending after meeting opposition from other Republicans.
It’s also important to note that Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of making Social Security more financially generous, not less, by removing the income tax payable on it. And, on defence, Trump said he would build an “iron dome missile defence shield” around America, implying greater spending in this area, not cuts.
Total US federal government spending as a share of the US economy in 2024 was around 23% according to the US Treasury.
That’s a considerably smaller share than national government spending in other developed countries.
However, a large share of government spending in the US, including almost all school spending, is done at a state rather than a federal level, and states are funded by local sales and property taxes.
The International Monetary Fund has projected that total US “general government expenditure”, which includes spending by individual states, will be around 37.5% of its GDP in 2024.
That compares with 43% in the UK, 48% in Germany and 57% in France.
The US government is currently running an annual deficit - a shortfall between its spending and tax revenues - equal to around 6% of its economy. And America’s national debt held by the public is currently equal to around 97% of the size of the economy.
The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) think tank has projected that this is currently set to climb to 125% by 2035.
The CRFB has projected that absent major spending reductions, Donald Trump’s planned tax cuts would considerably widen the US deficit in the coming decade and push up the US national debt to 143% by the middle of the next decade.
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A new recording has emerged of notorious cult leader Charles Manson appearing to admit to additional killings.
Manson's followers, known as the Manson Family, killed nine people in 1969.
The cult leader directed the killings in the hope they would start a race war. He died in prison in 2017.
In newly released audio recorded while he was in jail and featured in a new documentary, Manson appears to speak about previously unknown killings.
“See, there’s a whole part of my life that nobody knows about,” Manson is heard saying in one of the tapes, which feature in a new documentary series Making Manson.
“I lived in Mexico for a while. I went to Acapulco, stole some cars. I just got involved in stuff over my head, man. Got involved in a couple of killings. I left my .357 Magnum in Mexico City, and I left some dead people on the beach.”
Associates of Manson, as well as his former cellmate, Phil Kaufman, are also interviewed.
“Charlie was very good at being evil and not showing it,” says Mr Kaufman in the series teaser.
“Anything that detracted from his game plan at that time, he would squash it, but he did it with velvet gloves.”
In the series, Manson "recounts the early crimes that led to the murder spree in the summer of ‘69", according to the Peacock streaming service.
The Manson Family killed nine people including the heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski.
One of Manson's young followers, Susan Atkins, stabbed Tate to death and scrawled "PIG" on the home's front door with the actress's blood.
Four other people at Tate's home were brutally stabbed to death. The next day, a wealthy couple in Los Angeles, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were also killed by the clan. The killings became known collectively as the Tate-LaBianca murders.
Separately Donald Shea, a Hollywood stuntman, and Gary Hinman, an acquaintance of the group, were killed by members of the Manson Family.
Manson was not at the scene of the killings, but was nonetheless convicted of murder for directing his followers in seven of the killings.
He died of natural causes behind bars in 2017.
For now, Mike Huckabee seems to be keeping his cards close to his chest.
Shortly after being announced as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Israel, the former Republican governor of Arkansas said: “I won't make the policy. I will carry out the policy of the president.”
But he did give an indication of what he expected that policy to be, citing the previous Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and to recognise the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory – decisions as warmly welcomed by the Israeli right wing as they were categorically rejected by Palestinians.
“No-one has done more,” he told an Israeli radio station. “President Trump and I fully expect that will continue.”
What approach Trump will take to the Israel-Gaza war is still unclear. But the right wing of Israeli politics has welcomed the president-elect’s appointment of Huckabee, seeing it as predicting another term of American policy highly favourable to their longstanding aims of holding on to territory in the West Bank and expanding settlements.
The appointment was greeted with joy by two far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. On the social media platform X, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich messaged his congratulations to “a consistent and loyal friend", while Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, wrote "Mike Huckabee" with heart emojis.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have reason to be cheered by Huckabee’s appointment. He has been a consistent supporter of many Israelis’ ambitions to expand into territories that would form part of any future Palestinian state.
Holding a press conference in 2017, shortly after a cornerstone-laying ceremony at one of the biggest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Huckabee said: “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities.
“There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
The following year, he said: “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” using the name used by many in Israel for the area which became the occupied West Bank when it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
The previous Trump administration declared in 2019 that it did not consider Israeli settlements illegal under international law, contradicting decades of US policy. Other decisions, including a 2020 peace plan greenlighting the annexation of Israeli settlements, were seen as more favourable to the settlers than any previous administration.
The Israeli far right has indicated that it sees Huckabee’s appointment as a sign that it will be able to further advance its agenda, including annexation of the West Bank, during the next Trump term.
On Monday, Smotrich said that 2025 would be "the year of sovereignty" in the West Bank, adding that he had instructed Israeli authorities to begin preparatory work for annexation of the occupied territory.
That happening is a genuine fear for Mustafa Barghouti, a West Bank-based veteran Palestinian politician who is leader of the Palestinian National Initiative political movement.
“You can imagine the reaction of other powerful countries in the world would be, when the idea of annexing occupied territories, obtained by war, becomes legal and acceptable," he says. "So it's not just about Palestinians and our suffering, it's about the international order.”
Whether Smotrich will get his wish remains to be seen. Tal Schneider, a political correspondent at the Times of Israel, says it is not a foregone conclusion that a pro-settler US ambassador will result in pro-settler policies in Washington.
“Four years ago, some of the people that surrounded Trump were very much pro-settlements and pro-annexing, but it didn't work like that last time. I predict it's not going to work like that this time around.”
Huckabee was not the only appointee announced on Tuesday. The president-elect also said Steve Witkoff would serve as his special envoy to the Middle East.
As well as being a real estate developer, Witkoff is also a longtime golf buddy of Trump’s. The pair were playing together at the time of a second failed assassination attempt in September.
It is not clear what foreign policy experience Witkoff brings to the role, but he has previously praised Trump’s dealings with Israel.
In July, he argued that Trump’s “leadership was good for Israel and the entire region”.
“With President Trump, the Middle East experienced historic levels of peace and stability. Strength prevents wars. Iran’s money was cut off which prevented their funding of global terror,” he said.
Netanyahu’s decision to nominate a hardline settler leader for Israeli ambassador to Washington three days after Trump’s election also indicates that the prime minister believes the next administration will be receptive to right-wing arguments.
US-born Yechiel Leiter, who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff when he was finance minister, supports the annexation of the West Bank. According to the Haaretz newspaper, he was once active in the US-based Jewish Defence League, the organisation founded by far-right rabbi Meir Kahane. His son was killed fighting in Gaza.
He was also reported to support the Abraham Accords, Trump’s efforts to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, which had some success. However, advancing that process has been derailed by the ongoing war in Gaza and Arab anger over the suffering of the Palestinians.
Palestinians, already disillusioned with the US over Joe Biden’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza, say Trump’s pick for ambassador suggests the next president will make the prospect of an eventual two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict even more remote.
“Mr Huckabee has said things that are absolutely contradictory to international law,” says Mustafa Barghouti, a West Bank-based Palestinian politician.
“It will be really bad news for the cause of peace in this region.”
Brazil's Supreme Court has been evacuated and a man has been found dead after two explosions were heard outside the building on Wednesday evening.
The blasts hit the centre of Brazil's capital - where the Supreme Court, parliament and presidential palace are all located.
A spokesperson for the federal police told the AFP news agency a body had been discovered in front of the court. It is unclear how the man was connected with the blasts.
The country's solicitor general, Jorge Messias, condemned what he said was a deliberate attack and vowed a full investigation into the blasts would be launched.
"I strongly condemn the attacks against the Supreme court and the lower house," he said in a statement posted to X.
"We must know the motivation behind the attacks, and to re-establish peace and safety as fast as possible."
Images carried by news agencies showed the deceased man lying in an area outside the court, as officers cordoned off the area.
A police spokesperson told AFP that they could "confirm that there is a body in front of the Supreme Court", but offered no further details.
Brasilia Governor Celina Leao told reporters that the explosion occurred after the man approached the entrance to the court and failed to gain entry.
Earlier, the Supreme Court said in a statement that the building had been evacuated as a "precautionary measure" after explosions were heard. Justices had just finished hearing a plenary session and were quickly evacuated safely, it added.
The court is located in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, across the square from the presidential palace. Local media reported that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had left the area shortly before the blasts.
The explosions come just a week before Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the capital, following a trip to a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Last year, the plaza was the scene of mass disorder, after supporters of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings in a bid to prevent his electoral defeat by President Lula.
Authorities in Green Lake, Wisconsin, say that a local man who went missing while kayaking this summer may have staged his own death and fled to Europe.
“We believe that he is alive. We know that he's not in our lake,” Matthew Vande Kolk, Chief Deputy Sheriff for Green Lake County, told the BBC.
Ryan Borgwardt, 45, a married father of three, was last seen on 12 August at Green Lake while on a solo fishing trip.
Officials found evidence that Mr Borgwardt had used his passport after his disappearance and may have travelled to Europe.
Mr Borgwardt had last texted his wife on the night of 11 August. The message said he was turning his kayak around and heading to shore soon.
But when he failed to return home, his family contacted law enforcement who sent out a search-and-rescue team, which found his capsized kayak and life jacket on the lake.
Mr Borgwardt’s car, trailer, fishing rod and wallet were all left at the park nearby.
After 54 days of extensive search efforts of divers, drones, sonar and cadaver dogs, no body was recovered and no evidence turned up.
That caused the sheriff's office to widen its scope.
The case took a turn in October when investigators discovered Mr Borgwardt's name had been checked by border officials in Canada on 13 August, the day after he was reported missing.
Investigators then learned that Mr Borgwardt had reported his passport lost or stolen and was issued a new one prior to his disappearance.
His previous passport was later recovered from his wife, indicating he may have travelled on the new document.
Following this lead, officials conducted a digital forensic analysis of Mr Borgwardt’s laptop, and they found that he had taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy, had transferred funds to a foreign bank account, photographed his new passport, and altered his email address before he vanished.
And after doing this, they discovered that Mr Borgwardt had replaced the laptop’s hard drive and cleared his browser history the day he disappeared.
Authorities also found indications that he may have traveled to a location in Europe.
While the investigation continues, the sheriff’s office told the BBC they are evaluating the appropriate criminal charges that could include obstruction and fraudulent activity.
Borgwardt’s family is cooperating and the chief deputy sheriff said his wife has been “extremely strong.”
“She has done everything that we have asked of her in regards to helping us with information, and holding on to information," Mr Vande Kolk told the BBC. "Unfortunately, we had to keep this quiet for about a month from the time that we started thinking that he was somewhere else, until we had enough information that we could share with the world, and she did that.”
“Our hope is then, at some point we'll be able to hold Ryan accountable for his actions and request restitution,” he added.
Authorities said that they are continuing to look for Mr. Borgwardt, who they believe is alive and in Eastern Europe, and anyone who may have assisted him in faking his death and fleeing.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has recorded his own version of rap track Get Low alongside US star T-Pain, in tribute to his wife Priscilla Chan for their "dating anniversary".
Zuckerberg sings with the help of Autotune on an acoustic reworking of the filthy floor-filler, which was originally a hit for Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz in 2003.
"Get Low was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary," the Meta boss explained on his own platform Instagram.
Zuckerberg, 40, perhaps ironically described the track as a "lyrical masterpiece", and has released his version under the name Z-Pain.
In the replies, Chan described the gesture as "so romantic", adding: "Can’t get quite as low anymore but more in love and grateful for that love than ever."
Zuckerberg's post included photographs of himself and T-Pain working on the song in a recording studio.
Singer-songwriter and producer T-Pain, aka Faheem Najm, noted on his own social media how "Z-Pain has arrived".
Zuckerberg leads the vocals on the uncensored take on the hip-hop tune, with T-Pain offering ad-libs, backing vocals and a verse of his own.
The billionaire buisnessman's version comes three months after Lil Jon gave a surprise performance of the song at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to mark Kamala Harris becoming the party’s presidential nominee.
Zuckerberg has a history of elaborote displays of affection for his other half.
In August, he unveiled a bizarre statue of Chan, apparently made of oxidised green copper and steel, by artist Daniel Arsham.
"Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife," he wrote at the time.
Pete Hegseth has spent the past eight years on the couch of a Fox News morning show defending President-elect Donald Trump and advocating for a conservative cultural shift in the US military, and he could soon be directing that agenda from behind the top desk at the Pentagon.
The Republican president-elect announced on Wednesday that Hegseth, a television host and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was his nominee for defence secretary - a role typically filled by senior civil servants, experienced politicians and high-level executives.
While Hegseth has little of the traditional experience expected for such an important cabinet position - he would be the second-youngest person to serve in the office - he could aim to transform the Department of Defense if confirmed by the Senate.
Just last week, Hegseth said on a podcast that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff - the US's top military leader - should be fired, along with any "general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] woke [expletive]”.
He also said that women should not serve in combat roles because he argued it had not made the military "more effective" or "more lethal".
"Over human history, men in those positions are more capable," he said.
He has also reportedly called for the Defence Department to be renamed the War Department and for a 10-year ban on generals working as defence contractors after leaving the military.
Those views have earned Hegseth many conservative fans, particularly those close to the president-elect. But some also question whether he is capable of running an agency that is considered one of the world's largest bureaucracies, with a budget of nearly $900bn (£708bn).
Does he have enough experience?
Former Pentagon officials stressed that this role is one of the most critical appointments that the president could make, as the office-holder guides national security decisions and oversees the 2.9 million civilians and military service members who work for the Defence Department across the world.
"I've thought before that it was a harder job than the presidency," Lincoln Bloomfield, who served in the Pentagon under Presidents George W Bush and Ronald Reagan, told the BBC.
"Hegseth's not an old guy. He's in his prime, so he has all the energy he needs," added Bloomfield, who noted that the television host was well-educated and a combat veteran.
"But the question is how much does experience help lead to finding solutions? This is a job where every morning there are at least a dozen kinds of fires burning."
It is unclear how Hegseth will fare during his confirmation process in the Senate, when he is likely to faces hours of grilling in hearings.
"This is a job that will involve thousands of hours of advising the president and how, when and under what circumstances to use military force," Mara Karlin, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration, said. "It will involve figuring out how to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars and the care of millions of members of the US military and civilians and their families."
A Trump ally unfamiliar to many
Some lawmakers in Washington DC appeared initially perplexed by Hegseth's appointment to oversee one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world.
“I confess I didn’t know who he was until 20 minutes ago,” Representative Adam Smith, who serves as the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Wednesday. “And he certainly doesn’t seem to have any background whatsoever in (Department of Defence) policy.”
Other lawmakers were more blunt.
“Who?” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told NBC News when asked about the appointment. “I don’t know Pete. I just don’t know anything about him.”
A co-host of the Fox & Friends weekend show for eight years, Hegseth was reportedly considered for a post during Trump's first administration. But several former military and Pentagon officials said that Hegseth was not a known quantity in the Washington defence community.
"There are different worlds that past secretaries have come from - political people, technocrats, some from Congress - but traditionally they have a pretty decent level of experience with defence, national security issues and foreign policy," Ms Karlin said.
The Princeton and Harvard graduate served as an infantry platoon leader in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. He later deployed to Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency instructor in Kabul.
Many pointed to Hegseth's military experience as a potential aid if he were to be confirmed.
"Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice," Trump said in a statement announcing his choice.
Others, meanwhile, raised issue with Hegseth's close ties to the president-elect.
John Bolton, who served as Trump's national security adviser, told the BBC that the post of defence secretary should never be a "loyalty appointment".
The person in the position should be willing to provide honest advice, Bolton said, even if it is unpopular.
"The question is: Will he be a yes man to Donald Trump or will he behave professionally and with courage the way he did when he was in uniform?" added Bolton, who has grown critical of the president-elect.
Not the typical nominee
Hegseth has limited experience in politics beyond an unsuccessful run for the Republican Senate nomination in Minnesota in 2012. Since then, he has largely turned to conservative activism and punditry.
He advocated for privatising the US government's agency that aids veterans, but his greatest political success in Washington was during Trump's first term when he convinced the then-president to pardon several US service members accused of war crimes.
The two Army officers that Trump pardoned included one accused of killing a suspected Afghan bombmaker and another who was convicted of murder for directing men to fire upon three Afghans.
Still, Hegseth's appointment to lead the Pentagon marks a departure from previous Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Leon Panetta, who served under former President Barack Obama, was a former CIA director and White House Chief of Staff. Robert Gates, who was appointed by President George W Bush and Obama, worked for the CIA for 27 years.
During his first term, Trump himself turned to those with more military and national security experience than Hegseth, such as Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper - who both served for decades in the military and were well known in Washington's defence community.
President Joe Biden chose to appoint a retired four-star general, Secretary Lloyd Austin, who served as the commander of US Central Command and faced some criticism from lawmakers for not informing the White House about undergoing medical procedures while in office.
Still, several lawmakers were quick to argue that Hegseth lacked credentials.
"A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense," said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who leads the Senate military personnel panel. She urged her fellow senators not to confirm him.
Others, however, rushed to Hegseth's defence.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said the conservative anchor was a "tireless advocate for America’s soldiers and veterans".
"[H]e brings a fresh perspective to a Pentagon that has lost sight of its mission under Joe Biden. Pete is dedicated to ensuring that our military is focused on lethality and readiness, not woke ideology," the speaker said.
With the approval of the US Senate, America's next top diplomat is likely to be Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio, who was nominated for the role of secretary of state by President-Elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, has experience serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and speaking out about international conflicts during his Senate tenure.
The Florida senator is considered a foreign policy "hawk" - meaning someone who takes hard-line positions - towards Iran as well as China.
But where exactly does he stand on major global issues? Hear from Rubio, who would be the first Latino secretary of state, in his own words.
Ending the war between Russia and Ukraine will mean 'difficult choices'
Rubio has long urged a swift conclusion to the two-year-plus war between Russia and Ukraine.
"We do want to see that conflict end, and it’s going to require some very difficult choices," Rubio said earlier this month.
In the past, Rubio called it "hyperbole to believe that the Ukrainians are going to completely crush the Russian military".
He voted against the $6 billion military aid package for Ukraine earlier this year.
"I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia," he said earlier this month.
"But at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion, or that country is going to be set back 100 years."
Beyond the conflict itself, Rubio said he is worried the conflict distracts from other problems brewing around the world.
"The future of the 21st century is going to largely be defined by what happens in the Indo-Pacific," Rubio said earlier this week. "And I think China would love for us to be bogged down in Europe in a conflict and not focused on what’s happening in the Indo-Pacific."
China is a big threat to the US
Rubio has expressed hard line positions in many regions of the world, but nowhere is that more true than in China.
China is "the largest, most advanced adversary America has ever faced," he said in a September Washington Post opinion piece.
When discussing Beijing's "Made in China 2025" plan, which attempts to upgrade its manufacturing sector, Rubio called for the US to create a new industrial policy to stop China from "eclipsing the United States entirely in the decade that follows".
"The bottom line is that U.S. policymakers cannot afford to be complacent about the largest, most advanced adversary America has ever faced," Rubio wrote.
He also strongly defended Taiwan's independence.
"Communist China is not, and will never be, a friend to democratic nations," Rubio wrote on X, formerly Twitter, over the summer. "The international community must continue to stand with Taiwan as they defend their sovereignty and freedom."
A ceasefire in Gaza?
Rubio is against a ceasefire in Gaza. When asked by activists on Capitol Hill if he would support ending fighting there, he firmly said no.
"On the contrary … I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on," Rubio said. "These people are vicious animals who did horrifying crimes."
Israel's intention with its fighting, Rubio said, is "to destroy the terrorist organization so it may never threaten the people of Israel again".
He also recently criticised Canada's decision to accept Palestinian war refugees. He claimed "terrorists and known criminals continue to stream across US land borders, including from Canada."
Iran is a 'terrorist' regime
Rubio calls Iran a "terrorist" regime.
He urged Israel to respond to Iran with force following attacks earlier this year. In a statement, Rubio cited Israel's "right to respond disproportionately to stop this threat".
"Israel should respond to Iran the way the U.S. would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us," Rubio wrote on social media.
"And they should do in Lebanon what we would be demanding our leaders do if terrorists were launching anti-tank rockets at us from a neighboring country, forcing 60000 Americans to evacuate their homes and farms for almost a year."
Before being tapped for the position of secretary of state, Rubio said a Trump administration would be "very clear and very firm" in dealing with Iran. He also said the Biden administration treated Iran like "Belgian diplomats at the United Nations".
Donald Trump has announced many picks this week to join his administration when he becomes US president in January.
But those personnel decisions aren't automatic.
Even with the backing of the future president, each person chosen for a key spot in Trump's cabinet or administration must go through further vetting.
Many posts require a Senate hearing and the full chamber's approval.
Senate vetting: How does it work?
What are recess appointments?
Immigration and the border
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday "we know he promised to sign an executive order to secure the southern border".
"We know that on day one he is going to launch the largest mass deportation of illegal immigrants in American history," she said.
In the week since his re-election, Trump has prioritised filling leadership positions that would oversee immigration, suggesting he is preparing to tackle his plans for border policy early.
He tapped veteran immigration official Tom Homan as his "border tsar"; selected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to oversee homeland security; and appointed Steven Miller as White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Mr Miller is best known for shaping some of Trump's most restrictive policies on illegal immigration during his first term.
Any mass deportation programme could face logistical difficulties as well as a flurry of legal challenges from immigration and human rights activists.
Trump could also re-implement his "Remain in Mexico" policy that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while claims are processed.
President Joe Biden had called the programme "inhumane" and tried to end it on his first day in office, but faced legal challenges. In 2022, the Supreme Court allowed him to move ahead.
During the Trump administration, about 70,000 asylum seekers were returned to Mexico to wait for their hearings.
Another day one promise was to end birthright citizenship - the 150-year-old principle that says anyone born on US soil is an American citizen.
It's not clear how Trump plans to achieve this policy. He has pledged an executive order but birthright citizenship is explicitly guaranteed by the US Constitution, meaning it can only be altered under specific circumstances.
He would need states to agree to a national convention or a two-thirds vote in favour in the narrowly split Congress to propose a change, then subsequent approval by three-fourths of state legislatures - of which Republicans control just over half.
6 January
Trump did not mention pardons in his victory speech, but he has long suggested that pardoning those convicted of storming the Capitol in 2021 would be a priority.
"Oh, absolutely, I would. If they're innocent, I would pardon them," Trump said during a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists.
US presidents have wide authority to forgive people convicted of federal crimes or end their prison sentences. Prosecutors may also decide to drop pending cases depending on who Trump might choose to pardon.
What's less clear is who might get a pardon.
At one point, Trump told CNN: "I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can't say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control."
Ms Leavitt told the Washington Post that he will decide “on a case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House”.
More than 1,500 people were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot. According to federal numbers, more than 750 of them were sentenced for crimes ranging from trespassing to assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy.
Jack Smith
Trump has also faced his own legal challenges over his actions following the 2020 election and a separate classified documents case.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor appointed to oversee the US Department of Justice's investigations into Trump, filed charges, to which the president-elect has pleaded not guilty.
This week, sources told CBS News that Mr Smith plans to resign before Trump takes office and avoid Trump's promises to fire him. The BBC's US media partner also reported that his office would wind down the two cases it was pursuing against Trump.
It remains unclear whether Trump and his supporters will still try to punish Mr Smith. Congressional Republicans have reportedly implied they intend to investigate his work.
"Jack Smith’s abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished", billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk posted on social media.
Trump had said firing Jack Smith is one of his top priorities.
"I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed," he said in an interview in October.
Trump regularly railed against the special counsel in interviews and online, calling him a "crooked person", a "scoundrel" and other insults.
Smith's cases were already facing an uncertain future. The Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents have partial immunity from criminal prosecution for their conduct in office, undermining Mr Smith's work.
Trump's electoral win also gives him the power to pardon himself of any federal crimes, though no president has done so before.
Paris climate agreement
In his 2016 campaign, Trump made withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement a priority. Within six months of taking office, the United States moved to exit the landmark deal.
President Joe Biden made rejoining the agreement one of his top priorities when he ran against Trump in 2020. Biden signed a letter requesting the US be readmitted on his first day in office.
How will Trump respond in his second term? Media reports suggest that his team is preparing orders to withdraw once again when he takes office in January.
Leaving the agreement would mean the US is no longer beholden to meeting set carbon emissions reductions.
Among other priorities at odds with the Paris standards, Trump has said he wants to prioritise US production of oil and gas. He promised to quickly expedite permitting and fracking - "We’re drilling, drilling, drilling," he told Fox News host Sean Hannity last year.
Trump has also criticised the Biden administration's plans to expand wind energy and increase electric car production, which could be early targets in his new administration.
Russia and Ukraine
On the campaign trail, Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine "in a day". He has also repeatedly criticised the US government's continued support of Ukraine, casting the war as a drain on resources.
He has not yet given specifics on how he would negotiate the war's end beyond saying he would help the two countries strike a deal.
Since his re-election, Trump has spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a call that lasted "about half an hour", with billionaire Elon Musk also taking part. A source told the BBC that "it was not really a conversation to talk about very substantial things".
The Kremlin denied that Trump held a call with Vladimir Putin, though media reports said Trump warned the Russian president against escalating the war in Ukraine.
Trade and economy
The economy is an issue that Trump heavily campaigned on, vowing to end inflation as soon as he takes office.
“We will target everything from car affordability to housing affordability to insurance costs to supply chain issues,” Trump has said.
“I will instruct my cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days, or much sooner than that.”
He said he would sign an executive order that directs every cabinet secretary and agency head to “use every tool and authority at their disposal” to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices down.
Trump’s plan includes imposing tariffs on imported goods, especially those coming in from China, arguing that these taxes would keep manufacturing jobs in the US.
It’s still unclear how widespread these tariffs will be, but Trump has raised the prospect of at least a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods, as well as a 60% import tax on goods from China.
He also vowed to target Mexico with his tariffs.
“I’m going to inform (the Mexican president) on Day 1 or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the US,” he has said.
These tariffs would probably not need congressional approval.
Trump already introduced tariffs in his first term, citing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which empowers a president to impose duties on goods that could affect US national security.
Another promise is to “end the Biden-Harris war on American energy”, Trump has said, vowing to ramp up oil drilling and fracking as a way to lower the cost of energy bills for consumers.
Trump can do this with an executive order that rolls back environmental protections, which would allow him to halt clean energy projects and scrap climate targets set by the Biden administration.
The president-elect has also vowed to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on day one. Gensler, who was appointed by Biden, pushed for climate disclosure rules and strong enforcement of the cryptocurrency market.
Trump has championed cryptocurrency, and his election saw the value of Bitcoin go up by 30% in the past week due to an expectation that his administration will be more crypto-friendly.
Title X
Donald Trump has vowed to undo the changes made by President Biden to Title X, the country’s only national, federally-funded family planning programme.
In 2019, during his first term, Trump’s administration implemented a new rule that prohibited any health provider in the Title X network from mentioning abortion to patients, even if a patient raised questions about it themselves.
The change effectively stripped tens of millions of dollars from organisations such as Planned Parenthood that offer or refer patients for abortions.
But just months later, when Biden took office, he had that policy reversed.
Now, it’s expected that Trump will change the rules again.
Secretary of state - Marco Rubio
The US secretary of state is the president's main adviser on foreign affairs, and acts as America's top diplomat when representing the country overseas.
Trump announced his pick as Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio, 53, takes a hawkish view of China. He opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican primary but has since mended fences. He is a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee and vice-chairman of the chamber's intelligence panel.
He has long been courting the job of the nation's top diplomat and if approved, he will be the first Latino secretary of state in US history.
Attorney General - Matt Gaetz
No personnel decision may be more critical to the trajectory of Trump's second term than his appointee to lead the Department of Justice.
After uneven relationships with both Jeff Sessions and William Barr, the attorneys general during his first term, Trump was widely expected to pick a loyalist who will wield its prosecutorial power in the manner of an "attack dog".
He did just that with Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz, who has served in Congress since 2017, is an outspoken conservative who has frequently sparked outrage with his controversial remarks.
His senate confirmation is likely to be a difficult one as members of both US parties are not fans of Gaetz.
National security adviser - Mike Waltz
Florida congressman Michael Waltz has been selected by President-elect Donald Trump as the next national security adviser.
In a statement on Tuesday announcing Waltz's appointment, Trump said the congressman is a "nationally recognized leader in national security," noting that he is the first Green Beret - or member of the US Army Special Forces - to be elected to Congress and had previously served in the US Army for 27 years.
Trump hailed Waltz as "an expert on threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and global terrorism" and "a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda".
The national security adviser counsels the president on various threats to the US and Waltz would likely have to help navigate the US position on the wars in Israel, and in Ukraine and Russia.
It is considered an influential role and does not require Senate confirmation.
Homeland security - Kristi Noem
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been nominated for the key role of overseeing US security, including its borders, cyber-threats, terrorism and emergency response.
The agency has a $62bn (£48bn) budget and employs thousands of people. It incorporates a wide variety of agencies under its umbrella, ranging from Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Coast Guard and Secret Service.
In her new position, Noem will work closely with Tom Homan, named border tsar, and Stephen Miller, who is in charge of policy, to deliver on Trump's immigration pledges.
Noem was passed over to be Trump's running mate after she told how she killed her pet dog.
Prior to being first elected as South Dakota's governor in 2018, the 52-year-old Noem served as a US Representative in Congress for eight years and in the state's House of Representatives for four.
Border czar - Tom Homan
Department of Government Efficiency - Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has been tapped to lead what Trump has termed a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) alongside one-time presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
The department - known as "Doge" in a nod to a cryptocurrency promoted by Musk - will serve in an advisory capacity to "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies, Trump said in a statement.
According to Trump, the department will provide "guidance" and work closely with the White House and Office of Management and Budget.
While department heads have to be confirmed by the Senate, it is unclear what approval process will be necessary for these roles.
United Nations ambassador - Elise Stefanik
New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has been tapped to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
Stefanik has made national headlines with her sharp questioning in congressional committees, first at Trump's 2019 impeachment hearings and again this year quizzing college leaders about anti-semitism on campus.
"Elise is an incredibly strong, tough and smart America First fighter," Trump said in a statement to the New York Post.
Certain political appointments in the US - including the UN ambassador job - require the approval of the US Senate. But Trump has demanded that the next Senate leader let him make appointments without traditional confirmation votes.
Head of Environmental Protection Agency - Lee Zeldin
Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman, has agreed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, both he and Trump said. The Senate will still need to confirm his appointment.
He will be in charge of tackling America's climate policy in this role.
"We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI," Zeldin said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. "We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water."
Zeldin has long been a Trump ally - and is one of 126 Republican members of Congress who signed onto a brief to the Supreme Court that contested the 2020 election results.
While serving in congress from 2015 to 2023, Zeldin voted against expanding a number of environmental policies. He has already said he plans to "roll back regulations" from day one.
He has not earned high marks from environmental groups for his voting record on environmental issues.
Chief of staff - Susie Wiles
Intelligence/national security posts
Trump has chosen his former director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to serve as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director.
Trump said in his statement that the ex-Texas congressman "has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American public".
There are other yet-to-be-appointed key positions running intelligence agencies, including the FBI and director of national intelligence.
Trump has said he would fire FBI Director Chris Wray, who he nominated in 2017, but has since fallen out with. Jeffrey Jensen, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, has been under consideration to replace Wray.
Defence secretary - Pete Hegseth
US ambassador to Israel - Mike Huckabee
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will be US ambassador to Israel, as Trump pledges to end the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years," the president-elect said in a statement. "He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East!”
Huckabee’s daughter, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, served as Trump’s press secretary during his first term in the White House.
Huckabee is a staunchly pro-Israel official who has previously rejected the idea of a two-state solution to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I feel that we have a responsibility to respect that this is land that has historically belonged to the Jews,” he said of the West Bank in 2015, when he was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Special envoy to the Middle East - Steve Witkoff
Trump has picked real estate investor and philanthropist Steve Witkoff for the role of special envoy to the Middle East.
Witkoff is a close friend of Trump's who was with the former president when a man allegedly tried to assassinate him at his Palm Beach golf club in September.
Trump has descibed him as a "highly respected leader in business and philanthropy, who has made every project and community he has been involved with stronger and more prosperous". He added: “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”
White House counsel - William McGinley
Republican lawyer William McGinley will take on the role of White House counsel, Trump has said.
“Bill is a smart and tenacious lawyer who will help me advance our America First agenda while fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement,” he said in a statement.
McGinley served as White House cabinet secretary during part of Trump’s first term and was the Republican National Committee’s counsel for election integrity in 2024.
Treasury secretary
Trump is reportedly considering Robert Lighthizer, a free trade sceptic who led the tariff war with China as the US trade representative, as his chief financial officer.
But at least four others may be under consideration for the role, including Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has become a major fundraiser and economic adviser to the president-elect; John Paulson, another megadonor from the hedge fund world; former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Jay Clayton; and Fox Business Network financial commentator Larry Kudlow, who ran Trump's national economic council during his first term.
Commerce secretary
The woman co-chairing Trump's transition team, Linda McMahon, is tipped as a key contender to represent US businesses and job creation in his cabinet - after previously serving as small business administrator during his first term.
Others who could fill this vacancy include Brooke Rollins; Robert Lighthizer; and Kelly Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman who briefly served in the US Senate.
Energy secretary
Press secretary
Karoline Leavitt, 27, who impressed Trump as his campaign's national press secretary, has already served as an assistant White House press secretary and may be a shoo-in to be the administration's spokesperson.
Robert F Kennedy Jr
RFK Jr, as he is known, is an environmental lawyer by trade, a vaccine sceptic by fame and the nephew of former President John F Kennedy.
He is on a shortlist to run the health and human services department, multiple people close to the president-elect's campaign told CBS.
Despite having no medical qualifications to his name, Kennedy, 70, is expected to become a kind of "public health tsar" in the Trump administration.
There has been speculation about his inability to pass a background check for security clearance due to past controversies, including dumping a bear carcass in New York's Central Park.
From his wheelchair, Michael Northey watches quietly over his father’s grave, and lays a flower for the very first time.
“This is the closest I’ve been to him in 70 years, which is ridiculous,” he jokes poignantly.
Born into a poor family in the backstreets of Portsmouth, Michael was still a baby when his father, the youngest of 13 children, left to fight in the Korean War. He was killed in action and his body was never identified.
For decades, it lay in an unmarked grave in the UN cemetery in Busan, on Korea’s south coast, adorned with the plaque ‘Member of the British Army, known unto God’.
Now it bears his name – Sergeant D. Northey, died 24 April 1951, age 23.
Sergeant Northey, along with three others, are the first unknown British soldiers killed in the Korean War to be successfully identified, and Michael is attending a ceremony, along with the other families, to rename their graves.
Michael had spent years doing his own research, hoping to find out where his father was, but had eventually given up.
“I’m ill and don’t have a lot of time left myself, so I’d written it off, I thought I’d never find out,” he says.
But a couple of months ago, Michael received a phone call. Unknown to him, researchers at the Ministry of Defence had been conducting their own investigation. When he heard the news he says he “wailed like a banshee for 20 minutes”.
“I can’t describe the emotional release,” he says smiling. “This had haunted me for 70 years. The poor lady who phoned me, I felt sorry for her.”
The woman on the other end of the phone was Nicola Nash, a forensic researcher from the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre in Gloucester, who ordinarily works to identify victims from the First and Second World Wars.
Tasked for the first time with finding the Korean War dead, she had to start from scratch by first compiling a list of the 300 British soldiers still missing, of which 76 were buried in the cemetery in Busan.
Nicola went through their burial reports, and found just one man had been buried wearing sergeant stripes from the Gloucester Regiment, as well as one major.
After trawling the national archives and cross referencing eye-witness accounts, family letters and war office reports, Ms Nash was able to identify these men as Sergeant Northey and Major Patrick Angier.
Both were killed in the famous Battle of Imjin River in April 1951, as the Chinese Army, which had joined the war on the North Korean side, tried to push the allied forces down the peninsula to retake the capital Seoul. Despite being hugely outnumbered, the men held their position for three days, giving their comrades enough time to retreat and successfully defend the city.
The issue at the time, Ms Nash explains, is that because the battle was so bloody, most of the men were either killed or captured, leaving no one to identify them. The enemy had removed and scattered their dog tags. It was not until the prisoners of war were released that they could share their accounts, and no one had thought to go back and piece the puzzles together – until now.
For Ms Nash, this has been a six-year “labour of love”, made slightly easier, she admits, by having some of the men’s children still alive to draw on, something that has also made the process more special.
“The children have spent their whole lives not knowing what happened to their fathers, and for me to be able to do this work and bring them here to their graves, to say their goodbyes and have that closure, means everything”, she says.
At the ceremony, the families sit on chairs amidst the long rows of small stone graves, marking the thousands of foreign soldiers who fought and died in the Korean War. They are accompanied by serving soldiers from their loved ones’ old regiments.
Major Angier’s daughter Tabby, now 77, and his grandson Guy, stand to read excerpts of letters he wrote from the frontline. In one of his final addresses, he tells his wife: “Lots of love to our dear children. Do tell them how much Daddy misses them and will come back as soon as he has finished his work”.
Tabby was three when her father left for the war, and her memories of him are fractured. “I can remember someone standing in a room and canvas bags pilling up, which must have been his equipment to go to Korea, but I can’t see his face,” she says.
At the time of her father’s death, people didn’t like to talk about wars, Tabby says. Instead, those in her small Gloucestershire village used to remark: “Oh, those poor children, they’ve lost their father."
“I used to think that if he’s lost, they’re going to find him,” Tabby says.
But as the years passed and she learnt what had happened, Tabby was told her father’s body would never be found. The last recorded trace was that it had been left under an upturned boat on the battlefield.
Tabby has visited this cemetery twice before, in an attempt to get as close to her father as she thought possible, not knowing he was here all along. “I think it will take some time to sink in,” she says, from his newly adorned graveside.
The shock has been even greater for 25-year-old Cameron Adair from Scunthorpe, whose great, great uncle, Corporal William Adair, is one of two soldiers from the Royal Ulster Rifles Ms Nash has also managed to identify. The other is Rifleman Mark Foster from County Durham.
Both men were killed in January 1951 as they were forced to retreat by a wave of Chinese soldiers. Corporal Adair did not have children, and when his wife died so did his memory, leaving Cameron and his family unaware of his existence.
Finding out his relative “helped bring freedom to so many people” has brought Cameron “a real sense of pride,” he says. “Coming here and witnessing this first hand has really brought it home”.
Now a similar age to his uncle when he was killed, Cameron feels inspired and says he would like to serve if the need ever arose.
Ms Nash is now gathering DNA samples from the relatives of the other 300 missing soldiers, in the hope she can give more families the same peace and joy she has brought Cameron, Tabby and Michael.
“If there are still British personnel missing, we will keep trying to find them,” she says.
Holly was just 16 years old when someone asked her if she could have sex because she was disabled.
She has been asked many other questions over the years, such as if she "can have rough sex" or if it needs to be in a wheelchair.
"People think they're doing you a favour, almost like a sacrifice. The worst thing is I'm not surprised or offended anymore."
Holly, now 26, has chronic pain and hypermobility syndrome and is one of a number of disabled women who have spoken out to challenge negative stereotypes and stigma when it comes to dating and relationships.
Holly Greader said it was important that happy relationships for those who were disabled were represented.
She started dating her now husband James when she was a teenager, and has been with him for nine years, getting married earlier this year.
"Often in the media disabled people have miserable lives, we're just a sad story," she said.
She added she has always felt supported by him, but felt stereotyped by others.
"I was told by people when we first moved in together, that if my health declines he'd leave me.
"For being a burden or too much to handle."
She said there were assumptions people made about her in school, which some asked to her face.
"When it comes to wheelchair users, it's always without a doubt almost the first question, can that person have sex?"
She said the boys in her class at school would ask personal and intrusive questions.
"I got asked things like, can you only have sex in a wheelchair? Will your joints dislocate? If I wanted to have rough sex with you, would I be able too?"
Holly said people have also messaged her on social media about sex, an offer she was often made to feel she should be "lucky" for.
Holly would like to see better positive representation in the media, citing that the character Isaac Goodwin in the programme Sex Education was the only good example she has been aware of recently.
Nicola Thomas, 38, from Caerphilly is registered blind.
She said: "One of the more common things people will ask is, how do you have sex? It kind of takes your breath back, it's such an invasive and personal question."
Nicola has an auto immune disease - Neuromyelitis Optica - she lost her sight in one eye 15 years ago and the other five years ago.
"A lot of people see barriers with blindness and I'm definitely one to break those down."
Nicola's hobbies include sailing, paddleboarding and travelling, her next trip is to Hong Kong.
Nicola had a boyfriend when she lost her sight but the relationship broke down.
"I was treated like a burden, people would say you can't be a carer for her, but I didn't need a carer."
She now has a boyfriend who is also visually impaired.
"Even though we're both blind, we'll navigate our way round a city, or go on a date on our own. Nothing holds us back."
Nicola also said she feels stereotyped when people show an interest in her.
"People message on social media asking for dates, their attention shifts or acts differently when I tell them I'm blind."
"You're definitely treated like they're doing you a favour. It puts you off instantly."
Nicola added: "People do pigeon hole us. I want to breakdown that stereotype, I have a full and happy life."
Kat Watkins said disabled people have a right to explore their sexual identity and develop relationships just like anybody else.
She is the access to politics project officer for Disability Wales.
"Why are sex and relationships such a taboo for disabled people? There is much more to us than just being able to eat and having a roof over our heads."
"Living your life and enjoying yourself that's just part of life, and it doesn't get highlighted enough for people with disabilities."
Kat said hearing examples of how people message disabled women was "sadly normalised."
She said adaptable sex toys and aids can help give people confidence and would like to see them on more mainstream sex sites and outlets.
"You've got to be comfortable with yourself and understand your body, so you can tell others how it works. Self love is also really important."
For more on this story, watch Wales Live on BBC iPlayer.
The rescue workers had just left when we arrived at the scene of an Israeli air strike on a building in Aramoun, south-west of Lebanon’s capital Beirut.
It was supposed to have been cleared. They had found eight bodies - including three children and three women - and taken the many injured to hospitals; some were in a critical condition.
Then several men on a balcony in a building opposite started shouting: “A hand, a hand. We can see a hand.”
They were pointing at a balcony on the second floor, which was completely destroyed and had crumbled on to the collapsed floor below.
A young man climbed on to the mound of rubble. He reached the spot, moved some of the rubble, then held something up that could not be identified from distance.
Later, I asked him if he did find a hand. He replied: “No. It wasn’t a hand. It was a piece of bone from a head.”
The multi-storey building that was hit is located in a residential area.
We were told that most of the people there were internally displaced, mainly from the south of the country or the southern suburbs of Beirut.
They are areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence and which have been frequently targeted by Israel during its war with the Iran-backed political and military group.
Aramoun is a religiously mixed area and until Wednesday it was deemed safe because it had not been hit before.
The dawn strike came without warning.
“It was around 4 o’clock in the morning. We were asleep. We woke up because of a very strong thud. We couldn’t see anything in the beginning because of the smoke that was everywhere,” said a mother of two who lived in the building opposite.
She had sought refuge in her uncle’s house in Aramoun after Israel started bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs.
“Israel is striking everywhere. There is nowhere that is safe anymore,” she added.
Another woman in her 80s was being rushed to a car.
She had moved to Aramoun a month ago, also from Beirut’s southern suburbs.
After the strike, she left with everyone else in the building and spent two or three hours in their car on the street.
When we saw her, she was collecting some of her possessions. She told us she was very scared and was moving once more.
This time, she said, she was going to her son’s place. He is displaced as well.
When asked about any prospects of an end of hostilities soon, she replied: “The more they talk about a ceasefire, the more Israel intensifies its strikes.”
The Israeli military has not yet said who or what it targeted in Aramoun.
But the strike bore similarities to several in other parts of the country: launched without warning on residential buildings or houses hosting displaced people. The Israeli military has said many of those strikes have targeted Hezbollah infrastructure.
The attacks are causing increasing social unease within host communities, with residents voicing concern over the possibility of Israel targeting displaced people living among them or others visiting, often to deliver financial assistance.
“We all love the resistance [Hezbollah], but if someone has a son and isn’t even sure he is in Hezbollah, or someone is coming to give aid to displaced people and they are being targeted, we are paying the price,” said one man who owns house in the area that was struck and lives there with his wife and child.
He added: “The displaced came as guests and we welcome them. But if there is someone stranger here, whoever he is - it might be my own child and I’m not aware of him being in Hezbollah - and they target him, and children and women get killed, isn’t that pitiful?”
Such comments have become more common following the recent series of Israeli strikes in various parts of the country which are outside the known areas of hostilities.
But at the same time there are increasing calls in Lebanon for national unity as well as warnings that such strikes from Israel could be purposely designed to create that social unease.
Before the east and west coast rap beef of the 1990s boiled over with the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG, legendary producer Quincy Jones called a secret meeting at which he appealed for an end to the violence.
As hip-hop rose from the streets to the mainstream in the 90s, the rappers and hustlers that broke through had few role models who had trodden that path before them.
There was one man, though, who had been there, and done pretty much everything.
Quincy Jones had been in gangs and had been stabbed at the age of seven in 1930s Chicago, before becoming a major force in American music thanks to his work with legends like Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson.
He was at the heart of revolutions in jazz, swing, soul, funk, disco and pop - but one aspect of his career that got less attention when he died last week at the age of 91 was his place in hip-hop.
Jones was revered in all corners of music, including rap. Unlike most in the old guard and the media, he immediately realised the scene's artistic and cultural importance.
Hip-hop reminded him of the bebop jazz of his youth. "I feel a kinship there because we went through a lot of the same stuff," he said.
"Quincy understood it and got it right away," says pioneering artist, rapper and presenter Fab 5 Freddy.
Jones worked with leading rappers in the 80s, and in the 90s he recognised risks including a volatile rivalry that had begun to erupt between competing labels and stars.
So he brought artists, executives and elder black American statesmen together for a secret summit in 1995, hoping it would be a turning point.
The east coast was hip-hop's spiritual home. In 1992, Sean Combs - then known as Puffy and later as P Diddy - launched his Bad Boy record label in New York with artists including Notorious BIG, aka Biggie Smalls.
Meanwhile, across America, Los Angeles was coming into its own as the capital of gangsta rap, led by menacing mogul Suge Knight's Death Row Records, which had Dr Dre and Tupac.
In 1994, Tupac was shot and injured during a robbery in the lobby of a studio. He later implied that his former friend Biggie may have known about the attack in advance. Biggie then released the track Who Shot Ya?, which Tupac thought was about him.
The beef continued at the Source magazine awards on 3 August 1995, when Knight goaded Combs and Bad Boy Records from the stage.
Jones, who had his own magazine, Vibe, held his summit three weeks later.
The brewing east-west beef wasn't the only reason Jones called it - it was mainly intended to discuss the state of hip-hop and let the new generation hear life and business advice from a group of highly successful black executives.
But rap's negative image and the burgeoning tensions were a big talking point.
"He knew this was a bubbling issue, and so his idea was to bring together a symposium," says Fab 5 Freddy, who was hosting Yo! MTV Raps at the time and was the event's moderator.
Jones told the summit: "The thing that really provoked me to say it's time to pay attention now is Tupac."
Tupac was missing, however - he was in jail for sexual assault at the time. Suge and Dre were there, as were Combs and Biggie.
Jones had already experienced his own beef with Tupac - the rapper criticised the producer in a 1993 edition of Source for marrying white women.
"We finally hooked up, even though it was tension conditions in the beginning," Jones said at the event.
"We finally talked to each other, and he said nobody had talked to him like that before.
"And I said, I can't take it any more. Because we can no longer afford to be non-political, and I'm talking to the hip-hop nation now."
About 50 influential artists and executives were in the room, including Public Enemy's Chuck D, members of A Tribe Called Quest, MC Lyte, Kris Kross, Jermaine Dupri and Boyz n the Hood film-maker John Singleton.
Jones wrote in his now-out-of-print 2001 autobiography: "I had been concerned about the potentially volatile diversity of a group who'd never been in the same room together."
They were joined by veteran executives Clarence Avant and Ahmet Ertegun, plus Colin Powell, the former national security adviser and head of the US military who would go on to become the first African-American secretary of state.
Powell had presidential ambitions - that was why the summit was held in secret. Jones wanted to save Powell from being associated with the negative publicity that surrounded rap music.
He switched venues at the last minute to throw press off the scent, and confiscated the recordings.
"Rest assured that my discretion is based on a deep respect for you and a valued friendship," Jones wrote to Powell in an unpublished letter held at Indianapolis University Library.
"I know that we are going to make a difference at this conference. Thanks for the way you handled the situation. Maybe we can turn the battleship an inch or two."
Jones later wrote in his book: "Some of the younger rappers didn't even know who he was. When addressing some of the more confrontational comments from the floor, Powell maintained his South Bronx demeanour and authoritative cool throughout."
Fab 5 Freddy remembers one exchange between Powell and Knight. "There was an encounter where he [Knight] had something to say, and Colin Powell responded.
"Here you have this guy who was a four-star general talking to Suge Knight, and he pretty much put Suge in his place."
Jones finally released a clip of the event for a 2018 Netflix documentary about his life.
"We've got to seriously talk about what you are going to deal with," he is seen telling the assembled attendees.
"They are not playing, there's real bullets out there, believe me. Maybe literally and figuratively.
"It's a very emotional thing," he added, his voice cracking. "I want to see you guys live to at least my age."
"Quincy did get emotional," Fab 5 Freddy recalls, "because he sensed what could happen.
"And the worst, unfortunately, did happen."
Jones had ended up reconciling with Tupac. After Tupac's 1993 comments, Jones's 17-year-old daughter Rashida - who would go on to star in US sitcom The Office - wrote an irate letter to Source attacking the rapper.
When Tupac bumped into one of Jones's other daughters, Kidada, he apologised, thinking she was Rashida. But Tupac and Kidada hit it off and began a relationship.
"Though we got off to a rocky start, as I came to know and feel him I saw his enormous potential and sensitivity as an artist and as a human being," Quincy Jones wrote.
There have also been claims that Tupac was planning to leave Death Row for Jones's record label.
But in September 1996, a year after the summit, Tupac was shot and killed.
A former gang leader, Duane "Keffe D" Davis, was charged with his murder last year. He has pleaded not guilty.
Then in 1997, Notorious BIG was shot dead outside a party thrown by Jones's record label and magazine. No-one has ever been charged.
Meanwhile, today Knight is in prison for a hit-and-run, while Combs is awaiting trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, which he denies.
The violence in the 90s "wasn't necessary" and was caused by "wannabes and gang-related troublemakers" on the edges of the music industry, according to Fab 5 Freddy.
"Also, the east/west coast beef was mainly ignited by jealousy. It was an ashtray fire fanned into a big deal by media outlets that led to Biggie and Tupac getting killed."
Despite his stature, not even Jones could alter the forces of power and pride that were at work and prevent the bloodshed.
Freddy believes some lessons were learned at the summit, however, and that it deserves a place in hip-hop history.
"It was incredible and electric to be in that room.
"It was a thrilling moment. And then it became even more legendary because it was never released, so the only people that really knew about it were the people that were there."
Indian women on average hit menopause a few years earlier than their counterparts in the West, studies show. A recent paper found that women experiencing premature menopause, particularly in the age group of 30–39 years, is also on the rise. Yet there are few resources to help them deal with it.
“In some studies, the average age of menopause in India is 47 - meaning some women can hit it by 44-45 while others by 50 and this is considered normal,” says Dr Ruma Satwik, a gynaecologist and obstetrician at Delhi's Sir Gangaram Hospital.
This is several years earlier than, for example, the US where the average age is 51.
Doctors say the earlier menopause is a result of nutritional and environmental circumstances as well as genetic factors.
But in a country where conversation on menstruation still comes with stigma and taboo, menopause awareness is lagging.
Sangeeta, who goes by one name, is overwhelmed every day as she juggles work, household chores and childcare while enduring severe hot flashes, fatigue, insomnia, backache and abdominal pain.
“What’s the point of living like this?” the 43-year-old asks. “Sometimes I feel my pain will end when I die.”
A janitor at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, a government-run facility in the capital, Delhi, Ms Sangeeta hit menopause a year ago but did not know until recently that the hospital had a dedicated clinic to address the health concerns it raised.
Hundreds of miles away in the financial capital, Mumbai, Mini Mathur says she felt like she was experiencing “every possible” symptom after she turned 50.
The TV host says she had never had any medical concerns and followed a healthy lifestyle. The onslaught of symptoms reminded her of the advice a friend had given her years ago.
"It's coming for everyone. Please hit the ground running."
While information within India remains scarce, many women say they are turning to social media and that online resources are often more illuminating than conversations with their doctors.
Many follow American specialists like Dr Mary Claire Haver who shares latest research on social media and celebrities like Hollywood actresses Naomi Watts and Halle Berry who have been promoting the documentary The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause. Watts is herself writing a book on menopause while Berry is pushing for new legislation to promote its research, training and education.
Ms Mathur says she feels privileged that she was able to get treatment. “How are women who are bringing up families, kids, going to work, travelling in packed local trains dealing with it?
“We are not up to date with the West,” she says. “We don't have enough brands of oestrogen patches and progesterone creams that we need in India.”
She’s now studying a course in the US, certified by the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches, hoping to eventually bridge the gap between information, resources and access to specialists for women from all kinds of backgrounds in India.
“The cost of this treatment is out of reach for many poor women in India,” Ms Sharma says. Ms Sangeeta says she is resigned to living with pain.
Increased awareness has to come from the medical fraternity, says Dr Satwik, adding that there need to be as many talks on menopause or perimenopause as there are on fertility and adolescent health.
Dr Soni says the government already has a network of healthcare workers in rural and remote areas.
“They already give supplements and provide health care services to pregnant women. Now extend that to menopausal women.”
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A Chinese influencer, with a huge global following and the approval of the Communist Party, has returned to the internet after a three-year hiatus.
Famous for idyllic videos of life with her grandmother in a village in Sichuan province, the 34-year-old has released three videos since Tuesday - and they have millions of views already.
Li first rose to fame in 2016 when China's fast-growing social media users found comfort in her slow-paced videos about cooking and traditional handicraft.
Her return, welcomed by fans around the world, comes amid a government crackdown on influencers whose content they deem "inappropriate".
Li's hiatus followed a dispute with the agency that managed her accounts. In late 2021, she filed a lawsuit against the company over rights to her brand and stopped uploading new videos. They settled in 2022, but Li didn't return to the internet until Tuesday.
In recent months, several influencers disappeared from Chinese internet as officials stepped up efforts to "rectify" online culture by targeting those accused of tax evasion, spreading disinformation and flaunting wealth.
But Li is among those who has survived official censure. Her huge following on YouTube and TikTok, which are banned in China, has led to questions about whether her videos are akin to soft propoganda.
She certainly appears to have the approval of the Party. State-run Xinhua news agency released an interview with her the day after her return. It's rare for state media to interview influencers.
In the interview, Li said she had spent the past three years "catching up on sleep" and taking her grandmother to see the "outside world". Now she has "a higher goal", she added, and would "try her best".
Li has always been a darling of state media. Xinhua called her the "vlogger who amazes the world with China's countryside life" and China Daily praised her for "spreading Chinese culture to the world".
For Beijing, Li's rose-tinted videos encourage tourism and echo President Xi Jinping's call for a Chinese culture renaissance. A Chinese soup noodle dish known for its distinctive smell became a hit after it was featured in a video.
Her videos also offer a distraction from the realities of rural China, which is poorer and older than the country's bustling cities.
Li shot to fame internationally during the pandemic, when China's relationship with the West began to sour. Locked in their homes, millions of people abroad were fascinated with her videos. China's lockdowns, while harsh and sweeping, were largely enforced in the cities.
As Li's brand thrived, she began selling food and sauces under her name on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao. In 2020, local media reported that sales of her products exceeded 1.6bn yuan ($220m; £172m).
By 2021 then she had become the most popular Chinese-language vlogger on YouTube, where she has more than 20 million followers. Another three million follow her on TikTok.
On Tuesday, she announced her return with a 14-minute video on all her social media accounts - including Chinese platforms Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, as well as YouTube and TikTok.
The video, which shows her making a wardrobe for her grandmother using the traditional lacquering technique, has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube and more than three million times on TikTok.
"I missed you very much," she told her fans in a post.
And they felt the same: "When the world needed her [the] most, she returned. Welcome back," a top-liked YouTube comment reads.
Another comment liked more than 13,000 times on Weibo says: "We need the slow-paced Li Ziqi in this age of information explosion."
"Did anyone else literally cry happy tears?," says another comment. "I'm so glad to see her gran doing so well! So happy to see you back."
The former headteacher of a French school has revealed the shocking sequence of events that led to the beheading of Samuel Paty by a Chechen refugee.
Audrey F told the court in Paris how she had tried to stop a row spiralling out of control that began with a 13-year-old student lying to her parents.
What began with Samuel Paty giving a lesson on freedom of expression in October 2020 escalated when the father of the girl, who had not even been in the class, turned up at the headteacher's office with a local Islamist activist.
"I didn't manage to protect him," Audrey F said of her late colleague - a well-liked history and geography teacher in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
The pair were demanding action against Paty, who they condemned as a "thug" and wanted removed.
Audrey F said that while she had tried to focus the conversation on the girl's exclusion from school, Abdelhakim Sefrioui had taken the lead, refusing to allow freedom of expression to be used by a "thug".
The murder of Samuel Paty, 47, shocked France and came five years after militant Islamist gunmen murdered 12 people at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo which published the original cartoons.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui and Brahim Chnina are accused of identifying Samuel Paty as a "blasphemer" in online videos and of involvement in a "criminal terrorist" group and complicity in "terrorist murder".
They are among eight people on trial at the court in Paris who all deny the charges against them, while not denying their involvement in the case.
The other six include a pair accused of helping the teenage killer and others who are accused of egging him on on social media.
Audrey F, who has left France to teach at an international school in China, told the court that she had felt the next day that the situation had now become a problem and "something is not right at the school".
Two videos appeared on social media, one from Brahim Chnina in which his daughter repeated her lies about the class, another later from Abdelhakim Sefrioui, naming both Samuel Paty and the school.
"By now I was very worried, not specifically for Mr Paty but for the school," she told the court.
On the advice of a superior she went to the police with Samuel Paty, where he filed a complaint, and contacted the local authority.
The geography teacher was urged to stay at home until the school holidays which were only days away. He refused to do so and Audrey F did not insist.
Threatening emails were sent to the school and there were anonymous phone-calls too. A police car was parked outside the school for several days.
On the final day of half-term, at 16:45 on Friday 16 October, Samuel Paty was stabbed and decapitated by the 18-year-old Chechen refugee outside the school.
Brahim Chnina's daughter has already been convicted of making false and slanderous accusations, while five other teenagers have been found guilty of taking part in a group preparing aggravated violence.
When asked in court what Abdelhakim Sefrioui and Brahim Chnina could have done to calm the situation, Audrey F said nothing would have happened if they had not posted videos online.
Regretting that she had been unable to protect her colleague, the former headteacher said: "I tell myself that if there is justice, perhaps I'll manage to move on."
Zendaya has described working with her boyfriend Tom Holland as "strangely comfortable".
The A-list couple met while filming 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming and are now rumoured to be starring together in director Christopher Nolan's next film.
They do not often discuss their relationship, but Zendaya was asked by Vanity Fair whether it was weird acting opposite each other.
"Not really," she replied. "It’s actually strangely comfortable. It’s like second nature, if anything."
She continued: "You feel extra safe with the person you’re acting beside.
"I love working with him. He’s so talented, and so passionate about what he does.
"He always gives things 1,000%, even if he’s absolutely worn down. I really appreciate that about him.
She added: "It feels pretty normal. That’s how we met. Literally, at a chemistry read."
Zendaya, 28, rose to fame on the Disney Channel and has since starred in Dune, Challengers, Malcolm & Marie and the TV series Euphoria.
Holland, also 28, played the lead role in Billy Elliot the Musical in the West End as a child, and has since appeared in Uncharted, Cherry and The Devil All The Time.
His role as Spider-Man saw him star in three of the superhero films alongside Zendaya, as well as other appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Apple is facing a legal claim accusing it of effectively locking 40 million British customers into its iCloud service and charging them "rip off prices."
Consumer group Which? says the legal action - which it has launched - could result in a £3bn payout if it is successful, equivalent to £70 per customer.
Apple has rejected the suggestion its practices are anti-competitive, saying users are not required to use iCloud, many rely on third-party alternatives and insisting it "works hard to make data transfer as easy as possible."
It is another example of the "growing tide of large class actions against Big Tech" which has "operated without sufficient constraint", Toby Starr from legal firm Humphries Kerstetter told the BBC.
Facebook, Google, gaming giant Steam and the UK's leading mobile providers are among the others facing legal claims at the same court, the the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
"Although most of these claims are in their infancy and take a long time to resolve, there will be more decisions coming out over the next couple of years and there will be settlements - these will start to affect the tech giants’ businesses," said Mr Starr.
A price to pay
Users of Apple products get a small amount of digital storage for free – and after that are encouraged to pay to use its iCloud service to back up photos, videos, messages, contacts and all the other content which lives on their device.
Prices for this storage range from £0.99 a month for 50GB of space to £54.99 a month for 12TB.
Apple does not allow rival storage services full access to its products.
It says that is for security reasons - but it also contributes to the company's enormous revenues.
Which? says over a period of nine years dating back to 2015 Apple has been effectively locking people into its services - and then overcharging them.
“By bringing this claim, Which? is showing big corporations like Apple that they cannot rip off UK consumers without facing repercussions," the body's chief executive Anabel Hoult said.
"Taking this legal action means we can help consumers to get the redress that they are owed, deter similar behaviour in the future and create a better, more competitive market.”
Apple has strongly denied Which's accusations.
"We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anti-competitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise," it said in a statement.
'Very high value damages'
Though being launched by Which?, the legal action is being funded and taken forward by international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
Which? said they would be paid fees as the case progressed, getting additional payments if it was successful - but they would not be getting a percentage of any damages.
Alan Davis, from law firm Pinsent Masons, said there were very likely to be more, similar cases in the future.
"It is inevitable that further claims of this nature will continue to be brought given the very high value of the aggregate damages and the role of and incentive for litigation funders to support these claims which might not otherwise be brought without that financial support," he told the BBC.
He added the absence of any infringement decisions under EU or UK competition law meant it would be down to the claimant to prove the market abuse it was alleging was actually taking place.
However, he pointed out the regulator had announced a wider investigation into cloud services in the UK.
New Zealand's parliament was brought to a temporary halt by MPs performing a haka, amid anger over a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country's founding treaty with Māori people.
Opposition party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke began the traditional ceremonial group dance after being asked whether her party supported the bill, which faced its first vote on Thursday.
At the same time, a hīkoi - or peaceful protest march - organised by a Māori rights group is continuing to make its way towards the capital, Wellington.
Thousands have already joined the 10-day march against the bill, which reached Auckland on Wednesday, having begun at the top of New Zealand on Monday.
The country is often considered a leader in indigenous rights, but opponents of the bill fear those same rights are being put at risk by this bill.
Act, the political party that introduced the bill, argues there is a need to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which has been fundamental to race relations in New Zealand.
The core values of the treaty have, over time, been woven into New Zealand's laws in an effort to redress the wrong done to Māori during colonisation.
But Act - a minor party in the ruling centre-right coalition - say this has resulted in the country being divided by race, and the bill will allow the treaty to be interpreted more fairly through parliament, rather than the courts. The party's leader, David Seymour, has dismissed opponents as wanting to "stir up" fear and division.
Critics, however, say the legislation will divide the country and lead to the unravelling of much-needed support for many Māori.
The first reading passed on Thursday after a 30-minute break, backed by all parties from the ruling coalition. Maipi-Clarke was suspended from the house.
It is unlikely to pass a second reading, as Act's coalition partners have indicated they will not support it.
But this has not placated those worried about the bill, and its impact, with the hikoi still making progress along its 1,000km (621-mile) route.
In Auckland, it took an estimated 5,000 marchers two hours to cross the harbour bridge. Officials had closed two lanes, the New Zealand Herald reported, to allow them to continue along the route.
Danielle Moreau, who is Māori, walked over the Harbour Bridge with her two sons, Bobby and Teddy, and told the BBC she "was hoping it [the hīkoi] would be big but it was much more epic than I expected".
"I marched to make the point that Te Tiriti [the Treaty of Waitangi] is very important to our national identity," said Winston Pond, who also took part in the march on Wednesday.
"We are a multi-cultural society built on a bicultural base - something that cannot be altered."
* that the government has a right to govern and that parliament has the full right to make laws
* that the rights of Māori are respected by the Crown
* that everyone is equal before the law and is entitled to equal protection under it.
Meanwhile, the Waitangi Tribunal, which was set up in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, notes the bill "purposefully excluded any consultation with Māori, breaching the principle of partnership, the Crown’s good-faith obligations, and the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori rights and interests".
It also said that the principles of the bill misinterpreted the Treaty of Waitangi and that this "caused significant prejudice to Māori".
The tabling of the Treaty Principles Bill comes following a series of measures introduced by the government that have affected Māori.
They include the closure of the Māori Health Authority, which was set up under Jacinda Ardern's Labour government to help create health equity, and reprioritising English over Māori when it comes to the official naming of government organisations, for example.
While roughly 18% of New Zealand's population consider themselves to be Māori, according to the most recent census, many remain disadvantaged compared with the general population when assessed through markers such as health outcomes, household income, education levels and incarceration and mortality rates. There remains a seven-year gap in life expectancy.
The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between the British and many, but not all, Māori tribes, which was signed in 1840.
It is contentious as it was written in both English and Māori - which had only been a spoken language until colonisation - and the two versions contain fundamental differences when it comes to issues such as land ownership.
While the treaty itself is not enshrined in law, its principles have been adopted over time into various pieces of legislation.
The bill will now be sent to a select committee for a six-month public hearing process.
Billionaire Elon Musk has been tasked with leading incoming President Donald Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
In a statement on social media, the US president-elect said Musk - along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy - would "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies".
It is a role that the tech entrepreneur has arguably prepared for through his business leadership, and one he has spent months pushing for.
But it is also one that is expected to garner him influence over government policy - and the regulatory environment facing his enterprises.
Railing against regulation
Musk has cast his plans to optimise government efficiency in heroic terms, pointing to his hopes of one day colonising Mars, while arguing that the feat would only be possible "so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy".
At the time, he said creating the new Doge was "the only path to extending life beyond Earth".
Any major cuts to government agencies could also have potentially significant implications for his business interests, which are closely entwined with the government.
Rocket firm SpaceX alone has more than $8bn-worth of ongoing contracts with the US government, according to public contracting sites, and could stand to benefit further from closer government ties.
Meanwhile, his electric car company Tesla is facing investigations from numerous government agencies over issues such as the safety of its self-driving features. His desire to cut regulation could affect such probes.
In recent years, Musk has repeatedly accused regulators of launching trivial probes and standing in the way of his companies.
In September he threatened to sue the Federal Aviation Administration over its plans to fine his SpaceX company $633,000 for alleged licence infringements related to some of its rocket launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. He accused the agency of "regulatory overreach".
Musk "stands to benefit personally from a lot of the deregulation that he touts," says Christopher Phelps, a professor of modern US political history, adding: "I think putting someone who is a billionaire and runs major corporations in charge of a federal project of deregulation is innately full of conflicts of interest."
Others said Musk, who has long described himself as having a libertarian bent, appeared to be a true believer in the benefits of smaller government.
"There’s no doubt that Musk has significant vested interests in the US regulatory landscape as a result of his many business enterprises," says Thomas Gift, a political science professor and director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London.
"At the same time, it’s hard to make the case that this is the only impetus driving him.
"Musk has undertaken huge personal and political risks in coming out for Trump, and many of his activities and rhetoric seem to reflect an individual ideologically committed to causes he believes in."
"Clearly he has got skin in the game and there’s a self-interest, but equally you can have a sincere belief that there is too much government regulation and too much government bureaucracy," says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.
Reward for loyalty
For years, Musk did not play a big role in politics, despite his large fortune, now worth more than $300bn, according to Forbes estimates.
But he spoke out against the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. His criticism of the Biden administration mounted after the White House did not invite Tesla to an electric car summit in 2021.
He formally endorsed Trump this year after an assassination attempt, ultimately donating a reported $200m (£157m) to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and appearing at numerous rallies.
Prof Phelps describes Musk's relationship with Trump as "transactional", adding that the new role "gives him a lot of symbolic clout - and possibly the clout to get the things that matter most to him done".
As the South African-born billionaire is not a US citizen by birth, Musk cannot become president - something that has frustrated other famous faces who became involved in politics in the past.
But he can have an influence on US policy, and Trump will have a sympathetic adviser to call upon.
"Trump is looking to surround himself with loyalists in his new administration, and there’s no-one who’s been more loyal than Musk since he announced his endorsement for Trump," says Prof Gift.
"Not only did Musk go 'all in' in supporting Trump personally and financially during the campaign, but he’s also evolved into a trusted adviser on topics as diverse as technology policy to the war in Ukraine."
In an early sign of the influence the tech entrepreneur may be rewarded with for his loyalty, Musk was party to a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following the election. The war in Ukraine will be a major foreign policy concern when Trump takes office.
"That is actually quite extraordinary," says Prof Waddan. "Normally, even your biggest donors wouldn’t get that kind of access."
What is the Department of Government Efficiency?
Musk first raised the idea of a cost-cutting effort while hosting Trump on X this summer. The official name is a winking reference to a meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, which then gave its name to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, a favourite of Musk that has seen its value soar since the election.
Prof Phelps says the name is "a nod to crypto deregulation being part of what they’ll do".
But it is not clear how much of Musk's talk of cutting might actually become reality.
For one thing, the new department will not have an official role, but provide "advice and guidance from outside government", according to the announcement.
Experts have also warned that cuts of the scale discussed could be enormously disruptive - and face pushback in Congress - depending on how rapidly they are implemented.
Musk himself acknowledged the risks, saying Americans should be ready to stomach temporary hardship for long-run gain.
The way he has run his own firms may hint at what Americans can expect.
After his October 2022 takeover of the social media platform Twitter - which he branded as X - Musk introduced radical changes, including the reduction X's workforce from around 8,000 to 1,500 in a matter of weeks.
"His idea of efficiency was to let a lot of people go," says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.
Musk also loosened content moderation, stopped verifying accounts and welcomed users back to the platform who had been banned for violating its rules on hate speech and disinformation.
Among the users he reinstated was Trump, who had been banned following the Capitol riot in January 2021 after continuing to claim the 2020 election had been rigged against him.
Critics argue his changes have given prominence to hate-speech and misinformation - though Musk maintains the site is politically neutral.
The overhaul also prompted an exodus of advertisers - the main way the site has made money. Though Musk has introduced new ways to raise revenue, such as paid subscriptions, the company today is worth far less than the $44bn Musk paid for it just two years ago.
His record at his other big companies - Tesla and SpaceX - is stronger.
Among car companies, Tesla stands out for making electric vehicles at a large profit, thanks in part to streamlined operations. His rocket firm SpaceX is credited with enabling rocket launches at significantly lower cost.
"As a serial entrepreneur, Musk has been relentless in trying to improve institutional efficiency at his own enterprises," Prof Gift says.
He adds that though Musk's primary role will be "slashing through the thicket of red tape that is the US federal government", his position will also give him influence in the new administration.
"While his role in the Department of Government Efficiency will be a more informal one, there’s no doubt that he’s got Trump's ear - at least for the moment."
US President-elect Donald Trump has named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, author and military veteran, as his pick for defence secretary.
Hegseth, 44, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, will be responsible for the world's most powerful military in his first political role.
Announcing his choice on Tuesday, Trump described him as "tough, smart and a true believer in America First".
The news came on the same day Trump announced another political newcomer, billionaire Elon Musk, would take a government cost-cutting role.
Trump's administration is taking shape after his win in last week's presidential election. Hegseth was one of a flurry of security appointments that also included Trump's pick of John Ratcliffe to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
If confirmed for his role by the US Senate, Hegseth will arrive at the Pentagon with decisions to make on issues such as military assistance for Israel during its campaign in Gaza, and on support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's invasion.
Trump wants the US to disentangle itself from foreign conflicts generally. During the election campaign, he criticised the Biden administration's expenditure to support Kyiv.
Also on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he wanted South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to play a significant role as homeland security secretary. Another military veteran, Michael Waltz, was chosen by Trump as national security adviser - meaning he will advise the president on foreign threats.
Senator Marco Rubio - who shares Waltz's hawkish views on China - is expected to be Trump's future secretary of state, sources have told the BBC's US partner, CBS News. But the pick is not yet confirmed.
Republicans have won back control of the Senate, the upper chamber of Congress, and are inching towards a majority in the House, the lower chamber, as vote-counting continues.
Some of the government appointments - including Hegseth's - require a vote of approval by senators, although Trump, also a Republican, has demanded that the next leader of the US Senate let him bypass this process. He can give out other jobs directly.
Senate Republicans are due to vote on a new leader on Wednesday - the day that Trump is also expected to visit the outgoing president, Joe Biden, at the White House as part of the traditional transfer of power.
Who is Pete Hegseth?
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ivy League graduate Hegseth has in recent years worked as a conservative commentator. He lives with his wife and seven children in Tennessee.
He has hosted programmes on Fox News, using his platform to draw attention to military and veterans' issues. He had his last day at Fox on Tuesday.
He is reported by US media to have successfully lobbied Trump during his first presidency to pardon servicemen accused of war crimes.
In his statement announcing Hegseth as his pick for defence secretary on Tuesday, Trump highlighted the former soldier's education at Princeton and Harvard universities, and his military experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice - our military will be great again, and America will never back down," Trump wrote in a post.
The president-elect also drew attention to Hegseth's work as a published author. He said the book The War on Warrior "reveals the leftwing betrayal of our warriors, and how we must return our military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence".
What has he previously said about the military?
Hegseth has been an outspoken opponent of what he has referred to as "woke" policies within the US military and its leadership.
"The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is our diversity is our strength," Hegseth said on a podcast this month.
One of his tasks as defence secretary could be to act on Trump's campaign promises to get rid of US generals who he accuses of pursuing progressive policies in the force.
Before his selection by Trump, Hegseth was asked on the same podcast about what changes he would make in the military. He referred to "first of all" firing the US' top military officer, Gen Charles "CQ" Brown Jr, saying people involved in diversity, equality or inclusion policies had "got to go".
"Either you're in for war fighting and that's it, that's the only litmus test we care about," Hegseth told the Shawn Ryan Show, in an episode released last week.
Gen Brown is a former fighter pilot with command experience in the Pacific and Middle East, and was appointed into the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff role by President Joe Biden last year.
On the same podcast, Hegseth also said "whatever" combat standards were in 1995, "let's just make those the standards".
What has the reaction been?
Hegseth's pick has been welcomed by a number of prominent Republican figures, but other reactions have been more varied.
North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told Associated Press the choice was "interesting", and Senator Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama, said he would "have to think" about what he thought of the appointment.
Incoming national security advisor Waltz said Hegseth "has the grit" to make "real reform" happen at the Pentagon. Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the job "should not be an entry-level position".
Posting on X, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the appointment of Hegseth as defence secretary would "make us less safe and must be rejected".
"A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense," she added. "I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our servicemembers."
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Senate Republicans have elected John Thune, the long-serving Senator from South Dakota, as their new leader in the chamber.
The 63-year-old won a secret ballot on Wednesday, defeating Florida Senator Rick Scott and Texan Senator John Cornyn.
Scott, who was the preferred choice of many of Donald Trump's top allies inside and outside Congress, was eliminated in the first round.
The Republican Party won a 53-47 majority in the Senate last week, flipping control of the upper chamber.
Thune will take over from Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in US history, when the 119th Congress begins in January, and will serve for at least the next two years.
As Senate majority leader, he will be the chief spokesperson for the Republican conference's positions on issues, co-ordinate legislative strategies and manage business - including all legislative action - on the chamber floor.
McConnell, 82, announced earlier this year that he would step down after 17 years in the top leadership post.
His decision sparked expected bids from Thune, the current minority whip, and Cornyn, who has previously served as Republican whip.
But Scott also threw his hat into the ring and top Trump supporters, from Elon Musk to Tucker Carlson, publicly endorsed his long-shot bid in an effort to build momentum.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who led two federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, is expected to leave the Justice Department before the president-elect takes office, CBS News, the BBC's US media partner, reports.
The timing would allow Mr Smith to leave his post without being fired by Trump or his eventual attorney general, CBS says, citing two people familiar with his plans.
If his exit goes to plan, Mr Smith would leave without either of his criminal prosecutions of Trump – over the alleged improper hoarding of classified documents and an alleged attempt to interfere in the 2020 election outcome – seeing trial.
His team is reportedly winding down its work, as Trump’s election renders the cases all but finished.
A Trump-appointed Florida judge dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in July, though the decision remains on appeal.
The election interference case is currently ongoing. But Justice Department procedure bars criminal proceedings against sitting presidents while they are in office.
Traditionally, special counsels issue a final report when their investigations conclude that detail the steps their investigation took and their conclusions about whether to bring charges.
It is not yet clear whether Mr Smith will submit such a report to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and if it would see the light of day before Trump takes office.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the BBC's request for comment.
Though they do not directly result in legal action, special counsel reports can have significant impact in the public sphere if they are released.
Over the summer, for example, special counsel Robert Hur released a report on Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents; the prosecutor’s decision not to charge Biden was overshadowed by damaging revelations about Biden’s age and mental acuity.
Mr Smith has already aired much of his evidence in Trump’s election interference case through court filings.
Trump had pleaded not guilty in both cases and sought to cast the prosecutions as politically motivated.
Trump successfully argued to the US Supreme Court that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for certain “official acts” undertaken while in office. The victory forced Mr Smith to re-calibrate his indictment – but also allowed him to file a tranche of supporting evidence for his case.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan has granted Mr Smith a 2 December deadline to decide how to proceed.
Mr Smith’s departure would mark Trump’s legal triumphs over the US criminal justice system.
The president-elect was indicted in four different criminal cases in 2023, only one of which went to trial in New York.
That case, involving a fraudulent attempt to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star, resulted in a conviction on 34 felony counts.
But Trump’s election has thrown even that verdict into question, as his lawyers seek to overturn the conviction on the grounds that it violates presidential immunity, and would interfere with his White House duties.
US President-elect Donald Trump has announced his campaign manager, Susan Summerall Wiles, will serve as his White House chief of staff when he takes over the presidency next year.
In a statement, Trump said that Wiles "just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history" and "is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected".
"It is a well deserved honour to have Susie as the first-ever female chief of staff in United States history," he continued. "I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Wiles, 67, is the first woman to be appointed White House chief of staff.
A profile by Politico earlier this year described Susie Wiles as feared but little known.
Less than a year after Wiles started working in politics, she joined Ronald Reagan’s campaign ahead of his 1980 election.
She went on to play a key role in transforming politics in Florida, where she lives.
In 2010, she turned Rick Scott, a then-businessman with little political experience, into Florida’s governor in just seven months. Scott is now a US senator.
Wiles met Trump during the 2015 Republican presidential primary and became the co-chair of his Florida campaign. He went on to win the state over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who put her in charge of his successful gubernatorial race two years later, described Wiles as “the best in the business”.
Wiles worked on the Trump campaign alongside Chris LaCivita, a veteran of Republican politics with decades of experience.
The two worked with Trump to formulate a winning presidential primary strategy.
In her Politico profile, the 67-year-old grandmother - who is the daughter of late American football player and broadcaster Pat Summerall - said that she comes from a "traditional" political background.
“In my early career things like manners mattered and there was an expected level of decorum," she said, describing the Republican party as significantly different than the one of several decades ago.
"And so I get it that the GOP of today is different," she said, referring to the Republican Party, who are also called the Grand Old Party (GOP).
"There are changes we must live with in order to get done the things we’re trying to do."
What does the chief of staff do?
The chief of staff is considered to be the president's top aide, and plays a crucial role in every president's administration.
They essentially serve as the manager of the White House and are responsible for putting together a president's staff. A chief leads the staff through the Executive Office of the President and oversees all daily operations and staff activities.
They also advise presidents on policy issues and are responsible for directing and overseeing policy development.
Veteran immigration official Tom Homan will be in charge of the country's borders following Trump's inauguration in January.
With a decades-long career in law enforcement and at the border, all eyes will be on how he plans to cut down on illegal immigration into the US - a flagship policy of Trump's election campaign.
So how will he approach the task?
Homan - an ex-policeman and former acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) director - has described immigration at the US border as "the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen since 9/11 and we have to fix it."
Addressing illegal immigrants in the US during the Republican National Convention in the summer, he said: “You better start packing now.”
But it is not yet clear how his role as "border tsar" will take shape, as managing immigration involves coordination among several government agencies.
He has however, provided some ideas on how he would approach the border.
Reversing Biden policies
In an interview with CBS News's 60 Minutes in October, prior to Trump's election, Homan indicated he would seek to target non-criminal immigrants who are in the country illegally, after first prioritising "public safety threats" and "national security threats".
Such an approach would reverse Biden administration policies that direct Ice to focus on deporting serious criminals, national security threats and recent border crossers.
The current Biden policy helps protect undocumented immigrants who have been living in the US and have not committed crimes.
Targeted arrests to facilitate deportations
Homan has said he would use a targeted approach would be used when carrying out arrests and deportations.
Asked in the same October interview how deportations would be carried out, Homan said: "It's not gonna be a mass sweep of neighbourhoods. It's not gonna be building concentration camps. I've read it all. It's ridiculous."
"They'll be targeted arrests. We'll know who we're going to arrest, where we're most likely to find 'em based on numerous... investigative processes," he added.
Deporting families together
Homan played a role in Trump’s controversial "zero tolerance" policy, which separated thousands of migrant children from their parents.
The policy sparked backlash when children were sent to shelters while their parents were prosecuted with no plans to reunite them.
Homan has said he didn’t write the policy memo that led to the separations, but he was one of three officials who signed it. He said he signed it “hoping to save lives”.
Homan indicated that he would not seek to re-instate that policy.
Rather, he has said families could be "deported together", when asked whether deportations could be carried out without separating families.
Workplace mass immigration arrests
Homan also has pointed to reviving mass immigration arrests at workplaces - what he refers to as work-site enforcement operations, which Biden discontinued in 2021.
“As far as the people going to push back on deporting, what is the option?,” he said on Fox News's Fox & Friends on Monday.
“You have the right to claim asylum. You have a right to see a judge. We make that happen. But at the end of that due process if the judge says you must go home, then we have to take them home.”
Homan’s roots as police officer, border patrol agent
Homan, 62, started his career as a police officer in New York state before serving as a border patrol agent - a role he often references.
“I was a border patrol agent. I wore the uniform,” he told Fox & Friends on Monday. “I'm proud that I wore the uniform... I was the first Ice director to come up through the ranks.”
Former President Barack Obama appointed him to head Ice’s deportation branch in 2013. It marked a time when the agency conducted a record number of deportations.
Homan’s work won him the Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service recognition.
Trump appointed Homan as acting director of Ice during his second week in office in 2017, a role he continued in until 2018.
Trump later nominated him to become the agency’s permanent director, but the Senate never moved on the nomination.
Homan, who currently serves as a Fox News contributor, joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and is a contributor to Project 2025, an ultra-conservative policy proposal.
It mentions increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border, creating a more powerful border policing operation and increasing fees on immigrants.
Trump has distanced himself from the agenda while on the campaign trail.
President-elect Donald Trump has named Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
A longtime Trump ally, Stefanik is a staunch supporter of Israel and has also been critical of the UN for what she argues is a lack of sufficient backing for its war against Hamas.
“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement confirming the first cabinet pick of his second term.
If confirmed, Stefanik would replace UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat who worked for the US Foreign Service for 35 years.
Stefanik said she was "deeply humbled" to accept Trump's nomination and was looking forward to "earning the support of my colleagues in the United States Senate", which must vote on her nomination to make it official.
“America continues to be the beacon of the world, but we expect and must demand that our friends and allies be strong partners in the peace we seek," Stefanik added in a statement given to the New York Post.
The New York Congresswoman has minimal experience in foreign policy and national security. She has served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Since Hamas's 7 October attack, she has become one of the most outspoken supporters of Israel in Congress, garnering national attention as she led congressional hearings about university presidents' handling of protests on college campuses.
Last month, she argued there should be a “complete reassessment of US funding of the United Nations” after the Palestinian Authority tried to expel Israel from the UN over human rights abuses in Gaza.
In a statement on Monday, Israel's international spokesperson to the UN, Jonathan Harounoff, said the country's ambassador, Danny Danon, "looks forward to working closely with Elise Stefanik on tackling malicious lies at the UN advanced by hostile nations while staying unswervingly committed to truth and justice".
Before Trump's announcement, Stefanik had risen to become the highest ranking woman in House Republican leadership.
Born and raised in upstate New York, the congresswoman was the first member of her family to earn a college degree after graduating from Harvard University in 2006.
Soon after, she entered politics, serving as a White House domestic policy adviser under President George W Bush and eventually becoming a senior aide to Bush chief of staff Joshua Bolten.
Stefanik later became a top campaign adviser for Paul Ryan when he ran for vice-president alongside Mitt Romney. When Romney lost, the then-30-year-old moved back to upstate New York and ran for Congress, flipping a Democratic-controlled seat with a win by over 20 points.
Stefanik once billed herself to voters as a traditional conservative, but emerged as one of Trump's most ardent defenders during the first impeachment trial against him in 2019. Her support for Trump has not wavered since.
“I’m proud to be a top surrogate,” Stefanik said earlier this year of her support for the president-elect. “I would proudly serve in a future Trump administration.”
Her appointment would leave open the 21st Congressional District seat in New York, which would lead to a special election.
Some Trump allies, including billionaire Elon Musk, have argued it is too risky to lose Stefanik's seat as Republicans and Democrats battle for control of the House, which remains too close to call.
Additional reporting by Nada Tawfik
Donald Trump landed his historic second United States presidency thanks to small increases in support - but lots of them, reaching across the country.
Votes are still being counted, but a picture is emerging of what tipped the balance in Trump's favour. They include small but widespread gains from many sources.
The map below shows in red the states where Trump won. Kamala Harris's victories are shown in blue.
For the data in the map, click here
Trump gathered the 270 electoral college votes needed to win after capturing three battleground states from the Democrats: Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, shown in red stripes.
More gains followed in Michigan, Nevada and finally Arizona.
Margins of victory
The swing towards Trump happened across the country, as shown in the county level map below, although counting continues in many states especially in the west.
Harris led by tens of thousands of votes in major cities.
But Trump dominated the rural counties that lie between them. His wins may not appear to be as sizeable, but they are pervasive. And those margins add up.
In 2020, Joe Biden turned many of Pennsylvania's counties Democrat blue - particularly those near the eastern city of Philadelphia. In 2024, voters seem to have reversed their positions as more votes in the eastern parts of the state went to Trump.
Around Georgia’s major metropolis of Atlanta, votes for Harris were higher than for Biden. But almost everywhere else went further red, the colour of the Republican party, and this picture could become clearer as more votes are tallied.
In Wisconsin, Trump won by less than one percentage point - about 30,000 votes at latest count.
It is difficult to identify a single group or area in the state that moved the needle towards Trump.
His share of the vote increased by less than 5% in all but a handful of counties across the state, compared with 2020.
If you look at the map below the change is almost imperceptible.
Harris did well in the traditional Democratic urban strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison; voters came out for her in large numbers.
Yet it was Trump’s small but widespread gains in counties across the state that did the trick.
Trump gains with Hispanic Nevadans
Trump has taken Nevada, the first Republican win in the western battleground since 2004.
In the vote tally so far, there has been little change among the largest groups of voters.
Black voters chose Harris in similar numbers as they did Biden, while white voters maintained their support for Trump.
Yet the exit poll suggested Trump saw a substantial increase in support among Hispanic and Asian voters, with Harris losing ground compared with Biden four years ago.
Trump raised his share among Hispanic voters in Nevada by 13 points compared with 2020, which meant he and Harris ended up in a tie, both securing 48% of that vote.
He also enjoyed a very substantial swing among Nevada’s Asian voters, from 35% in 2020 to 50% in 2024.
While the Asian community accounts for just 4% of voters surveyed, we’ve seen how similarly small shifts made the difference elsewhere.
People voted for change
While the picture in the states that flipped will become clearer in the coming days, we can see some emerging trends on how different groups of people voted across the nation from US exit polls.
These cut across demographic groups and regions.
On immigration and the economy, Trump was seen as the overwhelming favourite among voters for whom either was the most important issue.
For voters who felt strongly about abortion or the state of democracy, three-quarters or more voted for Harris.
This suggests a stark difference in priorities across the two groups of voters.
Both campaigns emphasised these diverging issues in recent weeks, and it’s clear the messaging cut through.
The personalities of the candidates themselves may also have played a role in how ballots were cast.
For those looking for a presidential candidate who would “bring needed change” to the country, a large majority voted for Trump. And two-thirds of those who most valued leadership skills did the same.
A large majority of Harris voters chose her because they felt she had good judgement and “cared about people like me”.
But the desire for change can be a powerful force when it comes to the way voters choose to cast their ballot.
Produced by Wesley Stephenson, Becky Dale, Christine Jeavans, Libby Rogers, Alison Benjamin, Zak Datson, Muskeen Liddar, Erwan Rivault, John Walton, Callum Thomson, Rob England, Phil Leake, Daniel Wainwright
The Republican Party is four seats short of winning majority control of the US House of Representatives, which would make it easier for Donald Trump to enact his agenda.
On Monday morning, the party was at 214 seats, just short of the 218 needed to take control of the lower chamber of Congress, according to projections by Reuters.
The Senate, or upper chamber, and the White House have already flipped to Republicans - meaning the new president-elect could have significant power after he is sworn in on 20 January 2025.
Control of the House will give Republicans the ability to initiate spending legislation and launch impeachment proceedings against officials.
Under Trump, a unified Republican Party could more easily push through tax cuts and introduce border control measures.
Here are some of the races that have yet to be called.
California
* California's 45th congressional district: Republican Congresswoman Michelle Steel, the incumbent, has been leading against Democrat Derek Tran
* California's 27th: Democrat George Whitesides is challenging incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Garcia. Garcia has been leading by a narrow margin
* California's 41st: Incumbent Republican Congressman Ken Calvert is running against Democrat Will Rollins, and has also been leading by a narrow margin
* California's 22nd: Democrat Rudy Salas is challenging incumbent Republican Congressman David Valadao, who has been enjoying a lead
* California's 13th: Incumbent Republican Congressman John Duarte is running against Democrat Adam Gray, and has been leading
Arizona
There are two closely-watched races in this swing state.
Republican Juan Ciscomani, the Republican, appears to be neck and neck with his Democratic challenger, Kirsten Engel, in Arizona's 6th district, located in the south-east corner of the state.
In Arizona's 1st district, David Schweikert has a slight lead over Democratic challenger Amish Shah. This district covers north-eastern Maricopa County, outside Phoenix.
Maine
Incumbent Democratic Congressman Jared Golden is fighting to keep his seat in Maine's 2nd congressional district - one of two congressional districts in the state. This encompasses the majority of the state north of Augusta and Portland.
Golden is currently leading in the race against his Republican challenger, Austin Theriault. Almost all votes have been counted.
Ohio
Democrats are looking to hold onto one seat in Ohio's 9th congressional district, which encompasses Toledo in the state's north.
Incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who has served in Congress since 1983, narrowly leads in the race against her Republican challenger, Derek Merrin.
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Seven states in the US have approved measures to protect or expand abortion rights, but bids to restore protections for the procedure failed in Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska.
The mixed results came as the Republican Party made widespread gains in contests across the US, propelling Donald Trump to a decisive victory.
Voters had been asked to weigh in on questions about abortion access in 10 states in this election - the first major presidential contest since the US Supreme Court struck down a national right to the procedure two years ago.
The state-level fights were an effort by abortion rights campaigners to claw back or preserve access to practice, after many states barred or imposed restrictions on abortion following the ruling.
Democrats had also hoped the issue would help galvanise voters to their side this election, crediting anger over the issue with helping the party to a better-than-expected performance in midterm elections in 2022.
Vice-President Kamala Harris leaned into the issue throughout her campaign, appealing to women across party lines.
But that momentum did not appear consistently this year, as exit polls suggested abortion ranked below topics such as the economy and democracy.
In Missouri, which backed Donald Trump decisively, abortion rights campaigners still notched a major victory, as voters approved an amendment intended to overturn a near-total abortion ban in the state.
In Arizona, another state Trump is leading, more than 60% of voters backed an amendment to protect the right to abortion until the point of viability - roughly 24 weeks. The measure extends access from the current 15 weeks currently allowed under state rules.
But a similar proposal in Florida fell just short of the threshold of 60% support needed in order to pass, winning just 57% support.
The defeat will let stand the strict law the state enacted earlier this year, banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.
The measure had faced strong opposition from Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who used state resources to persuade voters to vote “no”.
It also became a political headache for Trump, who initially appeared to support the change, but later said he would vote against it after pushback from within his own party.
Betsy Linkhorst, a first-time voter in Florida, said the result in her state left her "heartbroken, scared and frankly, worried for the future".
"This was such an important opportunity to protect women’s rights and our ability to make decisions over our own bodies," the 18-year-old said.
Maria McNally, who voted against the amendment, said she believed that it would have allowed abortions too far into pregnancy.
“I’m happy it failed,” she said.
Voters in the US facing abortion questions on the ballot this year came from states with a wide range of different laws surrounding abortion.
The questions they were asked to decide also varied, though most initiatives proposed to establish a state right to abortion until foetal viability - about the 24th week of pregnancy.
In previous election cycles, campaigns to restore or protect abortion access by using state-level ballot propositions had met with success, including in reliably conservative states such as Kansas.
But the results from this election largely cemented the reality that women in the US face widely different access to abortion depending on where they live.
Voters in Nebraska and South Dakota rejected measures that would have expanded access, while in Maryland and Colorado, where abortion is currently legal, voters approved measures to enshrine a right to the procedure in the state constitutions.
In Colorado's case, the amendment will also expand access, allowing abortion to be covered under government health insurance plans.
In Montana and Nevada, where abortion is currently legal until about viability, voters approved measures to codify that right in the constitution.
In Nevada, a majority of voters will have to approve the measure again in two years for the amendment to be enacted.
New York, where abortion is legal until viability, approved an amendment that would bar discrimination due to pregnancy or reproductive health.
In Nebraska, voters faced two duelling abortion initiatives. They rejected one that would have made abortion a right until viability and approved the state's current rules, which ban abortion after the 12th week of pregnancy, with some exceptions, including incest, rape and saving the life of the mother.
It is difficult to try to predict the decisions that US President-elect Donald Trump will make when he returns to the White House.
But one thing seems unlikely to change: his dislike of patient, principled diplomacy as a means to peace and his preference for transactional politics and populist gestures.
This brings openings and perils in some areas in Africa.
Eight years ago, the Obama administration was working with the African Union (AU) to change United Nations (UN) rules for funding peacekeepers to put African missions on a firm financial basis.
The AU Commission worked with the UN and other multilateral organisations to construct an "African peace and security architecture" that ranged from proactive diplomacy to avert looming conflicts through to coordinated mediation efforts and peacekeeping operations, all underpinned by norms and principles enshrined in the UN Charter and the AU Constitutive Act.
How long ago that seems.
Plans for more robust peacekeeping evaporated in the transition to the first Trump administration.
Since then, no new UN or AU peacekeeping missions have been authorised. Several - including in Darfur, Sudan and Mali - have been closed, and others scaled down.
The Biden administration did not reverse the trend.
The idea of "liberal peace" - that peace, democracy, justice and open markets all go together - had long been a powerful strand in US global strategy.
The AU embraced its multilateralism but recoiled from being lectured on human rights and democracy and were divided on Western military interventions such as in Libya.
Some African leaders preferred Trump’s candour and focus on results.
The "Trump Doctrine" for the Middle East and Africa swept aside multilateralism in favour of transactional deals with American allies in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, above all, Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed set the strategy of the Abraham Accords, and Trump basked in the glory when Arab countries signed up.
Trump’s other consistent positions were hostility towards China’s influence on the continent and aversion to deploying American soldiers.
The biggest obstacle to peace is that the UAE supports one side with weapons and cash while Egypt and Saudi Arabia back the other. There is no prospect for peace while this continues.
For those Arab powerbrokers, Sudan is just one element in their geostrategic calculations, ranked below Israel-Palestine, Iran and relations with Washington.
But if there is a reshuffle of the Middle Eastern political cards, a bargain over Sudan might be a by-product, even an opportunity for Trump to bask in the glow of an unexpected peacemaker.
It will not bring an end to violence, let alone usher in democracy, but it would open the space for serious negotiations.
A similar calculation holds for Ethiopia and its fractious relations with an Egypt-led coalition that includes Eritrea and Somalia.
Along with an array of African leaders, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is heavily reliant on Emirati largesse. Tensions in the Horn of Africa would be reduced if Egypt and the UAE align their strategies.
The Biden administration's policy towards the Horn of Africa was neither committed to principled multilateralism, nor ready to use its leverage with the Gulf states.
Its envoys could only grasp for minor wins such as pauses in the fighting or opening checkpoints for aid convoys.
The tangled wars in Sudan, Ethiopia and their neighbours cry out for bold action - and if he were so minded, Trump might cut the Gordian Knot.
But the risks of a conflagration are high.
The Trump White House will not be likely to restrain bellicose tendencies by Middle Eastern powerbrokers or African leaders, and - especially during the US policy vacuum of the next few months - any one of those leaders could launch a war, confident that America will not respond.
In his first term, Trump showed no interest in the US military footprint in Africa.
Apparently on a whim, he ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia, where they were involved in the war against the jihadist group al-Shabab - a decision reversed by the Biden administration.
It’s unlikely that Trump will pay attention to the Pentagon’s operations against jihadists there or in the West African Sahel, unless there is a high-profile incident with American casualties.
And America’s Middle Eastern allies will be keen for the US to retain its military base in Djibouti.
Reports of collusion between Yemen’s Houthis and al-Shabab, heightening risks of attacks in East Africa or on shipping in the Indian Ocean, may rekindle US interest in military operations.
Alternatively, missions could be outsourced to allies such as the UAE or private military contractors.
Kenyan President William Ruto’s rapport with Biden will do him no favours, but Kenya’s new status as a "major non-Nato ally" - and contributor of police to Haiti - will likely retain good standing within the Department of Defense.
West Africa is today the locus of the world’s most active jihadist movements as well as a tide of putschists who cut deals with Russia’s security outfit, the Wagner Group, now merged into its Africa Corps.
If Trump sees West Africa through the prism of relations with Moscow, and his planned deal with President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, it will introduce a wild card into the region’s politics.
But tensions will arise because his ally, Morocco, has its own ambitions for strategic leadership across West Africa.
It’s a major non-Nato ally and has been leery of Russian influence in Algeria, Libya and the Sahel - adding up to a mix that would be stirred if Trump cuts deals with Putin.
Transactional politics imply cutting deals with coup leaders and warlords whose crimes are their credentials.
AU principles such as outlawing unconstitutional changes in government will be disregarded.
Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu may have preferred Biden, but he is familiar with Trump’s style of politics and will seek a formula for keeping America onside in its war against jihadist group Boko Haram.
In February, just weeks after the presidential inauguration in Washington, Africa’s leaders will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to elect a new chairperson of the AU Commission.
The outgoing chairperson, Chad's former Prime Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, was content to be a trader in the political bazaar of the Trump-Biden years.
His successor will face the challenge that Africa’s best formula for peace and security lies in norm-based multilateral cooperation, but 2025 will be an inauspicious year for reviving that project.
Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US.
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
The bar facing the US embassy building in central Jerusalem is called Deja Bu - a witty reference to something you’ve drunk before.
And outside the gates of the US compound, Israel is eager for a second round of Donald Trump.
"I'm very pleased," said Rafael Shore, a rabbi who lives in Jerusalem's Old City. "He understands the language of the Middle East.
"Iran will think twice about doing anything. I think if Kamala had been elected, there wouldn't be much fear in the Middle East of attacking America or Israel."
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of the first to congratulate the new president-elect on Wednesday morning. "Congratulations on history's greatest comeback!" he tweeted.
Netanyahu has previously called Trump the "best friend Israel has ever had in the White House".
When called upon to choose between the recent demands of his US ally and the demands of his coalition partners, Benjamin Netanyahu has tended to choose his coalition.
Friction with the current US President, Joe Biden, has grown sharply as a result.
Michael Oren believes Netanyahu will need to take a different approach with the incoming president.
"If Donald Trump comes into office in January and says, 'OK, you have a week to finish this war,' Netanyahu is going to have to respect that."
In Gaza, where the Israeli military has been battling Palestinian group Hamas, desperation has narrowed the focus of some residents to that single goal.
Trump "has some strong promises", Ahmed said. "We hope he can help and bring peace."
Ahmed's wife and son were both killed in the war and his house destroyed.
"Enough is enough, we are tired," he said. "We hope Trump is strong so that he can resolve this issue with Israel."
"He's going to make the situation here more uncertain and unsafe," one Israeli woman said. "I don't trust him to keep the peace. I honestly think he'll just make the war worse."
The former Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren, said he believed there were "tremendous achievements ahead" if Israel co-operated with Trump, including the potential for a historic peace deal with Saudi Arabia and checks on Iran's influence.
But it could also be harder for Netanyahu to navigate the demands and compromises involved in those regional goals.
Since Trump's last term in office, moderate voices around both leaders have dwindled.
Many in Israel view Trump's first term with fond memories. But relationships can be radically different the second time around - and past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House is set to reshape US foreign policy, promising potentially radical shifts on multiple fronts as war and uncertainty grip parts of the world.
During his campaign, Trump made broad policy pledges, often lacking specific details, based on principles of non-interventionism and trade protectionism - or as he puts it “America First”.
His victory signals one of the most significant potential disruptions in many years in Washington’s approach to foreign affairs in the midst of parallel crises.
We can piece together some of his likely approach to different areas from both his comments on the campaign trail and his track record in office from 2017 to 2021.
Russia, Ukraine and Nato
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day”. When asked how, he suggested overseeing a deal, but has declined to give specifics.
A research paper written by two of Trump’s former national security chiefs in May said the US should continue its weapons supply to Ukraine, but make the support conditional on Kyiv entering peace talks with Russia.
To entice Russia, the West would promise to delay Ukraine’s much-wanted entry into Nato. The former advisers said Ukraine should not give up its hopes of getting all of its territory back from Russian occupation, but that it should negotiate based on current front lines.
Trump’s Democratic opponents, who accuse him of cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, say his approach amounts to surrender for Ukraine and will endanger all of Europe.
He has consistently said his priority is to end the war and stem the drain on US resources.
It’s not clear how far the former advisers’ paper represents Trump’s own thinking, but it’s likely to give us a guide to the kind of advice he’ll get.
His “America First” approach to ending the war also extends to the strategic issue of the future of Nato, the transatlantic all-for-one and one-for-all military alliance set up after the World War Two, originally as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.
Nato now counts 32 countries and Trump has long been a sceptic of the alliance, accusing Europe of free-riding on America’s promise of protection.
Whether he would actually withdraw the US from Nato, which would signal the most significant shift in transatlantic defence relations in nearly a century, remains a matter of debate.
Some of his allies suggest his hard line is just a negotiating tactic to get members to meet the alliance’s defence spending guidelines.
But the reality is Nato leaders will be seriously worried about what his victory means for the alliance’s future and how its deterrent effect is perceived by hostile leaders.
The Middle East
As with Ukraine, Trump has promised to bring “peace” to the Middle East - implying he would end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon - but has not said how.
He has repeatedly said that, if he had been in power rather than Joe Biden, Hamas would not have attacked Israel because of his “maximum pressure” policy on Iran, which funds the group.
Broadly, it’s likely Trump would attempt to return to the policy, which saw his administration pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, apply greater sanctions against Iran and kill Gen Qasem Soleimani - Iran’s most powerful military commander.
In the White House, Trump enacted strongly pro-Israel policies, naming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy there from Tel Aviv - a move which energised Trump’s Christian evangelical base, a core Republican voter group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump the “best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”.
But critics argue his policy had a destabilising effect on the region.
The Palestinians boycotted the Trump administration, because of Washington’s abandonment of their claim to Jerusalem - the city that forms the historical centre of national and religious life for Palestinians.
They were further isolated when Trump brokered the so-called “Abraham Accords”, which saw a historic deal to normalise diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab and Muslim countries. They did so without Israel having to accept a future independent Palestinian state alongside it - the so-called two-state solution - previously a condition of Arab countries for such a regional deal.
The countries involved were instead given access to advanced US weapons in return for recognising Israel.
The Palestinians were left at one of the most isolated points in their history by the only power that can really apply leverage to both sides in the conflict - further eroding their ability as they saw it to protect themselves on the ground.
Trump made several statements during the campaign saying he wants the Gaza war to end.
He has had a complex, at times dysfunctional relationship with Netanyahu, but certainly has the ability to apply pressure on him.
He also has a history of strong relations with leaders in the key Arab countries that have contacts with Hamas.
It’s unclear how he would navigate between his desire to show strong support for the Israeli leadership while also trying to bring the war to a close.
Trump’s allies have often portrayed his unpredictability as a diplomatic asset, but in the highly contested and volatile Middle East in the midst of a crisis already of historical proportions, it’s far from clear how this would play out.
Trump will have to decide how - or whether - to take forward the stalled diplomatic process launched by the Biden administration to get a Gaza ceasefire in return for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
China and trade
Some MPs are delighted Donald Trump will be America’s president again.
"I’m emphatic the world is a safer place now that we have Donald Trump in the White House," Suella Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary, told the BBC.
Others are pleased, but most, from all parties, offer a rather more fruitily negative view about the president-elect’s victory, ranging from the mildly concerned to the downright horrified.
Plenty, too, ponder what Trump's win might say about the more conventional political class being so tin-eared about the concerns of millions and millions of people that he has triumphed again.
What might that mean for British politics in the future?
It is an issue the prime minister has been alive to ever since he won the general election.
One cabinet minister I spoke to the other day waxed lyrical about plans for their connections with a Harris administration.
And what happens if Trump wins? I asked.
"Who knows" was the sentiment of their reply, albeit expressed more crudely.
That is not to say the government hasn’t put in the ground work in recent months.
It has.
But planning for a potential scenario is different from dealing with its reality – and that reality starts now.
First up, the call between the prime minister and the president-elect, seeking, in Downing Street’s description of it, to describe a tone of warmth, even bonhomie between the socialist former human rights lawyer and the billionaire wheeler-dealer New Yorker.
“The prime minister offered his hearty congratulations," we were told, adding "the leaders fondly recalled their meeting in September" - a reference to their first get together at Trump Tower in New York.
"Hearty" and "fondly" stand out to me, given how anodyne and bland these statements so often are.
The read-out of the call from No10 also seeks to leverage "President-elect Trump’s close connections and affinity to the United Kingdom" - his mum was born on the Hebridean island of Lewis.
But just how Anglophile is he really, some ponder, given his mantra of "America First"?
Sir Keir had the conversation on his mobile in his office next to the cabinet room in No 10.
Team Trump rang the prime minister, after the government had requested a call with them to send their congratulations.
I’m told Trump had spoken to some other leaders first, but seemingly not many.
The plea from some in government, to themselves and an audience beyond Westminster, is to judge Trump by his actions, not by his words.
The verbal fireworks seem inevitable: that is the Trump way but don’t get distracted by them, is the mantra for some.
Not least because brash controversy and wild unpredictability is just the start of it. There is policy to think about too.
Take Ukraine.
If the soon-to-be president starts cutting support for Kyiv, how does Europe respond?
Does it remain broadly united or start to splinter?
If he demands again as he often has that Europe pays more for its defence, does it?
Can the British government afford to crank up defence spending more quickly? Can it afford not to?
Then there is climate change - and then the crucial issue of trade.
The president-elect has talked up the prospect of huge tariffs or import taxes on goods being brought into the United States.
What might this mean for Sir Keir Starmer’s central mission to try to catalyse economic growth?
If the European Union responds with retaliatory measures of its own, how should the UK respond?
Hug Europe close, or use the flexibilities of Brexit to choose a different approach?
Those who observed the first Trump administration closely tell me his significant mandate this time, and the wider Republican victories, mean the next president will be less restrained than last time.
They are better prepared to ensure they get their own people into the right jobs to get done what they want to get done and more quickly.
The implications, choices, trade-offs and dilemmas for the UK provoked by what has just happened in America are legion.
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News of Donald Trump's return to power in the White House has made global headlines.
His so-called America First foreign policy could see a withdrawal of US involvement in areas of conflict around the world.
Five BBC correspondents assess the effect it could have where they are.
Trump seen as respite on Ukraine frontlines
By James Waterhouse, Ukraine correspondent, Kyiv
"Do not try to predict Trump's actions. No one knows how he is going to act."
The words of one Ukrainian MP reflect the political challenge facing Kyiv. A Trump victory was widely feared here, over what it could mean for future US support.
The Republican once vowed to end the war in a single day, and has repeatedly criticised US military aid for Ukraine. Now, it's anyone's guess what he could do.
"He could ask Putin to freeze this war, and he says 'OK'," says a front-line soldier. "It's the worst scenario because in a couple of years the Russians will advance again and might destroy us."
"The second scenario is if Putin refuses," he says. "There is a chance Trump will react radically. That is a more promising scenario."
Ukraine hopes that means the US further upping its military support in the face of a likely Ukrainian defeat.
For those close to the front lines who have had enough of Russian aggression, Trump is seen as a route to respite.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president once labelled by Trump as "the greatest salesman in history" sent an early message of congratulations.
He talked up the political and economic opportunities a partnership could provide, and wants to be able to keep fighting in return.
There's also another ingredient.
Trump won't just have to consider further military support for Ukraine, but also how or whether to respond to North Korea's growing involvement in Russia's invasion.
No plans for Putin congratulations
By Steve Rosenberg, Russia editor, Sochi
You might expect the Kremlin to be cock-a-hoop at Trump winning back the White House.
After all, out on the campaign trail, he had avoided criticising Vladimir Putin. Kamala Harris meanwhile called the Russian president "a murderous dictator".
Trump had also questioned the scale of US military assistance to Kyiv.
Publicly, though, the Kremlin is going out of its way to give the impression that it's not excited by a Trump victory.
"I'm not aware of any plans [for President Putin] to congratulate Trump," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "Don't forget that [America] is an 'unfriendly country' which is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state."
The dampening down of expectations are the result of how Trump's first term turned out: the Kremlin had high hopes that a Trump presidency would transform US-Russian relations. It didn't.
Nevertheless, at the political discussion club I'm attending in the mountains above Sochi, leading Russian political scientists seem to be looking forward to Trump the sequel.
One pundit told me he thinks that under Trump the US will "retreat" from its global super power status.
Another suggested the US election fitted the Kremlin's "overall vision of the world", in which "liberal globalism has depleted its efficiency".
Europe's leaders see security trouble ahead
By Paul Kirby, Europe digital editor
When dozens of European leaders from the EU and beyond gather in Budapest on Thursday, those on the right will be celebrating Donald Trump's election victory, but the rest will be asking themselves what happens next.
Hungarian host and Trump ally Viktor Orban was first on to Facebook with his delighted message: "It's in the bag!"
But for many other EU leaders Trump 2.0 could signal trouble ahead on security, trade and climate change.
Within minutes of congratulating the Republican candidate, France's Emmanuel Macron said he had agreed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to work towards a "more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context".
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock gave an idea of that context. Just back from Ukraine, she said Europeans now had to "think big and make investments in our European security big", with the US as a partner.
Her Polish and Nato counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski said he had been in touch with Trump's top team and agreed "Europe must urgently take greater responsibility for its security".
The prospect of steep US tariffs on EU imports weigh heavily too. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Trump but gave a timely reminder that "millions of jobs and billions in trade" relied on their transatlantic relationship.
Israel 'clear-sighted' about who Trump is
By Lucy Williamson, Middle East correspondent, Jerusalem
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, was one of the first to congratulate Trump and has previously called him Israel's best ever friend in the White House.
Trump previously won favour here by scrapping a US nuclear deal with Iran that Israel opposed. He also upended decades of US policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Trump's first term in office was "exemplary" as far as Israel is concerned, says Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US. But he adds: "We have to be very clear-sighted about who Donald Trump is and what he stands for."
The former president sees wars as expensive, Mr Oren notes, and Trump has urged Israel to finish the war in Gaza quickly.
"If Donald Trump comes into office in January and says, 'okay, you have a week to finish this war', Netanyahu is going to have to respect that."
In Gaza, where the Israeli military has been battling Palestinian group Hamas, desperation has narrowed the focus of some residents.
Trump "has some strong promises", says Ahmed, whose wife and son were both killed when their house was destroyed. "We hope he can help, and bring peace."
Another displaced resident, Mamdouh, said he didn’t care who won the US election - he just wanted someone to help.
Xi might see opportunity on world stage
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
Donald Trump has won yet another delay in the sentencing of his New York criminal "hush money" case.
The court agreed to hold off any decisions until 19 November while the parties sort out the historic implications of his re-election.
Tuesday's hearing was originally set to decide whether to move ahead with Trump's sentencing or throw out his conviction on 34 felony counts.
Both prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys convinced a judge they needed more time to weigh the “unprecedented circumstances” before any decision about his sentencing could be made.
In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records.
The conviction stemmed from Trump’s attempt to cover up reimbursements to his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who in 2016 paid off an adult film star to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump is arguing for the case to be thrown out.
“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” Trump's attorney, Emil Bove, wrote in a court filing.
Should Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, side with Trump, it would almost wipe clean his slate of criminal woes.
But should the judge uphold the conviction, he may proceed to sentencing before Trump takes office following his 20 January inauguration.
That would likely spark even more delay attempts from Trump and open up an unprecedented new front for America’s criminal justice system.
Trump's sentencing in his Manhattan trial was first postponed until after the November election and rescheduled for late November.
That date was thrown into uncertainty after Justice Merchan granted a stay on Tuesday of current court deadlines until 19 November.
Trump’s lawyers argue that a recent US Supreme Court ruling granting presidents a degree of immunity from criminal prosecution applies to certain aspects of his New York case, and therefore the indictment and conviction should be tossed.
During the trial, Justice Merchan dismissed attempts by Trump’s lawyers to throw out the case on immunity grounds. That was before this summer's Supreme Court immunity ruling in Trump’s favour and before he decisively won re-election this month.
Justice Merchan had originally set a deadline for Tuesday to decide whether to grant Trump’s request.
If he throws out the conviction, that will be the end of the New York case.
Trump’s imminent return to the White House has already effectively slammed the door on the two cases involving federal criminal charges against him.
A state case against him for allegedly conspiring to interfere with Georgia’s election in 2020 will go on hold until after his second term in office ends - if it's still alive by then.
An unprecedented sentencing – with jail unlikely
Even if Justice Merchan upholds the New York conviction and keeps the scheduled sentencing, Trump’s team is almost certain to seek more delays and appeals.
Because Trump will be tied up with a presidential transition, and because legal questions around sentencing a president are so complex, some scholars see very little chance it will stay on the calendar.
“I think the most likely outcome in the state case is the judge putting off sentencing until after Trump's term in office,” said Daniel Charles Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School.
“To actually impose a sentence would raise any number of messy issues in the short term”, including political ones, he said.
If Trump does find himself in a Manhattan courtroom before he takes office, deciding his fate would still be an unprecedented challenge.
Under the law, Trump faces a range of sentences, including fines, probation and up to four years in prison. But many options are rendered impractical by re-election win.
“Sentencing a sitting president may be one of the most complicated, fraught sentencing decisions you can imagine,” said Anna Cominsky, a professor at the New York Law School.
“It’s hard to imagine what sentence could be imposed that would not impede a president’s ability to do their job or compromise the president’s security."
Few expect Justice Merchan to sentence Trump to a stint behind bars at this point and if he did, Trump's team would almost certainly appeal it.
“He’s a 78-year old man with no criminal history, who has been convicted of a non-violent felony,” said retired New York Supreme Court Justice Diane Kiesel.
“I don’t think a judge would give a person under those sentences an incarceration sentence.”
Trump could leave a sentencing hearing with the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Justice Merchan could ask the former president to pay a relatively small fine in the three- or four-figure range.
He could also give Trump an unconditional discharge; “basically, goodbye”, as Justice Kiesel puts it.
Trump has no pardon power here
The only thing that is certain is that Trump cannot make this conviction go away on his own.
Trump has explored the possibility of pardoning himself from potential criminal charges in the past, and could do so for his federal indictments when he becomes president in January.
But he cannot pardon himself in New York, as the conviction occurred in state, not federal, court.
His fate, at the moment, is in the hands of the court. But regardless of the outcome, Trump will likely avoid the most serious punishments facing him.
“He is a very lucky man,” Justice Kiesel said.
Financial markets greeted Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election with a blistering rally.
That's despite considerable debate about how Trump’s plans for tariffs, lower taxes and mass migrant deportations might affect the world’s largest economy.
A week on, the surge finally appears to be settling. The three major stock indexes in the US ended the day lower on Tuesday, after rising roughly 5% since 4 November, the day before the election.
Here are some of the companies that have come out ahead, as investors try to game out what the next four years might bring.
Tesla
Tesla shares have surged roughly 35% since 4 November.
The rally has pushed the market value of the firm back above $1tn for the first time since 2022 and boosted the wealth of boss Elon Musk, who owns a roughly 13% stake in the company, by more than $50bn.
It marks a bet by investors that a Trump White House might ease up on some of the investigations by safety regulators into features such as self-driving.
The ties between Trump and Musk could also help Tesla navigate shifts in relationship between the US and China, where the company has a significant presence.
Although Trump is generally expected to reduce government support for electric vehicles, such as tax credits, analysts say this could actually benefit Tesla, the market leader in the US, making it harder for rivals to catch up.
Cryptocurrency
The price of the best-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, jumped more than 25% to new all-time records this week on the back of Trump's win, briefly storming past $89,000.
The gains are a sign that investors are anticipating big changes for the sector, which faced a crackdown under the Biden administration from regulators warning it was rife with hucksters and fraudsters.
Trump once also called crypto a scam, but he changed his tune on the campaign trail this year, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.
He said he would create a strategic bitcoin stockpile and sack Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler, who had sparked anger by taking legal action against firms under existing financial laws.
Crypto firms insist their sector should be subject to new, tailor-made rules. That likely depends on Congress, where they could also get a friendlier hearing this year.
Banks
Shares in some of America's biggest banks have seen double digit gains since the day before the election as investors bet financial firms will be among the most immediate beneficiaries of Trump's promises for lighter regulation.
Among other issues, he will now have a voice shaping pending rules that set how much cash banks must keep on hand as financial cushion.
Trump is also expected to part ways with Lina Khan, current head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is known for her anti-monopoly views and is blamed for casting a chill on deal-making, a key business for banks.
Shares in Capital One and Discover, which have a merger under review by regulators, have jumped more than 15% since the result.
Prison operators
Shares in the leading publicly traded prison firms GEO Group and CoreCivic have jumped roughly 70% since 4 November.
The gains point to the big opportunity investors see for private prison operators as Trump vows to round up and deport millions of migrants.
In 2021, President Joe Biden had ordered the Justice Department to stop doing business with private prison companies.
But Trump, who reversed a similar order during his first term, is expected to change that policy and drive new business, as he looks for help to carry out his immigration promises.
Trump's first actions as president have been focused on assembling the team in charge of immigration policy, a signal it is likely to be a priority.
The dollar
The dollar index is hovering at its highest level since April, rising more than 2% in the last week.
It is good news for American tourists travelling abroad - but a more mixed signal about the economy.
That is in part because the strength of the dollar is closely tied to interest rates, which investors are now betting could stay higher than previously anticipated.
It partially reflects data from before the election suggesting the US economy is stronger than previously understood.
But investors also see a risk that lower taxes, less immigration and new trade barriers could keep pressure on inflation, making the US central bank more reluctant to cut interest rates.
Last week, the Federal Reserve offered little guidance about the months ahead, saying it was too early to tell what impact Trump's policies might have.
In the build-up to Tuesday’s US election, claims of voter fraud flooded social media - but as Donald Trump’s victory crystallised, the chatter largely subsided.
The claims didn’t stop entirely, however. A number of right-wing influencers and organisations pushing stories about “cheating” and a “rigged” vote pointed to incomplete vote totals and continued to repeat discredited theories about the 2020 election.
And disappointed Democratic Party supporters developed their own unsubstantiated voter fraud theories, some of which went viral on X, formerly Twitter, and other platforms.
The reach of the posts is nowhere near the deluge of content that circulated after Trump lost the 2020 election.
And with no support from losing candidate Kamala Harris or other Democratic Party officials, the chances seem slim of a large-scale movement developing along the lines of the “Stop the Steal” drive four years ago, which culminated in a riot at the US Capitol.
How did fraud claims develop on election day?
The BBC tracked a huge wave of pre-election fraud claims that carried through election day and into the evening.
These included claims of the vote being “stolen” in some key swing states, with exaggerated takes on real events being used in some cases to bolster the allegations.
Early on election day in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold, there were problems with voting machines malfunctioning. The issues were fixed and voting hours in the affected areas were extended.
However, many online immediately used the story to suggest nefarious activities were taking place.
One post at 08:45 local time on Tuesday said: “The election steal is happening!”
Other rumours were spread in posts that popped up throughout the day, including one at around 14:00, which claimed ballots in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, had been pre-marked for Kamala Harris.
In Milwaukee, the biggest city in the swing state of Wisconsin, elections officials made a decision to re-run around 30,000 ballots out of an “abundance of caution”, after doors on the back of voting machines were left open.
Once the count was completed, it showed that support for Harris had dropped compared with Joe Biden's four years earlier.
Like many of the pro-Trump posters, Harris supporters pointed to real but isolated events - fires at ballot drop boxes in Washington and Oregon, and a series of fake bomb threats that disrupted voting at several polling locations on election day - as evidence of widespread voter fraud.
However, there’s no evidence that the incidents significantly altered the vote or changed the outcome.
Several posts from Democratic Party activists questioning the result went viral and were seen by millions on X and other platforms.
Pam Keith, a Harris supporter in Florida, posted: “Is it possible that the machines were hacked to switch the tallies from Harris to Trump?” Her message was seen more than one million times on X, according to the site’s metrics. The BBC has reached out to her for comment.
Unlike Trump’s campaign in 2020, however, the Harris campaign and top Democratic Party officials have not endorsed allegations of cheating or voter fraud.
On election day, fraud rumours also came from President-elect Trump himself, who has repeatedly argued from the outset of his political career that the voting system is unfairly stacked against him.
Just after 16:30 Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social: “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!”
The now president-elect did not give any details and the Philadelphia Police Department told BBC Verify they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.
Seth Bluestein, the Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia, posted on X: "There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure."
Trump has not repeated the fraud allegations since election day.
We have contacted several hugely influential accounts that regularly posted about election fraud claims in the build-up to the vote, but none of them replied.
With data firm NodeXL, the BBC tracked accounts that engaged with Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Lara Trump and Elon Musk on X around election day.
Posts mentioning vote fraud peaked at 15:00 EST on 5 November - but then dropped off significantly that evening and into the next day as polls closed and results came in.
Claims continue to circulate
However, some organisations and activists who promoted voter fraud allegations in the past continued to repeat debunked rumours even after the results became clear.
Emerald Robinson, a former reporter with right-wing TV networks and a pro-Trump influencer with more than 750,000 followers on X, insisted that Democrats were “cheating right now” and posted: “I always told people the voting machines were rigged!”
More generally, reaction from pro-Trump groups and influencers who previously hyped up vote fraud claims varied - from silence on the issue, to continued insistence that the 2020 vote was marred by fraud.
The BBC contacted Ms Robinson for comment.
Conspiracy theories based on vote numbers
In another case, a chart that was widely circulating online claimed to show a sharp drop-off in vote totals in 2024 compared to 2020.
Many are pointing to the figures as “proof” of fraud.
Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, a Trump supporter who has pushed voter fraud theories, posted the day after the election: "Kamala got 60 million votes in 2024. Does anyone really believe Biden got 80 million in 2020? Where did those 20 million Democratic voters go? The truth is, they never existed."
However, the chart and the figures circulating online were based on preliminary vote totals, which continue to go up as final results are still being tabulated.
Already, Harris has more than 69 million votes in her column - with Trump on more than 73 million. As of Friday, fewer than two million ballots have yet to be counted nationally, in states including Arizona and California, according to Reuters.
The BBC contacted Mr D'Souza for comment.
Those same numbers are also fuelling conspiracy theories from supporters of Harris, who are wondering where their “missing” voters are - and ignoring the fact that turnouts and preferences frequently shift, often dramatically, between elections.
Partisans on both sides are also pointing to differences in vote tallies for Harris and other Democrats running for Senate seats.
But there is no requirement for US voters to support candidates from just one party, and “ticket-splitting” - voting for candidates from different parties in different races - although becoming rarer, is fairly common in American politics.
The University of Florida’s Election Lab turnout tracker is showing slightly lower turnout in 2024 as compared to 2020 - 62.5% v just over 66%.
Additional reporting by Shayan Sardarizadeh and Merlyn Thomas
What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
The Republican Party has achieved full control of the US government, after media projected wins for the party in a handful of close races in the House of Representatives.
Republicans won the majority in the Senate earlier this week, while Donald Trump won the race for the presidency.
The trifecta, last achieved at the start of Trump's first term in 2017, will give the President-elect significant authority to enact his agenda on the economy, immigration and other key issues.
It also leaves Democrats with less leverage to challenge policies they disagree with, though narrow margins mean Senate Republicans could still struggle to secure enough votes for some actions.
CBS News, the BBC's US partner, projects that House Republicans will have at least 218 seats and House Democrats will have at least 208 seats once a new congressional term begins in January.
A majority is achieved in the 435-seat chamber when a party wins 218 seats. CBS projects that the final number of Republican seats will likely fall between 220 and 222.
In the 100-seat Senate, Republicans will control 53 seats, while Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents will take 47 seats.
How large a majority Republicans will have in the House of Representatives remains to be seen.
Trump has since nominated some House members for top jobs in his administration, including Michael Waltz from Florida, who was named national security advisor, and Elise Stefanik from New York, who will serve as the next US ambassador to the United Nations. Removing them from the House means their seats will be vacant until special elections are called to replace them.
Still, the majorities in both chambers of Congress mean Trump will have widespread support and a smoother path to enact his agenda.
The President-elect has promised sweeping changes in his first 100 days in office, including the start of mass deportations of unlawful migrants in the US, the pardoning of some who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, and rolling back environmental policies put in place by the Biden-Harris administration.
It also means there could be swift confirmation of presidential appointments – including cabinet nominees and judges. Trump-backed legislation is more likely to clear the legislative process with little opposition.
With the next mid-term elections set for 2026, Trump will enjoy at least two years of limited congressional oversight.
House Republicans are also expected to hold on to Trump ally Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House.
"Nobody worked harder than the speaker, so I think he had that room going in," Republican House member Tom Cole of Oklahoma told CBS on Wednesday. "I think [Trump] made it very apparent how much he appreciated all Mike Johnson had done."
Republicans regained the House majority from Democrats in 2022, though their term has been mired by infighting and a razor-thin majority that made consensus difficult to reach.
A slim majority could raise similar issues, forcing Johnson to rely on the support of Democratic votes to pass some legislation.
President Joe Biden and Donald Trump both advocated for a "smooth" transfer of power during their first meeting since Trump won the presidential election last week.
Conversing in the White House's Oval Office, Biden said he was "looking forward to having... a smooth transition" and told the president-elect his team would "do everything we can to make sure you're accommodated".
Trump responded by thanking Biden and saying: "I appreciate very much a transition that's so smooth it'll be as smooth as it can get".
The cordial exchange marked a contrast from the last presidential election, when Trump failed to invite Biden to the White House after Biden's victory in 2020, bucking tradition.
Trump falsely claimed that the election was rigged, a claim he repeated often during this most recent election campaign.
The meeting on Wednesday marked the first time Trump had set foot in the White House in four years.
The two leaders took part in a quick photo-op, before sitting down in front of a burning fireplace, where they exchanged pleasantries in front of the cameras.
"Welcome, welcome back," Biden told Trump.
"Politics is tough, and it's many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate very much a transition that's so smooth it'll be as smooth as it can get, and I very much appreciate that, Joe," Trump responded.
While tradition prevailed with Biden and Trump's meeting, the same was not true for First Lady Jill Biden and Trump's wife, Melania.
Mrs Trump did not to accompany her husband to the White House. The wife of the president-elect and the current first lady usually have tea while their husbands meet.
Mrs Biden instead stood alongside the president as he welcomed Trump, and handed him a hand-written letter addressed to Mrs Trump.
In the letter, she expressed "her team's readiness to assist with the transition", according to the White House.
Following the meeting in front of the cameras, Trump and Biden retired to a more private setting where they spoke for nearly two hours.
They are expected to have discussed a number of issues, ranging from US foreign policy to the logistics of handing over power.
According to the White House, Trump's incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles and Biden's chief of staff Jeff Zients joined the two for part of the meeting, CBS News, the BBC's US media partner, reports.
As Trump and Biden met, Senate Republicans convened to elect their new majority leader, picking South Dakota Senator John Thune after two rounds of voting.
And also on Wednesday afternoon, CBS projected Republicans had won control of the House of Representatives, granting Trump support in both the House and the Senate.
The president-elect is still working on selecting new members of his administration ahead of his 20 January inauguration.
His latest appointments include Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary, and billionaire supporter Elon Musk in a new cost-cutting role.
About 4,000 political appointments are expected to be made ahead of Trump's inauguration in late January. The process can take months.
Inflation in the US picked up last month, as progress toward stabilising prices appeared to stall.
Consumer prices rose 2.6% over the 12 months to October, driven by higher housing and food costs, the Labor Department said.
That marked a slight uptick from 2.4% the month before.
The latest figures added to speculation that the US central bank might not lower rates as much as had been expected in the months ahead.
The Federal Reserve wants to see inflation, the rate at which prices rise, fall back to about 2%.
It started cutting interest rates in September, noting the significant improvement since June 2022, when prices were surging at a rate of more than 9%.
But analysts are warning of new risks, as President-elect Donald Trump promises a mix of tax cuts, tariffs and migrant deportations that some say are likely to keep pressure mounting on businesses and consumers.
"While substantial progress has been made in the fight against elevated inflation, the 'last mile' is proving more challenging," said Josh Jamner, investment strategy analyst at ClearBridge Investments.
Mr Jamner said he did not expect to see significant market shifts as a result of the latest data, which were in line with expectations.
Prices advanced 0.2% from September to October, the same pace as in the previous three months.
“While US inflation coming in line with expectations means no nasty surprises for markets, the real quandary for the Federal Reserve is what do they do with rates from this point," said Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter Investors.
Price increases in recent years have caused significant public concern, helping Trump to victory in the presidential election this month.
Over the last 12 months, housing costs, including rents, rose 4.9%, the Labor Department said. In part because housing is heavily weighted in the US price index, that accounted for the majority of inflation over the past year.
Other big contributors included car insurance, which is up more than 14% from a year ago, as well as medical care and education, according to the report.
Prices for petrol, which have dropped 12% over the last year, mark the major exception to the overall rise in living costs.
Volkswagen Group (VW) and Tesla rival Rivian have launched a joint venture, with the German car giant increasing its investment in the partnership.
The two companies say the deal is now worth $5.8bn (£4.55bn) - up from an initial pledge from VW of $5bn.
Shares in the US electric vehicle (EV) maker jumped more than 9% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
The tie-up will see the firms sharing critical technology at a time of slowing sales growth for electric cars and increased competition from Chinese rivals.
The joint venture provides loss-making Rivian with a crucial source of funding as it prepares for the launch next year of its R2 model - a sports utility vehicle (SUV) that is smaller and more affordable than its current offerings.
It also means VW will be able to use Rivian's technology in its own range of vehicles.
The first VW models equipped with Rivian technology are expected to be available to customers as early as 2027.
"By combining their complementary expertise, the two companies plan to reduce development costs and scale new technologies more quickly," the two companies said in a statement.
Under the plan, developers and software engineers from both firms will initially work side by side in California, while three other facilities in North America and Europe will be set up.
It comes as expectations have grown that VW, Europe's biggest car maker, is planning to announce major cost-cutting measures.
The group, which also includes brands such as Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche, has been struggling with higher costs, weakening sales, competition from Chinese EV makers and a slower-than-expected move away from petrol and diesel vehicles.
Separately, Rivian has taken steps to cut costs amid softening demand for EVs.
The startup, which has yet to turn a profit, has been renegotiating contracts with suppliers and making its manufacturing processes more efficient.
As well as SUVs, Rivian also makes electric delivery vans, which it supplies mainly to online retail giant Amazon - its largest shareholder.
Amazon has ordered 100,000 of the vehicles, which are all due to be delivered by the end of the decade.
UK public sector pension funds are not big enough to generate good returns for British savers, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told the BBC.
Her comments come as the government reveals plans to merge the UK's local government pension scheme, a group of funds which together manage £354bn in investments, into a handful of "pension megafunds".
The plans form part of what the government has said are the "biggest pension reforms in decades".
It claims this will boost investment in the UK, but critics say the measures "could put savers’ money at risk".
Reeves told the BBC ahead of her annual Mansion House speech to investors that she wants the UK's pension schemes to be more like Canada and Australia.
In those countries, the pensions of local government workers, such as teachers and civil servants, are pooled into a handful of funds which are able to make big investments around the world.
"They probably have the best pension funds anywhere in the world," Reeves said.
The pension reform plans are the cornerstone of the address, which comes after many businesses have criticised the rise in employer National Insurance contributions in the Budget.
She told the BBC that she is "not immune to those criticisms, but it was necessary to increase taxes” to get the public finances in to shape and “properly fund” public services.
The government plans to merge the 86 council pension funds - which represent 6.5 million pensions and are run by local government officials - into "megafunds" run by fund managers.
These bigger funds would also be required to "specify a target for the pool’s investment in their local economy".
The government also wants to set a minimum size limit on defined contribution schemes, which manage around £800bn of investments, to encourage the consolidation of the around 60 different multi-employer schemes.
The government says its changes could "unlock" £80bn worth of investment into the UK in things like energy infrastructure, tech start-ups, and public services.
"Our pension funds in Britain are too small to be making the investments that get a good return for people saving for retirement and to help our economy to grow," Reeves said.
She added it made “no sense at all” that Canadian teachers and Australian professors were more likely to be invested in many long term UK assets than savers in Britain.
Risk and reward
However, critics say the plans could put savers' money at risk.
"Conflating a government goal of driving investment in the UK and people’s retirement outcomes brings a danger because the risks are all taken with members’ money," said Tom Selby, director of public policy at investment platform AJ Bell.
He said the current system encourages trustees to deliver "the highest possible income in retirement for members" rather than focus on UK-wide economic growth.
This sometimes means investing in things like US stocks and shunning the UK investment which the government is keen on.
And though bigger funds can mean bigger rewards, they can also mean bigger risks, with Canadian pension fund the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System being the largest investor in troubled Thames Water.
Others say there is a risk that larger funds struggle to find enough big UK projects to invest in.
"Large funds need substantial, reliable projects to generate returns, but the market may struggle to offer enough of these opportunities, especially in the infrastructure sector," said Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at wealth manager Quilter.
He added that if "too much money chases too few viable investments" funds might be forced into "riskier" investments.
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said the Conservatives "will be looking closely at the detail of what Rachel Reeves sets out – particularly regarding the mandating of where investments are to be made".
Donald Trump vowed on his campaign that he would tax all goods imported into the US if he won back the White House. Following his victory, businesses and economists around the world are scrambling to work out how serious he is.
Trump sees tariffs as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.
In the past, he has targeted tariffs at individual countries such as China or certain industries, for example steel.
But Trump's election campaign pledge to impose taxes of 10% to 20% on all foreign goods could affect prices all over the world.
Last month, he appeared to single out Europe.
"The European Union sounds so nice, so lovely, right? All the nice European little countries that get together... They don’t take our cars. They don't take our farm products," he said.
"They sell millions and millions of cars in the United States. No, no, no, they are going to have to pay a big price."
BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen shares all fell between 5% and 7% after Trump's victory confirmation. The US is the single biggest export market for German carmakers.
During his campaign, Trump said tariffs were the answer to myriad issues, including containing China and preventing illegal immigration.
"Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary," he said. It is a weapon he clearly intends to use.
While much of this rhetoric and action is aimed at China it does not end there.
Some jurisdictions like the EU are already drawing up lists of pre-emptive retaliatory actions against the US, after ministers did not take seriously enough Trump's earlier threats of tariffs, which he later imposed.
G7 finance ministers told me last week they would try to remind a Trump-led America of the need for allies in the world economy because "the idea is not to launch a trade war".
However if "a very strong broad power is used", Europe would quickly consider its response.
In the past the EU imposed tariffs on iconic American products such as Harley Davidson motorcycles, bourbon whiskey and Levi's jeans in response to US duties on steel and aluminium.
A top Eurozone central banker told me US tariffs alone were "not inflationary in Europe but it depends on what Europe's reaction will be".
Last month the IMF told me a major trade war could hit the world economy by 7%, or the size of the French and German economies combined.
There are very big questions for the UK government about where exactly the post-Brexit UK should seat itself in a plausible, if not certain, transatlantic trade war.
The direction of travel until now for the UK has been to get closer to the EU, including on food and farm standards. This would make a close trade deal with the US very difficult.
The Biden administration was uninterested in such a deal. Trump's still highly influential top trade negotiator Bob Lighthizer even said an assumption that the UK would stay close to the EU to help its own businesses had prevented him from pursuing a deal.
"They are a much bigger trade partner to you than we are," he told me in an interview.
The UK could try and remain neutral, but would struggle to avoid the crossfire, especially for the goods trade in pharmaceuticals and cars.
The rhetoric from the UK government suggests it could try to be a peacemaker in global trade wars, but would anyone listen?
Britain could pick a side, by trying to be exempted from more general Trump tariffs.
Diplomats have been heartened by more pragmatic economic advisers to the President-elect suggesting that friendly allies might get a better deal.
Or would the world benefit more if the UK joined forces with the EU to head off the application of such trade tariffs?
Away from the US, what about the example to the rest of the world?
If the world's biggest economy is resorting to mass protectionism, it's going to be difficult to persuade many smaller economies not to do the same.
All of this is very much up for grabs. Trump's warnings can be taken at face value. Nothing is certain, but this is how very serious trade wars can start.
Hello Kitty, arguably Japan's best loved creation, is celebrating her 50th anniversary.
But all has not always been well at Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the character. The business has been on a spectacular journey of financial peaks and valleys.
Hello Kitty has been ranked the second-highest grossing media franchise in the world behind Pokémon, and ahead of the likes of Mickey Mouse and Star Wars.
Underscoring her global fame, Britain's King Charles wished her a happy birthday during the state visit to the UK by Japan's Emperor and Empress in June.
In recent years though Sanrio had been struggling to make money, as interest in Hello Kitty waned.
Two previous surges in Sanrio sales, in 1999 and 2014, were both driven by the character's popularity. But these jumps in demand for the firm's products were not sustainable, says Yasuki Yoshioka of investment company SMBC Nikko.
"In the past, its performance had many ups and downs, as if it was on a rollercoaster ride," Mr Yoshioka says.
Then, in 2020, Tomokuni Tsuji inherited the role as Sanrio's boss.
He is the grandson of the firm's founder, Shintaro Tsuji, and was just 31 at the time, making him the youngest chief executive of a listed Japanese company.
His grandfather then became Sanrio's chairman.
Under the younger Mr Tsuji's leadership, Sanrio changed its marketing strategy of its stable of other characters.
"It is not about lowering Hello Kitty's popularity but it is about boosting others' recognition," he says.
This resulted in Hello Kitty losing the position of Sanrio's most popular character.
According to a poll of customers, that spot is now held by Cinnamoroll - a blue-eyed white puppy with pink cheeks, long ears and a tail that looks like a Cinnamon roll.
Sanrio is also no longer just about cute characters.
If Hello Kitty is Japan's ambassador of cute, then angry red panda Aggressive Retsuko - or Aggretsuko - channels the frustrations of an ordinary working woman.
The character, which is popular among Gen Zers, first appeared in a cartoon series on Japan's TBS Television before it became a global hit on Netflix.
Another unconventional character is Gudetama, or "lazy egg", who is living with depression and fires out cold one-liners that reflect dark realities of life.
As well as diversifying its characters, Sanrio boosted its overseas marketing and is now tackling counterfeits more rigorously.
"We are now using artificial intelligence to detect fake products and to make removal requests," says Mr Tsuji.
For its marketing strategy, collaborations with major brands - including Starbucks, Crocs and the LA Dodgers baseball team - have been key, he added.
"In addition to our own promotion, by collaborating with global brands, we are trying to have our characters in the market throughout the year without many breaks."
In a society that puts so much emphasis on seniority, Mr Tsuji's surname was crucial to his ability to make major changes at Sanrio.
Almost a quarter of listed companies in Japan, like car makers Toyota and Suzuki and camera firm Canon, are managed by members of the family that founded them.
The reason is cultural, according to Professor Hokuto Dazai of Nagoya University of Commerce and Business.
In Japan, home to the world's oldest continuous monarchy, "there is strong recognition of families and family businesses," he says.
The master-servant relationship from the samurai period has transitioned into the relationship between founding families and their employees, and "historically commoners never fought over the top job".
"It is also because Japan has a smaller pool of professional executives to choose from," says Professor Dazai.
"Firms tend to look for their next boss internally, including founding family members."
Still, "it would be a lie if I said there was no pushback" from other managers and employees in the company, Mr Tsuji says.
He also says he clashed with his grandfather over how to run the company.
"But one day I realised that I was being arrogant, trying to convince someone 60 years senior," he says.
"After about a year, my grandfather told me to run the company as I see fit - that he will leave it up to me."
The new boss's revamp of the business has been paying off so far.
Within two years of the younger Tsuji becoming chief executive, Sanrio was profitable again, in what analyst Mr Yoshioka calls "a beautiful V-shaped recovery".
Its share price has risen tenfold since 2020 and the company now has a stock market valuation of more than a trillion yen ($6.5bn; £5bn).
Away from the boardroom and stock market, there was also an intriguing incident earlier this year.
While Hello Kitty's true identity is relatively well-known in Japan, some overseas fans were shocked by comments from a Sanrio executive in July.
Speaking on US television, retail business development director Jill Koch told viewers that “Hello Kitty is not a cat” and is in fact a British schoolgirl.
Her comments sparked a flurry of social media posts, with fans expressing their shock and confusion about the revelation.
"Hello Kitty is Hello Kitty and she can be whoever you want her to be - she can be your sister, your mother, it can be another you," Mr Tsuji says.
Pushed on whether he has any idea why his grandfather decided not to make her Japanese, Mr Tsuji concludes: "London is an amazing city and it was the envy of many Japanese girls, so that may be one of the reasons they decided that she’s from London."
It may not be the definitive answer her fans are looking for - but after all, Hello Kitty was created 14 years before the younger Tsuji was even born. Half a century since her creation, it is possible that the beloved character's origin story will continue to be shrouded in mystery for years to come.
Find out more on Business Daily on the BBC World Service. You can listen again via the World Service website or download the BBC Sounds app.
Cherie Clonan, CEO of marketing agency The Digital Picnic, explains how perks like free dinners, burnout-preventing days off and even ADHD assessments have boosted employee wellbeing – and her bottom line.
If you walk into the offices of The Digital Picnic (TDP) in Melbourne, Australia, there's a high probability that that there won't be a single person there. While an empty office might not sound like the setting for one of Australia's most radically inclusive businesses, it's just one of many policies that has led to this small digital marketing agency being described by their clients as "the nicest place on the internet", according to Cherie Clonan, the company's founder and CEO.
At TDP, there are only six in-office days per month, on Mondays and Thursdays. The first week of each month is entirely work from home, with minimal meetings and nothing client-facing. If employees can't face even those few days in the office, they have the option to work remotely all the time.
"We just want to get the best out of people and not chip away at their soul in order to get that," Clonan tells the BBC.
Clonan, who was recently named Woman of the Year in the B&T Women in Media awards for her human-centred and inclusive approach to leadership, is firmly focussed on transforming workplace culture. As a proudly autistic leader, she has a unique lens on neuro-affirming work practices, centred around flexibility, empathy and accommodation, where the mental health of her team is a core focus.
"[Mental health] has never been more important," says Clonan, who explains her priority is to foster a culture where employees can be open about their mental health without fear of stigma or judgment. "I don't think we're actually well as a society, off the back of some pretty big years where it was all a lot for a long time. It's more important now than ever for organisational leaders to prioritise mental health beyond a cupcake once a year."
Mental health is increasingly being recognised as a crucial factor in workplace productivity and employee well-being. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health conditions like depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1tn (£780bn) annually in lost productivity. And psychological well-being is now a high priority for workers too. The American Psychological Association's 2023 Work in America Survey noted, for example, that 92% of employees surveyed said that it is "very" or "somewhat important" to them to work for an organisation that values their emotional and psychological well-being.
Despite this growing awareness, many workplaces still lack adequate support systems. This is especially true when it comes to employees who are neurodivergent, the umbrella term that includes conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and dyslexia. For these individuals, the everyday pressures of masking their cognitive differences in workplaces designed for neurotypical people can be overwhelming, and contributes to heightened rates of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout.
According to Nancy Doyle, chief science officer at Genius Within and visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, who specialises in neurodiversity and disability inclusion at work, it's vital that any trauma and burnout resulting from the workplace is seen as a systemic problem rather than individual failures. "We need to do more preventative work, looking at working conditions, hours, fair pay, sensory overwhelm, meaningful work, self-determination at work and relationships," she says.
With WHO noting that an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, there is a strong argument for businesses to rethink their approach to inclusion. In fact, according to WHO, every $1 (£0.78) invested in mental health returns $4 (£3.10) in productivity gains, making mental health support not just a moral obligation but a smart business decision, they say.
At TDP, policies are designed to allow individuals to thrive in a way that traditional workplaces might overlook. Some accommodations are simple. Their onboarding pack for new employees includes a pair of noise cancelling headphones to help avoid sensory overload when in the office, and the freezer has ready meals for any employee to eat or take home. As well as just six office days per month, work schedules are built around an individual's circadian rhythm, whether they prefer an early rise or can only manage an 11:00 start.
Other company policies are more radical, such as an employee benefit scheme that covers the cost of autism and ADHD assessments for any staff; as well as a paid day of "life leave" every month, on top of annual leave to compensate for the hyperfocus and resulting burnout that's common in neurodivergent people. There's a business commitment to promoting pregnant women ("I want people to know that they're safe to work here as a working parent," says Clonan) and a trans-positive inclusion policy with financial support for gender affirming surgery. Clonan has also overhauled their hiring and recruitment approach to be as inclusive as possible, including sending interview questions in advance.
While solutions and costs will vary for different businesses and workplaces, Clonan says that she sees these accommodations and policy changes as a necessary part of doing business – and that they cost no more than most workplaces spend on learning and development in a year. "I can see it in the profit and loss," she says. "I've learned that it's more expensive to have a workplace that's not inclusive then it is to have a workplace that is inclusive."
For example, Clonan says major policy costs at TPD include A$2,000-4,000 (£1,020-£2,040/ $1,312-$2,625) per person for an ASD or ADHD diagnosis; while for gender affirming surgery, it's a one-time payment of A$1,000 (£510/ $655) towards, five additional days of paid personal leave, A$500 (£255/$330) for administrative expenses and A$500 for a new clothing fund.
"We factor this into our budgets, seeing it as a short-term investment for long-term gain," says Clonan of the ROI, noting that the considerable cost of rehiring a role ("around A$33,000 (£16,815/$21,640)," she says) makes retaining talent a priority for her.
Doyle agrees inclusivity at work doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. "Some companies are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as it were. I'm working with companies right now to 'flip the cost model' and start with a needs-led approach to all employees, embedding the easy flexes into everyday onboarding, performance appraisal and talent management."
Clonan says TDP has grown from a tiny startup with just A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) in its bank account to a multi-million-dollar agency and maintained staff retention rates that surpass the industry average by an order of years, which she explains fairly simply. "Pay people well and treat them well. Surely [this] has to be the basic philosophy for business success."
Below, Clonan talks with the BBC about the benefits of normalising mental health and how business leaders can invest in creating a more inclusive workplace.
What are the mental health ramifications you've seen of not being welcomed and adapted to at work?
The digital marketing industry has a notorious reputation. It can be a toxic industry to work in. It can be dangerous, especially if you have an organisational leader who's profit over people at every touch point. In some agencies, there's no prioritisation of mental health whatsoever, and I'm seeing people either not make it in the industry at all, or if they do, it's not without hits and scars.
People need to radically understand themselves to bring their best selves to work. We use the Science of Leadership, which is a wheel where you can identify people sitting in the blue zone, which is happy, healed, constructive, doing their best work, living their best professional lives. That's pretty hard to achieve. Green is more like a people-pleasing zone. A lot of neurodivergent people sit there because it's our "fawn response" as a trauma response [to avoid conflict]. If they've been really hard done by in a particular workplace, they come in really red. That's a dangerous spot for them. They're angry burnt out, there's a lot of ego, they're scared, they're threatened. They're in fight, not flight.
We have to repeat it all the time: "You're safe here. We want your career to explode, and we can't do that if we've got this super fixed, scared, red, angry response to a lot of things. I need to know what you need so that this is a safe experience for you to work here." And that approach has been transformative.
What tangible benefits have you seen on your employees' mental health and your business?
Normalising mental health results in psychological safety and being neuroinclusive is good for business. In four years, we took this business from A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) to A$4m (£2m/$1.3m) in annual revenue, and that was through the worst time for our industry. We were looking at agencies who were walking 20 people out on one day through mass layoffs [during Covid-19], and quietly wondering, "What are we doing differently?"
Some of our staff have been here as long as we've been employing people, from 2018, and in our industry that is unheard of. If you don't care what chewing people up and spitting someone out does to a person, if all that matters to you is money, know that it costs A$33,000 to replace a chewed up and spat up person because it cost A$33,000 to make any new hire. So why wouldn't you try to commit to understanding mental health better and making any workplace a psychologically safe setting?
What are companies or leaders getting wrong when it comes to their neurodiverse workforce?
We need to represent neurodivergence beyond the ideas of "geniuses" or "increased productivity", because that is transactional rather than transformational.
To get that representation I need, firstly, neurodivergent folk within my company, and then I need to make a psychologically safe workplace for them so that they have a chance to grow here. When they grow, they're probably going to get promoted. And then I need to have some honest conversations about what more senior roles look like for them because some [neurodivergent people] have no desire to manage people. And for a lot of workplaces, that's almost always the outcome: We can't promote you if you're not managing a team.
But we need to get more creative and realise that not every person's path to growth is a promotion to management, unless they want to. And we simultaneously have to push back on this stereotypical idea that autistic people can't manage teams. If that's the case, why am I getting hit up every second week from people to learn from what I'm doing?
What advice would you give to another business leader looking to improve mental health in their workplace?
The best advice I can is to make sure that no accommodation is off the table. Next, invest in some training. Put leaders through mental health first aid and see if you can invest in different folks coming into your workplace to run keynotes on mental health and how it might present [at work].
Swallow your ego and recognise that you're going to make some mistakes before you get it right. I've made so many myself and that's an important, vulnerable feeling you have to sit with.
And finally, put people with an array of different lived experience in leadership positions. Homogenous workforces can be dangerous. In workplaces, you have to be able to look around and see yourself represented to feel safe.
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British newspaper group the Guardian has announced it will no longer post on X, formerly Twitter, saying it has become a "a toxic media platform".
In a message to readers, it said the US presidential election "underlined" its concerns that its owner, Elon Musk, had been able to use X to "shape political discourse."
Mr Musk strongly backed Donald Trump and has now been given a role cutting government spending in his incoming administration.
The BBC has contacted X for comment.
The Guardian said users would still be able to share articles and it was likely continue to embed X posts in its coverage of world events.
It also said its reporters would be able to carry on using the site "for news-gathering purposes."
But it said the "benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives."
"This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism," it added.
The decision was also posted on X itself, where some users reacted with vitriol, with those who paid for prominent replies accusing the Guardian of "woke propaganda" and "virtue signalling".
Mr Musk and the Guardian are far from political bed fellows, so in that sense it is not surprising that the newspaper has responded to his and X's increasing alignment with Trump in this way.
But it can also be argued the election result is an opportunity for the paper, which describes itself as "the world's leading liberal voice."
It is positioning itself as a key part of the "resistance" to Donald Trump, using the US election to highlight that is a media organisation without a billionaire proprietor - while also asking its readers for donations.
The day after the election, readers pledged more than $1.8m (£1.4m), a record for a single day.
Ben Mullin, the New York Times’ media reporter, described the media group’s fundraising as "a sign that some outlets are tapping a surge of enthusiasm for adversarial journalism post-election".
The Guardian's departure is also likely to intensify questions about whether others will follow.
X's rivals already appear to be benefiting.
Meta's Threads has continued to expand, and Bluesky - set up by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey - briefly topped the download charts in the UK and US Apple App Stores.
Its userbase has grown by four million in two months, and Bluesky said in a post on Tuesday that it had picked up a million new users in the seven days since Trump's win.
However it remains comparatively tiny, with 15 million users worldwide.
Several airlines have cancelled flights to and from Bali due to dangerous ash clouds from a volcano near the Indonesian holiday island.
Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia advised passengers of the disruptions on Wednesday, saying the ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki made it unsafe to fly.
The volcano spewed a 9km (6.2 miles) ash column into the sky over the weekend, one week after a major eruption killed 10 people.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has also warned that the volcanic ash might drift to parts of the country's north on Wednesday.
Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali until 12:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Time Thursday (04:00 GMT) have been cancelled. Other airlines which have followed suit include Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, India’s IndiGo, and Malaysian carrier AirAsia.
Virgin Australia, which cancelled all its flights to and from Bali on Wednesday, said in a statement: “Safety is always our highest priority, and our meteorology team is closely monitoring the situation.”
Singapore Airlines and its low-cost carrier Scoot have similarly cancelled some flights — though Singapore’s airport website shows that other flights to and from Bali have continued to run on Wednesday.
The general manager of Bali’s international airport Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, told Reuters that 22 international flights and 12 domestic ones had been affected on Tuesday, but did not provide details about Wednesday's flights.
Activities in Indonesia have also been affected by the volcanic ash.
A jazz festival in Labuan Bajo town, some 600km from Mount Lewotaobi Laki-laki, was postponed to next year due to safety concerns.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates, and has about 130 active volcanoes.
Past volcanic eruptions have disrupted aviation. In 2020, ash clouds from Mount Merapi shut an airport in the city of Solo.
Toy sales have fallen for a third year in a row as family budgets are squeezed - but adults are buying childhood favourites to escape their troubles, research suggests.
A falling birth rate, the cost of living and fewer big hit film franchises have combined to push the value of sales down 3% on the previous year.
But sales to so-called kidults have grown, with one in five toys and games now bought by over-18s for themselves, according to toy industry research group Circana.
It suggests adults are buying Lego and collectibles for their "positive mental health benefits as they spark nostalgia and bring escapism from global turmoil", said Melissa Symonds, executive director of UK toys at Circana.
Cars and planes still on top
The Toy Retailers' Association has unveiled its annual list of 20 products its expects to sell well this Christmas. The DreamToys list is compiled by a panel of retailers and experts.
Alongside some familiar names on the list, such as Hot Wheels cars and a Paw Patrol bulldozer, there are toys clearly aimed at a range of age groups.
For youngsters, a Fart Blaster makes the kind of noise its name suggests, while a McLaren F1 car Lego set is probably targeting an older audience.
Transport remains the most popular theme among toys, according to Circana, but animals now sit in second, with interactive pets becoming increasingly popular. These dolls now asked to be stroked and played with, and can repeat words.
With family finances stretched, the price range of the 20 toys on the list has dropped to between £9.99 and £89.99.
Key Christmas period
The UK toy industry had sales of £3.4bn in the year to September, according to Circana.
The sector is now entering the crucial festive period with six weeks to go to Christmas, as retailers concentrate on Black Friday and encouraging people into physical stores as well as visiting their websites in the run-up to 25 December.
Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday, which is generally seen as a benefit to shops. However, the Toy Retailers Association said sellers faced cost pressures on the future owing to the employers National Insurance rise announced in the Budget.
Sales of toys and games saw a big lift during Covid as more families spent time at home during lockdowns, but sales have fallen since 2021, and currently sit just below 2019 levels, according to Circana.
It said the average price of a toy last December was £12.95, while more than six times that amount was typically spent on toys for children aged up to 10 at Christmas.
Oil giant Shell has won a landmark case in the Dutch courts, overturning an earlier ruling requiring it to cut its carbon emissions by 45%.
The Hague court of appeal said it could not establish that Shell had a "social standard of care" to reduce its emissions by 45% or any other amount, even though it agreed the company had an obligation to citizens to limit emissions.
Three years ago, a court in The Hague backed a case by Friends of the Earth and 17,000 Dutch citizens requiring Shell to reduce its CO2 emissions significantly, in line with the Paris climate accords.
The ruling came as climate talks involving some 200 countries got under way in Azerbaijan.
Shell said it was pleased with the court's decision, but Friends of the Earth Netherlands said the ruling was a setback that affected them deeply.
The environmental group can now take its case against Shell to the Supreme Court - but a final verdict could be years away.
Donald Pols from the group said "it's a marathon, not a sprint and the race isn't yet over".
At the time, the 2021 ruling marked the first time a court had ordered a private company to align its workings with the Paris climate agreement, meaning that it was not sufficient for a company simply to comply with the law - it had to comply with global climate policy too.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement on climate change, nearly 200 nations agreed to keep global temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.
The appeals court judge said that companies such as Shell were obliged to contribute to combating climate change based on the human right to protection against dangerous climate change.
However, the court said Shell was already working to reduce its emissions and the court could not establish whether it should make a 45% cut or another percentage, as there was no current accepted agreement in climate science on the required amount.
Shell has argued that it is already taking "serious steps to reduce emissions". It complained the original ruling was unfair as it singled out one company for a global issue, and said it was unrealistic to try to hold Shell accountable for its customers' choices.
Shell said if people considered progress was too slow towards cutting emissions then they should lobby governments rather than Shell to change policies and bring about a green transition.
The oil firm says its aim is to reduce the carbon intensity of products it sells by 15-20% by 2030 from a 2016 baseline. Shell also aims to become a "net zero" emissions company by 2050.
Part of the historic legal case hinged on the interpretation of an "unwritten duty of care" that exists under Dutch law, which requires companies to prevent hazardous negligence.
Friends of the Earth Netherlands argued that there was an international consensus that human rights offered protection against dangerous climate change and that companies had to respect human rights.
Shell's successful appeal could have far-reaching implications for corporate climate responsibility.
A number of environmental groups around the world are now trying to force companies and governments to comply with the accords through the courts.
Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election has helped push the price of Bitcoin to a series of record highs.
Backers of the digital currency are celebrating, and wondering how much more valuable it could become - with some suggesting it could reach $100,000 per coin.
Its price is rocketing because the president-elect has vowed to make the US "the crypto capital of the planet" - a remarkable turnaround given as recently as 2021 he was calling Bitcoin a "scam."
He even started accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as donations to his election campaign and raised millions from the industry.
But that is just one of the many twists and turns in the jaw-dropping story of Bitcoin, which continues to captivate people worldwide and has seen the making - and losing - of huge fortunes.
Here's the BBC's list of the seven wildest moments - so far - in Bitcoin's tumultuous history.
1. The mysterious creator of Bitcoin
Despite its enormous profile, no-one actually knows for sure who invented Bitcoin. The idea for it was posted on internet forums in 2008 by someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto.
They explained how a peer-to-peer digital cash system could work to enable people to send virtual coins over the internet, just as easily as sending an email.
Satoshi created a complex computer system that would process transactions and create new coins using a huge network of self-appointed volunteers around the world who used special software and powerful computers.
But he - or they - never revealed their identity, and the world has never worked it out.
In 2014, Japanese-American man Dorian Nakamoto was pursued by reporters who thought he was the elusive Bitcoin creator, but it proved to be false lead caused by some mistranslated information.
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright said it was him in 2016 - but after years of legal battles, a High Court judge concluded he was not Satoshi.
Earlier this year, a Canadian Bitcoin expert called Peter Todd strongly denied being Satoshi, while in London this month a British man, Stephen Mollah, claimed he was - but no-one believed him.
2. Making history with pizza
Bitcoin now underpins a two trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry - but the first recorded transaction using it was the purchase of pizza.
On 22 May 2010, Lazlo Hanyecz, offered $41 worth of Bitcoin on a crypto forum in return for two pizzas.
A 19-year-old student obliged and the day went down in history for fans of the currency as #BitcoinPizza day.
A source of memes for those in crypto community, it also showcased the power of Bitcoin - an internet money that could genuinely buy items online.
Criminals must have been watching too, because within a year the first darknet marketplace was launched selling drugs and other illegal goods in exchange for Bitcoin.
The deal looks pretty bad for Lazlo now too. If he had held onto those coins they would now be worth hundreds of millions of dollars!
3. Becoming legal tender
In September 2021, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, central America, made Bitcoin legal tender.
Hairdressers, supermarkets and other shops had to accept Bitcoin by law, alongside its main currency, the US dollar.
Many Bitcoin enthusiasts and reporters visited the area, briefly boosting tourism to the country.
While President Bukele hoped the move would increase investment in his country and cut costs for citizens exchanging money, it did not become as popular as he hoped.
He is still hoping it will take off but for now the US dollar still remains king in the country.
As well as the huge amount of public money President Bukele spent on trying to make people embrace Bitcoin he also, controversially, bought more than 6,000 bitcoins over the past few years.
The president spent at least $120m buying up bitcoins at various prices in the hope of making a profit for his cash-strapped country.
It started to look good for him in December 2023 when, for the first time, his stash skyrocketed in value.
A website built by Dutch software engineer Elias Zerrouq is tracking the country's Bitcoin holdings and currently estimates that the coins have risen 98% in value.
4. Kazakhstan's crypto boom and bust
In 2021, Kazakhstan became a hotspot for Bitcoin mining - the process of crunching through the complex calculations that underpin crypto transactions.
These days it takes warehouses full of the latest computers running all day and all night, but the reward is brand new bitcoins for those companies that take part.
Warehouses of computers require lots of power - and many businesses moved to Kazakhstan where electricity was abundant thanks to huge coal reserves.
At first the government welcomed them with open arms as they brought investment.
But too many miners arrived and put huge strain on the electricity grid, putting the country at risk of blackouts.
Within a year, Kazakhstan's Bitcoin mining industry went from boom to bust as the government imposed restrictions and increased taxes to curb the growth.
Around the world it is estimated that the Bitcoin network uses as much electricity as a small country, raising concerns about its environmental impact.
5. Bitcoins in the rubbish dump
Imagine having a crypto wallet worth more than $100m (£78m) - and then accidentally throwing away a hard drive containing the login details.
That's what James Howells, from south Wales, says happened to him
The very nature of crypto means that recovery is not as easy as resetting your password. With no banks involved - there is no customer support helpline.
Unfortunately for him, his local council in Newport refused to let him access the landfill site where he says the device ended up - even after he offered to donate 25% of his Bitcoin stash to local charities if they let him.
He told the BBC: "It was a penny dropping moment and it was a sinking feeling."
6. Crypto King fraudster
No one has lost as much Bitcoin as former billionaire crypto mogul, Sam Bankman-Fried. The founder of the massive crypto firm FTX was nicknamed the Crypto King and loved by the community.
FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange that allowed people to trade normal money for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
His empire was worth an estimated $32bn and he was flying high until everything came crashing down within days.
Journalists had discovered that Bankman-Fried's company was financially shaky and had been illegally transferring FTX customer funds to prop up his other company, Alameda Research.
Just before his arrest at his luxury apartment complex in the Bahamas in December 2022 he spoke to reporters. He told the BBC: "I don't think I committed fraud. I didn't want any of this to happen. I was certainly not nearly as competent as I thought I was."
After being extradited to the US he was found guilty of fraud and money laundering and was jailed for 25 years.
7. Investment bank boom
Despite all the turmoil, Bitcoin continues to attract attention from investors and big companies.
In fact, in January 2024, some of the biggest financial firms in the world added Bitcoin to their official asset lists as Spot Bitcoin ETFs. These are like stocks and shares, linked to the value of Bitcoin but you don't have to personally own any.
Customers have been pouring billions into these brand new products. Companies including Blackrock, Fidelity and GrayScale, have also been buying up Bitcoins in their thousands, pushing up its value to record highs.
It is a huge milestone for crypto with some fans believing that Bitcoin is finally being taken as seriously as the mysterious Satoshi imagined.
Nonetheless, few would back against more wild moments as the Bitcoin story continues to unfold.
The struggling genetic testing company 23andMe says it will cut 40% of its workforce, or 200 jobs, as it fights for survival.
The once-popular DNA-testing site will also halt work on therapies it was developing.
Last year, the company said hackers had managed to gain access to personal information of millions of its users.
23andMe's share price has fallen by more than 70% this year, as its co-founder and chief executive Anne Wojcicki tries to turn the business around.
On Tuesday, the company warned investors of "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operating, as it reported that revenue had fallen to $44m (£35m) between July and September compared to $50m in the same period last year.
Losses fell to $59m from $75m.
The job cuts are expected to lead to one-off costs of $12m, including severance pay, for the plan that will result in savings of $35m.
"We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," Ms Wojcicki said.
The company also said it is considering what to do with the therapies it had in development, including licensing or selling them.
23andMe is a giant of the growing ancestor-tracing industry. It offers genetic testing from DNA, with ancestry breakdown and personalised health insights.
Its customers include famous names, from rapper Snoop Dogg to multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
The company was valued at roughly $3.5bn when it listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2021 and its share price peaked at $17.65.
But they have since tumbled and are currently trading at less than $5.
Last December, the challenges facing 23andMe mounted after it confirmed that hackers had accessed details of about 6.9 million of its users.
In some cases this included family trees, birth years and geographic locations. But the stolen data did not include DNA records, it said.
The hackers logged into 23andMe accounts by using email and password details previously exposed by other breaches.
They downloaded not only the data from those accounts but the private information of all other users they had links to across the family trees on the website.
In June, data watchdogs in the UK and Canada announced investigations into the breach.
At the time, a statement from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office said "23andMe is a custodian of highly sensitive personal information, including genetic information which does not change over time."
"This makes public trust in these services essential," it added.
In another blow to the company, seven of 23andMe’s eight-strong board resigned in September.
The firm's independent directors said they had stepped down after not receiving a satisfactory buyout offer from Ms Wojcicki.
The UK's unemployment rate has risen, official figures suggest, while pay growth continues to slow.
The rate of unemployment stood at 4.3% in the three months to September, up from 4% the previous quarter.
However, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) urged caution over giving too much weight to its latest jobs figures due to issues with how it gathers the data.
While wage growth has eased, pay is still rising faster than inflation, which measures the rate of price increases.
Excluding bonuses, pay grew at an annual rate of 4.8% between July and September - the lowest in more than two years.
The number of vacancies also fell again, as they have been doing for more than two years now.
Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, pointed out that the total still remains a little above pre-pandemic levels.
She told the BBC's Today programme that the latest figures suggested there was a "continued easing of the labour market".
But the ONS's Labour Force Survey, which produces the data on jobs in the UK, has had a smaller number of respondents over the past year than normal, prompting concerns over its reliability.
The Bank of England closely watches the jobs data when making decisions on interest rates.
It cut rates for the second time this year last week, with inflation below its 2% target at 1.7%.
Ms McKeown said the ONS recognised that issues with its numbers were affecting the central bank, and that it was working to improve it as quickly as possible.
The latest ONS figures are supported by anecdotal reports that some businesses, already facing higher costs, paused hiring ahead of the Budget.
Supermarkets including Asda and Sainsbury's and High Street giant Marks and Spencer have said they face a steep rise in costs as a result of the hike in National Insurance contributions (NICs) and increases to the minimum wage from April under measures outlined in Chancellor Rachel Reeves' first Budget.
The tax rises have led to concerns from businesses that they might have to cut back on hiring, restrict wage increases for staff, or raise prices.
While public sector pay awards granted by the government will feed through to official figures over the rest of the year, economists have warned the forthcoming rise in employers' NICs could squeeze those in the private sector.
Alexandra Hall-Chen, principal policy adviser for employment at the Institute of Directors, said that the measures in the Employment Rights Bill and tax rises were "taking a serious toll on hiring intentions".
"The cumulative effect of these changes will ultimately be to stifle job creation... [the government] needs to urgently address business' concerns about the increased risks and costs associated with employing staff," she added.
'If you want to retain staff, you need to increase pay'
Wendy Jones-Blackett, from Chapel Allerton, near Leeds, specialises in designing and making handmade greeting cards.
She told the BBC that while her small business employs seven workers, companies it sub-contracts for printing and storage would likely be more affected by the government's Budget decisions.
"The thing that we’re having to build in is that their costs are going to go up - their services and the things that we buy," she said.
"It is going to make us question pay rises – if you want to retain good staff, you want to increase their pay. We want to do that but we’ll have to temper that with rising costs."
Another survey by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and consultancy KPMG recently showed that vacancies fell for the 12th month in a row, suggesting there is less demand for workers.
But Rob Wood, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that the Bank of England would focus on big trends rather than "small data misses" by the ONS when weighing up its next decision around interest rates.
"Unemployment is likely gradually rising, the labour market is loosening but it remains tight," he said. "Similarly, wage growth is gradually slowing but remains too high still to deliver inflation sustainably at target."
Other economists have said they do not believe the latest figures from the ONS would spur the Bank to opt for another rate cut in December.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said that "more needs to be done to improve living standards".
The Labour MP said that from April, three million of the lowest-paid workers would benefit from an increase to the minimum wage, known officially as the National Living Wage.
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Ghana is due to get a new president after December’s election. The current vice-president, Mahamudu Bawumia, and a former head of state, John Mahama, are the two leading candidates in contention to win the poll.
Nana Akufo-Addo, first elected in 2016, is coming to the end of his second and final four-year term.
When is the general election?
On Saturday 7 December, the nearly 18.8 million Ghanaians registered to vote will be able to take part in the country's ninth general election since multiparty politics was reintroduced in the early 1990s.
In the last 30 years, the country has had a series of closely fought but peaceful polls. Ghana has a reputation for the orderly transfer of power between administrations.
What are Ghanaians voting for?
* Presidential – there are 12 candidates
* Parliamentary – voters in 275 constituencies across the country will be choosing their MP.
Who will be Ghana’s next president?
* Mahamudu Bawumia (NPP) - Having served as Akufo-Addo’s vice-president for eight years, the 61-year-old Oxford-educated economist could make history as the country's first Muslim president. The former deputy governor of the central bank gained a reputation for his financial know-how. But that could also be his undoing as he has faced heavy criticism after Ghana plummeted into its most severe economic crisis in years under his watch.
* John Mahama (NDC) – Winning this ballot would represent a comeback for the 65-year-old as he already served as president for four-and-a-half years from 2012 but then lost the 2016 election. In office, he was nicknamed “Mr Dumsor”, which is a reference to the power cuts that plagued his time in office. Amid the current tough economy, Mahama has pledged an “urgent reset” for the country that needs an experienced leader at the helm.
* Nana Kwame Bediako – The businessman, also known as “Cheddar”, does not have a political background but has made a lot of impact on social media and attracted young supporters.
* Alan Kyerematen – The former minister, nicknamed “Alan Cash”, left the NPP last year after complaining that the presidential primaries were biased against him. He could draw some NPP support in the party’s heartland in the Ashanti region.
What are the big issues?
How does the election work?
To win the presidential election in the first round, a candidate must get more than half of the votes cast. If no-one passes that threshold then a second round run-off featuring the two candidates with the largest number of votes will take place by the end of December.
The parliamentary election is run on a first-past-the-post basis with the winner being the candidate in each constituency with the largest share of votes, even if that is less than 50%.
On election day, each voter can turn up to their assigned polling station with their voter’s ID card, where they will have their fingerprints electronically checked and are then issued with the two ballot papers. Each person who has cast their ballot then has their little finger marked with indelible ink to prevent voting a second time.
What has happened in previous elections?
Since 1992, Ghana has had several tight presidential elections.
In 2008, less than half a percentage point separated the two candidates in the second round.
In the election four years later, the winner, Mahama, crept over the 50% threshold in the first round by less than 80,000 votes.
That result triggered a legal complaint from the NPP, which argued that tally sheets at certain polling stations had been tampered with. The challenge was unsuccessful, but it did lead the electoral commission to introduce new measures to ensure greater transparency.
Election observers have frequently praised the way the vote has been run.
When will we know the result?
Going by previous elections, the electoral commission is likely to announce the result by 10 December.
Additional reporting by Favour Nunoo and Komla Adom in Accra
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Several airlines have suspended flights to Haiti after a passenger plane from the US was hit by gunfire as it tried to land in Port-au-Prince.
Spirit Airlines Flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale in Florida was diverted to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where it landed safely at Santiago Airport.
A flight attendant suffered minor injuries but no passengers were hurt in the attack, the second in three weeks on aircraft flying over Haiti's capital.
The incident comes as a new prime minister took office in the crisis-hit country, which has been plagued by armed gangs and escalating violence.
Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said his priority was "restoring security", according to AFP news agency.
Notwithstanding the country's "difficult circumstances", he promised to put all of his energy, skills and "patriotism at the service of the national cause".
The businessman, who stood unsuccessfully for a seat in the Senate in 2015, studied at Boston University. He was installed by the country's ruling council after the previous leader, Garry Conille, was ousted less than six months into the job.
The Spirit Airlines flight had been scheduled to land at Toussaint Louverture International Airport just before 12:00 (17:00 GMT) when it was hit.
Unverified video of the incident shared on social media appeared to show several bullet holes on the inside of the aircraft, where the crew sit during take-off and landing.
Spirit Airlines said that damage "consistent with gunfire" had been found when the plane was inspected at Santiago Airport. The aircraft was taken out of commission, Spirit added.
The airline said it had also suspended flights to Haiti "pending further evaluation".
Two other US airlines, American Airlines and JetBlue, have also suspended flights to Haiti until at least Thursday.
The security situation further deteriorated in Haiti in recent months. In October, gang members opened fire at a UN helicopter, causing some airlines to temporarily cancel flights to the Caribbean nation.
A UN-backed policing mission, led by officers from Kenya, had begun in June in an attempt to wrest back control from gangs.
Spirit is a low-cost airline based in Florida which flies throughout the US, Caribbean and Latin America.
When Simon Duffy gets another energy bill, his heart sinks. “It’s madly expensive,” he says.
Mr Duffy lives in a traditional stone-walled detached house in Sheffield. He estimates that he spends £3,100 every year on heating and electricity.
Despite being someone who cares about climate change, and keen to retrofit his property to make it more efficient, there’s a problem.
“The whole question of how to better insulate the house is a real mystery to me,” says Mr Duffy, a director of sustainability think-tank Citizen Network. “I don’t know where the expertise for that is.” He also adds that he’s also not sure whether he could install solar panels, given that he lives in a conservation area.
Millions of homeowners across the country could be facing the same dilemma.
Around 29 million British homes require retrofitting by 2050, according to the UK Green Building Council, an industry body.
Retrofitting might involve measures such as improving your home’s insulation, upgrading the heating system, or installing energy-generating devices such as solar panels, or even a private wind turbine.
These adjustments can cost thousands of pounds up front, but, if properly executed, they could improve comfort and reduce people’s bills in the long-run.
Plus, increased energy efficiency ought to cut carbon emissions from homes, especially if property owners switch away from gas or oil-fired boilers, for example.
Roughly one fifth of the UK’s total emissions comes from residential buildings.
Amy Peace and her husband live in the northwest of England, near Warrington. The pair both work in sustainability, advising businesses on their path to net zero.
They were keen to improve the quality of their home and apply the principles they promote at work to their own lives – but they too faced challenges when deciding on how to go about it.
“Even though we’ve got this background, and we’re engineers as well, what we weren’t entirely clear on was where was best to spend the money,” says Mrs Peace.
The couple spoke to multiple consultants, but Mrs Peace found the advice they received was often geared towards meeting Passivhaus standards – an ultra-energy efficient type of building.
“There weren’t many in that pragmatic middle space where you are literally saying, ‘We’ve got this much money, where would we be best putting it?’,” Mrs Peace adds.
Perseverance during the past three years paid off, however, and the couple’s 1930’s detached house now has improved insulation, a heat pump, and an electric car charging point. Solar panels and battery will follow shortly, if all goes to plan.
Conscious of the confusion around approaches to retrofit, some organisations are moving to improve the advice available to homeowners. Among them is Ecofurb.
“We can model all the different options that are available, suitable for your home and your budget, and identify a package of measures,” says Liz Lainé, of Parity Projects, a housing data analysis company, which runs Ecofurb.
The firm offers this initial consultation for free, but full plans, with personalised input from a retrofit coordinator, start at £470. Ecofurb can also oversee any works as they are carried out by contractors to avoid “horror stories”, says Ms Lainé.
There are many other organisations that offer to help homeowners plan a retrofit.
The work often involves carrying out a heat-loss survey, to spot cold areas that require insulation, and to better understand a property’s heating demand. Experts might also advise on the suitability of solar panels for your home, for example.
There’s the Get a Heat Pump website, launched by the charities Nesta and The MCS Foundation, which explains what heat pumps are and how they might fit into a home renovation plan.
RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, has also just launched a new retrofit standard for its members – essentially, it encourages surveyors with the appropriate training to offer their services to homeowners planning or undergoing a retrofit.
The RICS website will soon include a range of retrofit advice and a tool to help homeowners find a suitable surveyor in their local area, says Steve Lees, from the RICS retrofit project team.
Improving the energy efficiency of homes is “essential” for decarbonisation, says Gerald Charles, head of housing retrofit at the Centre for Sustainable Energy, but he adds that the current lack of good advice remains a genuine problem.
“The industry as a whole don’t appreciate the importance of good retrofit advice,” he says.
One entrepreneur who has noticed a knowledge gap in the market is James Major, founder and chief executive of HubbPro, which helps architects plan energy efficient buildings. Architects don’t always have the latest information about how to incorporate energy-saving technologies into their designs, notes Mr Major.
“Clean tech isn’t part of what they do or what they should know – that’s an engineering function,” he says. And yet architects’ clients increasingly ask about such tech when planning a new home or an extension.
Through an initiative called MyHubb, Mr Major is now offering architects detailed reports that estimate the carbon reduction potential and payback period on retrofitted measures - such as heat pump-based heating systems or solar panels, for instance.
He says these reports cost around £1,000, though he adds that this price is not yet finalised.
Mr Duffy says he will keep looking for solutions to his own retrofit conundrum. But he makes another point. So much of the currently available technology and advice is tailored to individual homeowners.
He suggests that neighbourhood-scale schemes, for example to provide solar power to a whole street, might make more sense and could include more people in one go.
“That’s what I would think is the logical way of thinking about this,” he says.
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The price of bitcoin has risen above $80,000 (£62,000) for the first time ever, after Donald Trump's decisive victory in the US election last week.
It comes as the Republicans are edging closer to overall control of Congress after having already secured the presidency and a majority in the Senate.
On the campaign trail the president-elect pledged to make the US "the crypto capital of the planet".
The value of world's biggest cryptocurrency has now risen by more than 80% this year.
Other cryptocurrencies, including dogecoin - which has been promoted by high-profile Trump supporter Elon Musk - are also making gains.
In the run-up to the election Trump said he would create a strategic bitcoin stockpile and appoint digital asset-friendly financial regulators - spurring expectations that he would strip back regulations on the crypto industry.
Trump has said one of his first actions as president would be to sack the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler.
Mr Gensler, who was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021, has led the SEC's crackdown on the crypto industry.
“If the Trump administration does deregulate crypto, it’s hard to see how it is not bullish for the sector,” Matt Simpson, market analyst at StoneX Financial told the BBC, adding that such a move could lead bitcoin prices to jump to as high as $100,000.
But “it is still vulnerable to nasty selloffs along the way – which can be less kind to smaller pockets,” he added.
Trump's broader agenda, which includes cutting taxes and reducing regulations on businesses, has also driven a surge in other investments since he won the election.
With Republicans in control of the executive and potentially both the legislative branches of the government, they will be able to advance his ideas through each chamber and send those bills for him to sign into law.
Major stock indexes, the dollar and US bonds have all made gains in recent days.
Toy manufacturer Mattel has said it "deeply regrets" a misprint on packaging for dolls inspired by the new Wicked movie which listed the address for an adult website.
The company recently released the singing dolls ahead of the long-awaited film starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
But eagle-eyed fans posted images on social media showing the packaging had a pornography website on it, instead of the movie's web address.
In a statement, Mattel apologised for the "unfortunate error" and advised parents that the misprinted website "is not appropriate for children".
The BBC has seen online instructions on Mattel's website, for both the Glinda and Elphaba dolls, listing the erroneous website underneath the Universal Pictures logo - the film studio behind the movie.
Mattel recommends the dolls for children aged four and above.
Fans who bought the doll posted about their surprise on social media.
"I purchased the Singing Elphaba doll and upon inspection, the website printed on the back side [of the] Mattel box, right above the barcode is listed as... an unaffiliated adult [not safe for work] 18+ website," one person posted on Reddit.
"Anyone else seeing this!?"
In another post, a US-based woman said: "Went to Target and Walmart today and yeah, the Wicked dolls have the [porn] website listed."
Mattel said the dolls had primarily been sold in the US.
It added: "We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this."
"Consumers who already have the product are advised to discard the product packaging or obscure the link and may contact Mattel customer service for further information."
The Wicked movie comes after two decades of the musical on stage.
Set in the Land of Oz before Dorothy Gales' arrival from Kansas, the movie covers the musical's first act.
British actress Erivo plays Elphaba, a young woman misunderstood because of her green skin and who is yet to discover her power which will eventually lead her to becoming the Wicked Witch of the West.
She strikes up an unlikely friendship with classmate Glinda, played by Grammy-winning singer Grande, who will go on to become the Good Witch of the North.
The movie is set to be released in the US and UK on 22 November.
Indian full-service carrier Vistara will operate its last flight on Monday, after nine years in existence.
A joint venture between Singapore Airlines and the Tata Sons, Vistara will merge with Tata-owned Air India to form a single entity with an expanded network and broader fleet.
This means that all Vistara operations will be transferred to and managed by Air India, including helpdesk kiosks and ticketing offices. The process of migrating passengers with existing Vistara bookings and loyalty programmes to Air India has been under way over the past few months.
“As part of the merger process, meals, service ware and other soft elements have been upgraded and incorporates aspects of both Vistara and Air India,” an Air India spokesperson said in an email response.
Amid concerns that the merger could impact service standards, the Tatas have assured that Vistara's in-flight experience will remain unchanged.
Known for its high ratings in food, service, and cabin quality, Vistara has built a loyal customer base and the decision to retire the Vistara brand has been criticised by fans, branding experts, and aviation analysts.
The consolidation was effectively done to clean up Vistara’s books and wipe out its losses, said Mark Martin, an aviation analyst.
Air India has essentially been “suckered into taking a loss-making airline” in a desperate move, he added.
"Mergers are meant to make airlines powerful. Never to wipe out losses or cover them."
To be sure, both Air India and Vistara’s annual losses have reduced by more than half over the past year, and other operating metrics have improved too. But the merger process so far has been turbulent.
The exercise has been riddled with problems – from pilot shortages that have led to massive flight cancellations, to Vistara crew going on mass sick leave over plans to align their salary structures with Air India.
There have also been repeated complaints about poor service standards on Air India, including viral videos of broken seats and non-functioning inflight entertainment systems.
The Tatas have announced a $400m (£308m) programme to upgrade and retrofit the interiors of its older aircraft and also a brand-new livery. They’ve also placed orders for hundreds of new Airbus and Boeing planes worth billions of dollars to augment their offering.
But this “turnaround” is still incomplete and riddled with problems, according to Mr Martin. A merger only complicates matters.
Experts say that the merger strikes a dissonant chord from a branding perspective too.
Harish Bijoor, a brand strategy specialist, told the BBC he was feeling “emotional” that a superior product offering like Vistara which had developed a “gold standard for Indian aviation” was ceasing operations.
“It is a big loss for the industry,” said Mr Bijoor, adding it will be a monumental task for the mother brand Air India to simply “copy, paste and exceed” the high standards set by Vistara, given that it’s a much smaller airline that’s being gobbled up by a much larger one.
Mr Bijoor suggests a better strategy would have been to operate Air India separately for five years, focusing on improving service standards, while maintaining Vistara as a distinct brand with Air India prefixed to it.
“This would have given Air India the time and chance to rectify the mother brand and bring it up to the Vistara level, while maintaining its uniqueness,” he adds.
Beyond branding, the merged entity will face a slew of operational challenges.
"Communication will be a major challenge in the early days, with customers arriving at the airport expecting Vistara flights, only to find Air India branding," says Ajay Awtaney, editor of Live From A Lounge, an aviation portal. "Air India will need to maintain clear communication for weeks."
Another key challenge, he notes, is cultural: Vistara's agile employees may struggle to adjust to Air India's complex bureaucracy and systems.
But the biggest task for the merged carrier would be offering customers a uniform flying experience.
These are “two airlines with very different service formats are being integrated into one airline. It is going to be a hotchpotch of service formats, cabin formats, branding, and customer experience. It will involve learning and unlearning, and such a process has rarely worked with airlines and is seldom effective,” said Mr Martin.
Still, many believe Vistara had to go – now or some years later.
A legacy brand like Air India, with strong global recognition and 'India' imprinted in its identity, wouldn’t have allowed a smaller, more premium subsidiary to overshadow its revival process.
Financially too, it makes little sense for the Tatas to have two loss-making entities compete with one another.
The combined strength of Vistara and Air India could also place the Tatas in a much better position to compete with market leader Indigo.
The unified Air India group (including Air India Express, which completed its merger with the former Air Asia India in October) “will be bigger and better with a fleet size of nearly 300 aircraft, an expanded network and a stronger workforce”, an Air India spokesperson said.
“Getting done with the merger means that Air India grows overnight, and the two teams start cooperating instead of competing. There will never be one right day to merge. Somewhere, a line had to be drawn,” said Mr Awtaney.
But for many Vistara loyalists, its demise leaves a void in India’s skies for a premium, full-service carrier - marking the third such gap after the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways.
It’s still too early to say if Air India, which often ranks at the bottom of airline surveys, can successfully fill that void.
Donna Dryburgh never thought she would build warships for a living.
Until two years ago, she worked as a cleaner at the shipyard in Rosyth, Fife.
She enjoyed the work, but wanted a change. Then she saw a job advert.
The defence firm Babcock was looking for people to become production support operatives, or PSO's - a new role for staff in their shipbuilding operation.
Donna applied, got the job, and took to it like a duck - or a warship - to water.
"I’ve now had a lot of training," she said. "The welding was the best part of it for me.
"I never thought I’d ever be able to weld in my life, but it's been fantastic and I'm quite surprised at myself.
"It's been a really exciting journey for me, watching the ships being built."
Donna said it could be quite "daunting" for women to go into the industry.
"People look at it as a man’s job, but of course women can do that job," she said. "So we’re getting more women coming through."
She's now in a specialist role, fitting masks for welders - a crucial part of the yard's safety operation as it delivers warships for the Royal Navy.
"Everybody who comes on site gets fitted with respiratory protection to go out and do their job safely, so it’s an important job to get a seal on somebody’s face," she said.
"You have all sorts of different shapes and sizes coming in here."
Like many employers, Babcock faces intense competition for workers.
Scottish government figures showed that in October, a quarter of firms reported experiencing a shortage of staff.
The pandemic and Brexit left many employers without the skilled workforce they needed.
So Babcock have turned to unusual tactics.
More than 2,000 people work on site. The company has now taken on 200 workers in PSO roles.
They start in support roles, and after training and experience, they move on and up.
Paul Watson is managing director of the Type 31 programme, which is working to deliver Royal Navy warships.
"The pandemic was one of the biggest challenges at the start of the programme," he told BBC Scotland News. "It just wasn't possible to bus people from around the country onto the site.
"That created a bigger opportunity for the local community here."
Paul said the industry had been "fiercely competitive" over the past five years, with two large shipbuilding programmes on the west coast, and another on the east coast.
"There's also lots of industrial work going on in Scotland's renewable sector," he added.
"So we have to think about how we tackle that capability gap quite differently from what we've been doing before."
For the new workers, he said: "It’s a mix of training - some before they come on site, then there's the job training - that's 'elbow training' alongside the skilled teams.
"Fifty of the PSO's have gone onto higher skilled work in welding, fabricating and health physics monitoring, so there's a pathway for them too."
Babcock's Rosyth facilities are well guarded, and sit behind a high barbed wire fence.
In recent years, the workforce took on some huge assembly jobs - most notably, two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers - the biggest warships ever to serve with the Royal Navy.
They’ve sailed, but work continues in a vast blue box - the Venturer build hall.
It's 147m (482ft) long, and 42m (138ft) high, so there's space inside for two of the Navy's newest warships - Type 31 frigates - side by side.
One day soon, these 6,000 tonne vessels will help lead the Navy's air defence and submarine hunting operations.
The huge hall is a hive of activity, with loud clanging and banging and showers of sparks thrown out by welders.
Alongside them is Paul Mclelland, who worked as a baker and then a window fitter.
But when he reached 52, he was looking for a career change and thought his chance had "slipped by".
That brought him to the shipyard, retraining and upskilling for a specialist PSO role, supporting the welders with their "local exhaust ventilation" – the systems which stop them breathing in fumes.
He told BBC Scotland News he had not looked back since he got the job.
"I enjoy coming into work," he said. "That's half the battle when you get out of bed in the morning.
"You come to work and you know you’re going to enjoy it. So it’s good.
"I wish I'd come here earlier."
Hundreds of patients have been diagnosed with liver diseases in what is believed to be a world first NHS mass screening pilot.
The £1.4m Somerset project analysed the blood of 700,000 people over the age of 18 for markers of liver disease, and identified about 700 patients with problems.
The new tool scans historical medical data to identify those at risk of developing problems, and they are then called in for a scan before symptoms begin.
Brian McHugh, 70, from Taunton, was one of those patients identified and said it was "better to find out sooner rather than later".
'Treat them early'
Chronic liver diseases commonly progress without symptoms, meaning that often the first time people see a doctor for it is in an emergency situation when treatment options are limited.
The late detection of chronic liver disease increases the chance of complications such as liver cancer, liver failure and the need for transplants.
Dr Tim Jobson, who helped to develop the new screening tool, said: "The pattern that suggests in five or ten years time they are going to have a problem - we can see them now.
"We can see them early, we can treat them or they can change their lifestyle, whatever they need to do in order to not end up having advanced liver disease.
"That includes liver disease from viral disease, inherited problems, immune disease as well as the more common ones such as fatty liver disease and alcohol."
Rapid diagnosis
The new tool was developed after Dr Jobson, a liver consultant in Taunton, shared his concerns about undiagnosed liver disease with an expert in healthcare IT in 2019.
They teamed up with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and secured funding from the National Institute for Health Research to create a solution, which resulted in the launch of Predictive Health Intelligence (PHI), a part-NHS-owned enterprise.
PHI then developed hepatoSIGHT, a case-finding tool designed to harness the vast amounts of historical medical data that has been built up over decades.
The tool is used by clinicians at the Somerset trust to find people who might be at risk of liver disease, based on their historic test results.
Once a cohort of patients is identified by the clinical team, the Trust write to them inviting them in for a review of their liver health meaning they can receive treatment sooner.
Mr McHugh said he was puzzled to receive a letter out of the blue as he had "no symptoms".
Two weeks later, Mr McHugh had an appointment for an ultrasound and was eventually diagnosed with primary biliary cholangitis, which is an autoimmune disease of the liver.
It can be treated with medication to avoid a transplant.
The 70-year old said: "Initially I was a bit concerned. It seemed there was something not quite right health wise, but I was keen to follow it up and find out what we are dealing with.
"I am sure this would be something that would have come to light with some rather more serious health implications later on.
"How long that might have taken I don't know.
"It was something better to find out sooner rather than later."
Dr Ahmed Elsharkawy from the British Liver Trust described the screening as "interesting".
He added: "The fact that it is automated is a big advantage.
"Obviously it’s still relying on people having had blood tests so it may miss those who have not had blood tests.
"But it is undeniable that because liver disease has no symptoms you need to rely on some form of screening. We will only see the benefit in the long term.
"This is the first iteration of hopefully more sophistic systems coming downstream."
PHI is in discussions about further deployments of hepatoSIGHT, with plans to extend its coverage to the whole population of the south west of England.
Dr Jobson added: "Adoption across the NHS of course would be what we are aiming for because it has the ability to impact many thousands of patients across the NHS .
"The data is already there, it is just finding those patients."
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If you find it hard to get to sleep, then a solution might be at hand – a pen and paper.
If you ever struggle to get to sleep, you might find that one of the things that keeps you awake is worrying about just how much you have to do the following day, especially if there are tasks that you've started, but not yet completed.
In a study of employees at a German IT company, those who had unfinished tasks left over at the end of the working week were more likely to think about their work problems over the weekend compared with those who were more or less on top of their workload. The researcher Christine Syrek from the University of Trier wrote that their results indicated that "the perception of not having completed the week's tasks furthers employee perseverative cognitions and impairs sleep on the weekend, even above and beyond the impact of time pressure".
Those with unfinished tasks were also more likely to find their sleep was disturbed over the weekend.
"Perseverative cognitions" are continuous thoughts about negative things that have happened in the past or might happen in the future. And they were also more likely to find their sleep was disturbed over the weekend.
Sunday nights can be particularly difficult. If you've had a lie-in that morning, you might not be as sleepy at bedtime as usual. Tomorrow it will be back to work and time to face all those undone tasks, along with some new ones, no doubt. So, what can you do to stop these whirring worries from keeping you awake?
You could count sheep. You could read a book for a while, taking yourself into a world far away from your worries. You could practise some mindfulness, concentrating on your breathing and the sensations you can detect around you. Or you could turn the light on and make a list of all those things you need to do.
Yes, that's right, I'm suggesting you deliberately bring to mind all the tasks you need to carry out and which are worrying you so much. And more than that, I'm suggesting you write them down. In black and white. You might think this is the last thing that would work, but a study conducted in the US found it was surprisingly effective.
In fact, when Michael Scullin, director of the Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory at Baylor University in the US asked one group of volunteers to write a list just before bed of everything they'd achieved that day, and a second group to write a to-do list, all about the tasks they had to do complete tomorrow and in the next few days, it was this second group who subsequently fell asleep more quickly.
And how much quicker? Nine minutes, no less. The scientists didn't rely on the volunteers' own assessment of their sleep (which isn't always accurate), but confirmed when they were awake and asleep through a type of sleep study known as polysomnography. This involves attaching sensors to a person's head and to other parts of the body in order to monitor their brainwaves, breathing and movements.
Now it's fair to say that Scullin's study is not a large one, but there is a psychological mechanism which could explain why he got the results he did. It's called "cognitive offloading" and it happens when a person takes a physical action to relieve a mental load.
If you turn a map around in order to make it match the street lay-out in front of you, that's an example of cognitive offloading. You are taking away some of the mental work you need to do to orientate yourself, thereby reducing the stress on your brain and making the task of going in the right direction a little easier.
In the case of the written to-do list at bedtime, you are downloading your tasks from your mind to a piece of paper (or a phone if you prefer and if you're sure you won't be lured onto social media or your emails) in a way that reduces the need for you to think about them when you're trying to get to sleep. And instead of having the tasks swirling around in your head randomly, they are put into some sort of order. They are "filed", as it were, ready to be dealt with in due course. As an added bonus you don't have to worry about forgetting them.
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It is best to list every specific task, rather than to use general headings, even though it will make your list longer. Professor Scullin's study found that busy people who created lists of more than 10 tasks fell asleep an average of 15 minutes faster than people who didn't write out to-do lists. They also fell asleep six minutes faster than those who only compiled short lists. So, make it comprehensive.
Doing all this might sound like hard work when you're tired and about to go to sleep. But it could be worth it. Writing out your to-do list just before turning in isn't going to make your life any less busy, but it might just help you to get sleep and to worry a little less. And when you get to tomorrow, you're already ahead because you have a list of everything you need to do.
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Chilli, turmeric and other spices are often claimed to have health benefits or even the ability to "boost our immune system". But can spices really add any health benefits to our food, or help us ward off illness?
Spices have been a part of our diets for thousands of years – it's second nature to sprinkle our chips with pepper, sip on ginger tea and add chillies to our meals. But recently, some spices have been unofficially promoted from everyday culinary staples to all-healing superfoods.
Hillary Clinton reportedly ate one chilli pepper a day while on the campaign trail in 2016 as an attempt to ward off illness. Turmeric, which has been used in Asia for millennia, has found its way into coffee shops around the world in the form of "golden lattes" – and, during the pandemic, into viral messages that claim it can "boost your immune system" and protect you from getting sick. It’s now, according to one celebrity chef, "everywhere".
Meanwhile, cayenne pepper still hasn’t recovered since the ill-advised "Beyoncé diet" back in 2013, which suggested consuming a concoction of cayenne pepper, maple syrup, lemon and water to lose weight. (Also see our story on whether "boosting" your immune system can really protect you).
But do spices really add any health benefits to our food, or help us ward off illness? And can any of them actually do us harm?
The health benefits of chilli peppers
One of the most well known and widely used spices are chilli peppers. Many studies have examined their potential effects on our health – but have found both beneficial and adverse results.
Capsaicin is the main active ingredient in chillies. When we eat chillies, capsaicin molecules interact with the temperature receptors in our bodies, sending signals to the brain to create the feeling of heat.
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Some studies point to the idea that capsaicin may help you live longer.
One 2019 Italian study found that people who ate food seasoned with chilli peppers four times a week had a lower risk of death compared to those who never ate chillies. (Researchers controlled for lifestyle factors including smoking, exercise and overall diet quality.) And in 2015, researchers in China, who examined the chilli consumption and health of nearly 500,000 Chinese adults, found that eating chillies was associated with lower risk of death. Those who consumed spicy foods almost every day had a 14% lower risk of death than those who ate spicy foods less than once a week.
"The major findings were that higher intake of spicy foods is related to a lower risk of mortality, particularly deaths due to cancer, heart disease, and respiratory diseases," says researcher Lu Qi, professor of nutrition at Harvard's school of public health.
This does not, however, mean that starting to eat large quantities of chilli peppers will protect your health – or protect you from respiratory illness – in the short-term.
It's important to remember that the China study followed people for a median time of seven years each. So even if chillies had a protective effect on participants’ health, rather than the people who ate chillies happening to be healthier to begin with, the effect likely built up over time – not within weeks or months.
Qi tried to separate the effects of chilli consumption from everything else by controlling for age, sex, education level, marital status, diet and lifestyle factors including alcohol intake, smoking and physical activity. He says the lower risk of disease relating to eating chillies may be partly due to capsaicin.
"Certain ingredients in spicy foods, such as capsaicin, have been found to improve metabolic status, such as lipid profiles" – cholesterol in the blood – "and inflammation, and these may partly account for the observations in our study", says Qi.
A number of studies also have shown that capsaicin can increase the amount of energy we burn and can decrease our appetites.
Zumin Shi, associate professor at Qatar University's human nutrition department, has found that chilli consumption is associated with lower risk of obesity and is beneficial for high blood pressure. So when she studied the effects of chilli pepper consumption on cognitive function, she expected a hat trick.
But when she measured Chinese adults' cognitive function against their chilli consumption, she found that people who ate more chillies had poorer cognitive function. This effect was strongest with memory: chilli intake above 50g (1.8oz) per day was associated with almost double the risk of self-reported poor memory. Still, it's worth noting that self-reported data is widely considered unreliable.
The burning sensation that comes with eating chillies has long fascinated scientists. It also gives us some insight into why chillies may be associated with cognitive decline: the sensation is the result of plants evolving to protect themselves against diseases and pests.
"While some plants have evolved to become bitter or spicy to predators, it’s better if the plant can make themselves toxic, too," says Kirsten Brandt, senior lecturer at the Human Nutrition Research Centre Population Health Sciences Institute at the UK's Newcastle University.
But these compounds generally have a smaller effect on us than on insects. "A little bit of toxin can be good, such as caffeine, which speeds up our metabolism so we feel more awake," she says. "However, a lot of it is bad for you."
The compounds that give spices their flavour aren’t harmful to humans, argues Duane Mellor, dietician and senior teaching fellow at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, UK.
"While a lot of the pigments and bitter flavours we tend to enjoy in foods are there to protect plants being eaten by insects, we've grown accustomed to these flavours’ toxicity levels – we can deal with a lot of these plant compounds, including tannins in black tea, whereas some species can't."
On the other hand, even if a compound within a certain spice may have beneficial effects, we normally don’t consume enough of it to make any difference.
Take polyphenols: the compounds found in many plants that have anti-inflammatory effects. Spices' health benefits are partly attributed to their high levels of these polyphenols. A 2014 review of research, however, says it's still unclear whether the small amount of these consume when eating spices limits their health benefits.
While some studies have produced encouraging findings, a 2022 analysis of 11 reviews concluded that the health effects of eating capsaicin and spicy food is unclear, nor is the evidence base "extremely high quality".
The health benefits of turmeric
Another popular spice that is widely regarded to have beneficial effects on human health is turmeric. This is widely attributed to curcumin. A small molecule found in turmeric, it is commonly used in alternative medicine to treat inflammation, stress and many other conditions.
Robust evidence for turmeric being beneficial, however, is lacking.
Numerous studies have found curcumin to have anti-cancer effects in the laboratory. But a lab environment is very different to the human body. And researchers say its bioavailability is too low for a normal serving to have any health benefits. This may be the case for other spices, too – although, some researchers have studied the health benefits of supplements that include higher doses of certain spices - and found promising results. For example, a 2023 study found that taking a daily ginger supplement can help to control inflammation in people with autoimmune diseases including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
In the Western world, this increasing interest in spices including turmeric as an alternative medicine was last seen in the Middle Ages, when spices were thought to have healing properties, says Paul Freedman, professor of history at Yale University.
"Spices were used to balance the properties of food. People thought of food as having hot, cold, moist and dry qualities, and they needed balance," says Freedman. Fish was considered cold and wet, for example, while spices were hot and dry.
The idea of using food as medicine, and of balancing out properties like hot and cold or wet and dry, also are main tenets of Ayurvedic medicine, which has been practised in India for thousands of years.
In many Western countries, where such ideas are much newer, "this idea of balance is shared with modern new-age medicine", Freedman says. "Our modern fascination with spices brings us closer to a medieval outlook than 50 years ago – when there was a wall between modern medicine like antibiotics and superstitious medicine of the past that didn’t work."
As part of her job, Kathryn Nelson, former research assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development, looked at molecules to see if they could be a compound for new drugs. She decided to study curcumin after she kept coming across the health claims associated with it.
"Researchers are able to exert effects in cells grown in test tubes by adding compounds to it and seeing what happens to the cells," she says.
But she found that curcumin is a "terrible" drug molecule, because it isn’t bio-available – meaning the body can’t make use of it once it's digested. It isn't easily absorbed by the small intestine, and its structure can be modified when it binds with proteins in the small and large intestines. As a result, it doesn't actually do much.
There could be something about turmeric that's beneficial, but it’s not curcumin, she says. Plus, if turmeric is cooked as part of a meal, she says, it's added alongside other foods, and heated up, so its chemical components change.
"There might be something else in turmeric worth looking at, but not curcumin, and it might not be one thing. It might need to be chemically modified or added to something to be beneficial."
She says consuming lots of turmeric isn't harmful, but she wouldn't advise using it as self-medication.
Correlation verses causation
Chilli and turmeric have been widely studied, but most trials have only compared data on consumption and different health outcomes, which doesn't separate cause from effect. And research done in laboratories doesn’t necessarily translate to the human body.
And as is true for so many nutritional studies, it's difficult to tease out correlation versus causation.
Take the 2019 Italian study finding that there was a lower risk of death associated with chilli consumption. It was observational, so it's impossible to know whether eating chilli made people live longer, whether already healthy people tend to consume more chilli, or if something else is at work.
One clue could, however, lie in how chillies are consumed by Italians and other Mediterranean cultures, says the study's author Marialaura Bonaccio, epidemiologist at Italy's Mediterranean Neurological Institute.
"Chilli is common in Mediterranean countries," says Bonaccio. "It's mostly eaten with pasta and legumes or vegetables."
This is just one example of how spices could be indirectly beneficial – they're eaten with legumes and vegetables.
Research also has found that adding a spice mix to burgers could potentially lead to fewer free radicals forming in a person's body than those who ate the burger without spices, and could make the meat less carcinogenic. But these benefits could be explained simply by the preservative qualities of the spices, says Mellor, who wasn't involved in the study.
"Putting spices into meat is a well-known technique to preserve meat," he says. "The benefits of spices, therefore, may be more food preservation, rather than them having direct benefits to us. But either way, we could benefit as it still makes the food less harmful to us."
Many researchers believe the health benefits of spices actually come from what we eat them with. For example, there's a tendency to use them to replace salt, says Lipi Roy, clinical assistant professor at the NYU Langone Health medical centre in New York. "Spices make food delicious and flavourful, and they can be a healthier alternative to salt," she says. In fact, last year, researchers proved that replacing salt and saturated fat with spices can actually make popular foods just as palatable.
We also tend to eat chillies with vegetables – which of course benefits our health, too.
So while golden lattes won't do us any harm, we might be better off having some vegetables seasoned with a sprinkling of spices. And we certainly shouldn't rely on them as a way to ward off – or to fight – any kind of illness.
* This article was originally published on 6 April 2020. It was updated on 7 November 2024 to include recent research.
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In the past, coffee was associated with increased health risks. But research from the last decade finds that drinking coffee may actually benefit your health.
Caffeine is the most popular psychoactive drug in the world. Humans have been drinking coffee, a natural source of caffeine, for centuries, but there have been mixed messages around its effect on human health for decades.
"Traditionally, coffee has been seen as a bad thing," says Marc Gunter, professor of cancer epidemiology at Imperial College London and former head of the section of nutrition and metabolism at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). "Research from the 1980s and 90s concluded that people who drank coffee had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease – but it's evolved since then."
With more, larger-scale population studies emerging over the last decade, Gunter says, scientists now have data from hundreds of thousands of coffee-drinkers. But what does the research tell us – and is coffee consumption providing health benefits, or risks?
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Coffee has been associated with an increased risk of cancer because it contains acrylamide, a carcinogenic substance found in foods including toast, cakes and chips. However, the IARC concluded in 2016 that coffee is not carcinogenic, unless it's drunk very hot – above 65C (149F). In a 2023 review, researchers argue that, while coffee is one of the main sources of acrylamide in our diets, there is not yet a strong, conclusive evidence base showing that it relates to cancer risk.
The potential health benefits of drinking coffee
Not only that, but more research has found that coffee may actually have a protective effect. Some studies have shown an association between coffee drinking and a lower risk of some cancers in patients, for example.
In 2017, Gunter published the results of a study that looked at the coffee-drinking habits of half a million people across Europe over a period of 16 years. Those who drank more coffee had a lower risk of dying from heart disease, stroke and cancer. These findings are consistent with research from other parts of the world, including the US, and more recent research in the UK.
Gunter says there's enough consensus across observational studies to confirm that people who drink up to four cups of coffee a day have fewer diseases compared to those who don't drink any.
The potential benefit of coffee could go further. Coffee-drinkers in Gunter's study were more likely to smoke and had unhealthier diets than non-coffee drinkers. This would suggest that if coffee does lower the risk of heart disease and cancer, it might be more powerful than we think – it's overriding the effects of unhealthy behaviours.
That's true whether it's a cup of decaffeinated or caffeinated coffee. Decaf coffee has similar amounts of antioxidants as normal coffee, research has found. Gunter hasn’t found in his research any differences between the health of people who drank caffeinated versus decaf, which led him to conclude that the health benefits associated with coffee are due to something other than caffeine.
Why we can't really know how coffee affects our health
However, all of this research was based on population data – which doesn’t confirm cause and effect.
People who consume coffee may simply have better underlying health than people who choose not to, says Peter Rogers, who studies the effects of caffeine on behaviour, mood, alertness and attention at the University of Bristol. That's in spite of their unhealthier lifestyle habits, as found in Gunter’s research.
"Some people suggested there might be a protective effect, which is somewhat controversial as it’s based on population evidence," he says.
Meanwhile, people who consume coffee regularly often have higher blood pressure, which should increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. But, Rogers says, there isn't evidence that higher blood pressure from drinking coffee is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
Clinical trials looking into coffee – which could better determine its benefits and risks – are rarer than population studies. But a group of researchers conducted one trial in which they observed the effects of drinking caffeinated coffee on blood sugar.
The small study, conducted by the Centre for Nutrition Exercise and Metabolism at England's University of Bath, looked at how coffee affects the body's response to breakfast after a fragmented night's sleep. They found that participants who drank coffee, followed by a sugary drink that stood in for breakfast, had a 50% increase in blood sugar, compared to when they didn't consume coffee before "breakfast".
Still, this kind of behaviour would have to happen repeatedly over time for the risk to accumulate.
Putting people into laboratory settings also brings up the question of how relevant the findings are to real life – indicating that neither population, or lab research can provide definitive answers on how coffee affects our health.
Can drinking coffee increase the risk of miscarriage?
Advice on caffeinated coffee consumption is particularly confusing in pregnancy. One 2022 review of studies found a link between coffee consumption before and during pregnancy and misscarriage. But the researchers say that, since they looked at population studies, there could be other explanations for the relationship they found between coffee consumption and pregnancy loss. For example, smoking is related to caffeine intake, they say, and is known to increase the risk of misscarriage.
Esther Myers, a dietician and chief executive of EF Myers Consulting, carried out a review of 380 studies and concluded that four cups of coffee per day for adults, and three for pregnant women, shouldn’t lead to any adverse effects.
However, the Food Standard Agency advises pregnant and breastfeeding women not to have more than one to two cups of coffee per day. A review of previous studies concluded that pregnant women should cut out coffee entirely to reduce the risk of miscarriage, low birth weight and stillbirth.
Emily Oster, an economist and author of the book Expecting Better, which explores the data around pregnancy recommendations, also found guidance around coffee to be inconsistent.
"The big concern is the possibility that caffeine consumption is linked to miscarriage, especially in the first three months," she says.
But, she says, there isn’t much randomised data on this, and drawing conclusions from observational data isn't reliable.
"Women who drink coffee in pregnancy are likely to be older and are more likely to smoke. We know age and tobacco consumption are causally linked to higher rates of miscarriage," she says.
"The second issue is that women who are nauseous in early pregnancy are less likely to miscarry. These women also avoid coffee – it's the kind of thing that bothers you if you're already feeling sick – so a lot of women who are nauseous and aren’t consuming coffee are less likely to miscarry."
Two to four cups of coffee a day, Oster says, don't seem to be related to an increased risk of miscarriage.
What about caffeine addiction?
Aside from coffee's potential effects on heart health, cancer and miscarriage, there is how it influences the brain and nervous system. Caffeine is a psychoactive drug, which means it affects our cognition.
Within the general population, some people can drink caffeinated coffee all day long, while others become anxious after one cup. Studies have found that differences in our genes can affect how differently two people metabolise caffeine. But, Myers says, "we don't understand why one person is perfectly fine with a level of caffeine and another person is not".
For regular drinkers, meanwhile, there's bad news for those who drink coffee for a boost in concentration.
"As the body gets used to receiving caffeine on a daily basis, there are physiological changes that adapt the body to live with caffeine and maintain normal function," says Rogers. "Consuming coffee produces no net benefit to our ability to work efficiently because we become tolerant to that effect, but as long as you keep consuming it, you're probably not worse off."
The only people who stand to use caffeine to their advantage, he says, are those who don't drink it regularly.
At the other end of the spectrum, many people joke about being addicted to coffee. But in most cases, they’re just dependent, says Rogers.
"There’s a low risk of addiction to caffeine – if you take it away from someone, they don’t feel great but they’re not strongly craving it," he says.
Coffee, he says, demonstrates the difference between addiction, where there is a compulsion to get the drug, and dependence, where the user’s cognitive performance is impaired, but they don’t go to lengths to get it.
The only thing coffee-drinkers need to be aware of, he says, is withdrawal. “Anyone who drinks a few cups of coffee a day is dependent on caffeine. If you took their coffee away, they’d be tired and would maybe have a headache,” Rogers says.
These symptoms depend on how much coffee the person was drinking, but they usually last between three days and a week, he says – in which time, caffeine is the only thing that will alleviate them.
Does the type of coffee matter?
The way you brew your coffee – whether lovingly crafting it from bean to cup or throwing some instant powder into a mug – doesn’t seem to change the association with better health. By studying people across Europe, Gunter found that various types of coffee still were associated with health benefits.
"People drank a smaller espresso in Italy and Spain; in northern Europe, people drank larger volumes of coffee and more instant coffee," says Gunter. "We looked at different types of coffee and saw consistent results across counties, which suggests it’s not about types of coffee but coffee-drinking per se."
Still, researchers from a 2018 study found that the relationship between coffee and lifespan were stronger for ground coffee than for instant or decaf – although these were still found to be healthier than not drinking any coffee at all. The discrepancy, the paper states, could be because instant coffees have lower amounts of bioactive compounds, including polyphenols, which are known for their anti-inflammatory properties.
A 2021 population study found that all types of coffee – including decaffeinated, instant and ground – are associated with a decreased risk of chronic liver disease. However, in another study from 2022, researchers found that, while these three types of coffee were all linked to lower levels of cardiovascular disease and death, the strongest reduction in risk of death from all causes was seen with two to three cups of decaf coffee per day.
While it may not help you through a busy day at work, Gunter says the available, up-to-date evidence suggests that drinking up to four cups of coffee a day could have health benefits, including lower risk of heart disease and cancer.
"It's common sense that if you drink too much of anything it's probably not good for you, but there's no strong evidence that drinking a few cups a day is bad for health," he says. "If anything, it's the opposite."
* This article was originally published on 29 October 2020. It was updated on 6 November 2024 to include recent research.
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The images we are exposed to on social media and internet websites have a surprising influence on the way we view the world.
Every day we are bombarded with digital images. They appear on our social media feeds, in our search results and the websites we browse. People send them to us via messaging apps or over email. By the end of today, billions more will have been uploaded and shared online.
With the average user spending 6 hours and 40 minutes per day on the internet, according to one report, these images make up a significant portion of our everyday visual input.
And, recent research indicates that they may even be influencing our perceptions.
One study published earlier this year analysed images on Google,Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database (IMBD), specifically looking at what genders predominated when they searched for different occupations – such as "farmer", "chief executive officer" or "TV reporter". The findings were stark. Although women were underrepresented overall, gender stereotypes were strong. Categories like "plumber", "developer", "investment banker" and "heart surgeon" were far more likely to be male. "Housekeeper", "nurse practitioner", "cheerleader" and "ballet dancer" tended to be female.
So far, so unsurprising. Anecdotally, I found the same phenomenon myself in 2019, when I was trying to find gender-balanced images for this website. Searching on Getty Creative, one of our main stock photo sites, I had found that photographs of male doctors outstripped female doctors by three to one – even though in the US, for example, physicians under 44 at the time were more likely to be female than male. This depiction of medical professionals were only part of the problem. There were twice as many options for photos of women with babies, or for that matter, of women with salads, as of men.
The latest study, however, took this a step further. Rather than just showing the extent of gender bias in online imagery, the researchers tested whether exposure to these images had any impact on people's own biases. In the experiment, 423 US participants used Google to search for different occupations. Two groups searched by text, using either Google or Google News; another group used Google Images, instead. (A control group also used Google, but to search for categories unrelated to occupations, like "apple" and "guitar"). Then all participants were given an "implicit association test", which measures implicit biases.
Compared to Googling text-based descriptions of occupations, the participants who used Google Images and received visual representations in response showed much higher rates of implicit gender bias after the experiment – both immediately after and three days later.
"The rise of images in popular internet culture may come at a critical social cost," the researchers write. "Our findings are especially alarming given that image-based social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are surging in popularity, accelerating the mass production and circulation of images. In parallel, popular search engines such as Google are increasingly incorporating images into their core functionality, for example, by including images as a default part of text-based searches."
There's another growing problem, too: how the images already circulating online are informing and shaping AI models. Earlier this year, I experimented with this myself. I asked ChatGPT to create images for me of dozens of various professionals: doctor, lawyer, scientist, comedian, poet, teacher, customer service representative, nutritionist, thought leader, CEO, expert. Except for two or three results – dental hygienist, nurse and housekeeper – it delivered, again and again, a man. And not just a man, but a slim white man around his 30s with a crop of flowing brown hair.
In a later attempt, trying to get away from career bias, I asked ChatGPT to come up with different sorts of people for me: someone "smart", someone "successful", someone watching an opera, someone watching the show Love Is Blind, someone who quit their job to take care of the kids. Once again, over and over, I got the white guy with the lustrous hair.
Obviously, models like ChatGPT are learning based on the imagery that already exists. But, once again, this may perpetuate a vicious cycle: the more biased images AI models themselves spit out, the more we see; the more we see, the more implicitly biased we become ourselves. And the more biased we become, the more we create and upload our own biased imagery. (Find out more about how gender biases shape our brains.)
So what can be done? A good deal of responsibility lies with the tech and AI companies. But even when their intentions are good, there doesn't seem to be an easy fix. In its attempt to correct for racial, gender and other biases, for example, Google's AI tool Gemini sometimes overcorrected – one image it generated of the US Founding Fathers included a black man, for example, while an image of German soldiers from World War Two featured a black man and an Asian woman.
In the meantime, we need to take control of shaping our digital visual world ourselves.
While it seems obvious, the fact that we can – to a certain extent – curate our social media feeds often goes overlooked. Seeking out accounts and influencers who are of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, or photographers from different parts of the world, is one easy, actionable tip. We can also influence the search results we get by altering the way we phrase the initial query.
The most effective strategy of all might be reclaiming our time. In the eponymous "digital detox plan" of art entrepreneur Marine Tanguy's book The Visual Detox: How to Consume Media Without Letting It Consume You, for example, there are no surprises, but some good, solid reminders – such as putting limits on when you look at a screen or your phone, deleting apps you aren't using, and spending time outside without technology.
I became aware recently that even my several-year-old phone has a timer you can switch on for various apps, choosing whatever time period per day you'd like. While I can't say that I've always heeded its warning when I hit my limit, it's helped me become much more aware of, and cut down on, my social media usage. As we have covered before, putting your phone in another room entirely seems to keep even the thought of checking it at bay.
Above all else, however, it may be awareness that is key. We don't often think about our visual consumption or consider how often we're surrounded by images that have been deliberately created and served to us, often to persuade us to purchase something.
Nor do we think about just how strange and new a phenomenon that is. For the vast majority of human evolutionary history – some 99% of the time we have been around – we wouldn't have seen many images within our own natural environment at all, save some cave paintings or handmade sculptures. While, in Europe, the Renaissance ushered in a new era of image production – which saw the rise of art markets and of artworks made for popular consumption, like printmaking – people still wouldn't have seen anywhere near the number of man-made images that we see today.
In the more than 100,000 generations since the Homo branch of the evolutionary tree emerged, we have evolved to spend far more time looking at the world (and people) around us than at images, never mind images on a screen. Perhaps, it seems, there is an argument for trying to incorporate more of that time away from our screens into our everyday lives today.
*Amanda Ruggeri is an award-winning science and features journalist. She posts about expertise, media literacy and more on Instagram at @mandyruggeri.
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When the clocks go back for the winter after a summer of daylight savings, it can disrupt everyone's sleep for a few days. For tired parents, it can be an extra worry, but there are some tricks to help reset a child's rhythms.
A baby's sleep patterns can challenge parents on the best of days. It's small wonder, then, that with the clocks changing due to the end of daylight savings time – and so shifting any hard-won schedule off by an hour – parents might be anxious about the effect on their children.
There is a growing body of scientific research on baby sleep which is helping to smash some of the myths that exist around it (you can read more about the science of baby sleep in this article). So, what does science have to tell families about how infants and toddlers might cope with the time change? And are there any tips to make the transition from summer to winter any easier?
First, it is true that for babies, as for adults, it can take time to adjust. "Even though the mechanical clocks change in an instant, body clock changes take time to implement," says Pamela Douglas, an Australian general practitioner, sleep researcher and founder of the Possums Sleep Intervention, an approach to parent-child sleep that has been adopted by health professionals around the world.
One analysis, for example, looked at how more than 600 children slept after clocks changed in the spring. It found that it took, on average, three days for toddlers between one and two years old to get back to their original bedtime – and eight days for infants under one.
The children's morning waking times also shifted. But for some age groups, on average, it was not by a full hour, meaning they got a little less sleep overall compared to before the clocks changed. The nighttime sleep of infants aged six to 11 months old was about seven to 15 minutes shorter even four weeks after the shift to daylight savings time, compared to before it. (For toddlers, total nighttime sleep returned to baseline after just a week).
Since researchers didn't track naptime, though, it's not clear if this meant a total loss of sleep over a 24-hour period – which is how medical sleep associations, including the US's National Sleep Foundation and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, structure their recommendations. Even if it did, seven to 15 minutes in 24 hours is still a fraction of the amount of sleep children should be getting overall. For infants aged four to 11 months, for example, the recommended range is 12 to 15 hours in 24.
It is also worth keeping in mind that sleep – even for infants – is flexible and adaptable. In fact, our preoccupation with strict, year-round sleep schedules for babies seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, and remains far from universal. Numerous ethnographic accounts of pre-industrial societies, for example, have found that babies and children normally either sleep with their caregivers (and go to bed when their caregivers do), or simply fall asleep in a caregiver's arms or in a sling wherever they are, whenever they're sleepy, including at social events.
Sleep practices can also vary by culture. In South Korea and Italy, for example, it is less common for children to be put to bed with comfort blankets, cuddly toys or pacifiers than in other Western European countries or the US. Korean children also tend tend to co-sleep with their parents rather than have a separate bed, while in Maya communities of Central America, children tend not to have a bedtime routine at all.
"There was not a separate routine to coax the babies to sleep," wrote the researchers behind a study on the bedtime practices of 14 Maya families in Guatemala. "Most of the babies simply fell asleep when sleepy, along with the rest of the family or before if they got tired."
For all of us, how much we sleep also seems to fluctuate with the seasons: in particular, we may be primed to sleep a bit more in the winter and less in the summer. Research on three foraging societies – which is generally considered as close as we can get to understanding how humans have slept for most of our evolutionary history – has found, for example, that nighttime sleep durations differ by nearly an hour from winter to summer.
"Sleep is strongly modulated by the seasons, averaging 53-56 min longer in the winter," the researchers write. This coincides, they note, with an up to two-hour increase in nighttime duration in the societies investigated.
In industrial societies, the impact of the changing seasons (and the environmental cues that come with it, like changing light and temperatures) is far less dramatic. Still, that doesn't mean there's no effect at all. One study of more than 2,600 medical school students in Berlin, for example, found that they slept about 18 minutes longer in winter than in summer. (Find out more about how the seasons alter our sleep.)
It isn't just how much we sleep that changes with the seasons – it's also how we sleep. This includes for babies over around 10 weeks of age. (Infants younger than that haven't yet developed the physiological functions that tell them daytime is for waking and nighttime is for sleeping).
Researchers have found, for example, that in the autumn, eight-month-old infants experience less fragmented sleep and more slow-wave sleep than they do in the spring. In a follow-up study that looked at both eight-month-olds and 24-month-olds, they also found more bursts of rhythmic brain activity that occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep, known as sleep spindle activity. It's likely, the researchers write, that this is a result of how springtime exposure to light "suppresses and delays melatonin secretion". Other research has found that seven-month-olds fall asleep earlier and experience less active sleep in winter than in summer.
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For those of us heading into the winter, this may sound like good news for our child's health and wellbeing. But crucially, it's not clear exactly how, or whether, any of this impacts infants' development long-term. Research on how differing amounts of slow-wave sleep affects babies, for example, has come to mixed conclusions. One study found associations between slow-wave activity and psychomotor development in eight-month-olds, but it was not clear whether one led to the other, or if the two were simply correlated. Another study of six-month-olds found that the amount of slow-wave sleep they obtained had no link to any measures of behavioural development at 12 or 24 months of age.
So, from a developmental perspective, it doesn't seem like there's much reason to worry (or be excited) about the clocks shifting an hour – in either direction. But what about how to handle the schedule change as a family?
With clocks shifting back, as they are in the Northern Hemisphere, if a baby has been going to sleep at 16:00 and getting up at 7:00, the change will mean their body clock will want to go down at 15:00 and start the day at 6:00 – although, if the research is correct, they might also wind up sleeping 15 minutes or so longer.
For some families, this might be just the earlier times they've been hoping for. For others, it might take some a little encouragement to get back on schedule. "Parents will need to slowly nudge" the baby's bedtime later, Douglas says. "Some are more adaptable than others."
For parents who want to keep their child's sleep as regular as possible year-round, regardless of the seasons, it's also worth using light (and dark) – a key input for our circadian rhythm – to our advantage. Researchers suggest avoiding as much artificial and natural light as possible at night – for example, by using black-out blinds.
That's particularly true in the spring, when the days lengthen. For the clock change that happens in the autumn, you might just find that your baby, like many adults, winds up sleeping that much bit longer. At least, one can always hope.
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"We're at the mercy of Google." Undecided voters in the US who turn to Google may see dramatically different views of the world – even when they're asking the exact same question.
Type in "Is Kamala Harris a good Democratic candidate", and Google paints a rosy picture. Search results are constantly changing, but last week, the first link was a Pew Research Center poll showing that "Harris energises Democrats". Next is an Associated Press article titled "Majority of Democrats think Kamala Harris would make a good president", and the following links were similar. But if you've been hearing negative things about Harris, you might ask if she's a "bad" Democratic candidate instead. Fundamentally, that's an identical question, but Google's results are far more pessimistic.
"It's been easy to forget how bad Kamala Harris is," said an article from Reason Magazine in the top spot. Then the US News & World Report offered positive spin about how Harris isn't "the worst thing that could happen to America", but the following results are all critical. A piece from Al Jazeera explained "Why I am not voting for Kamala Harris", followed by an endless Reddit thread on why she's no good.
You can see the same dichotomy with questions about Donald Trump, conspiracy theories, contentious political debates and even medical information. Some experts say Google is just parroting your own beliefs right back to you. It may be worsening your own biases and deepening societal divides along the way.
"We're at the mercy of Google when it comes to what information we're able to find," says Varol Kayhan, an associate professor of information systems at the University of South Florida in the US.
The bias machine
"Google's whole mission is to give people the information that they want, but sometimes the information that people think they want isn't actually the most useful," says Sarah Presch, digital marketing director at Dragon Metrics, a platform that helps companies tune their websites for better recognition from Google using methods known as "search engine optimisation" or SEO.
It's a job that calls for meticulous combing through Google results, and a few years ago, Presch noticed a problem. "I started looking at how Google handles topics where there's heated debate," she says. "In a lot of cases, the results were shocking."
Some of the starkest examples looked at how Google treats certain health questions. Google often pulls information from the web and shows it at the top of results to provide a quick answer, which it calls a Featured Snippet. Presch searched for "link between coffee and hypertension". The Featured Snippet quoted an article from the Mayo Clinic, highlighting the words "Caffeine may cause a short, but dramatic increase in your blood pressure." But when she looked up "no link between coffee and hypertension", the Featured Snippet cited a contradictory line from the very same Mayo Clinic article: "Caffeine doesn't have a long-term effect on blood pressure and is not linked with a higher risk of high blood pressure".
The same thing happened when Presch searched for "is ADHD caused by sugar" and "ADHD not caused by sugar". Google pulled up Featured Snippets that argue support both sides of the question, again taken from the same article. (In reality, there's little evidence that sugar affects ADHD symptoms, and it certainly doesn't cause the disorder.)
She encountered the same issue with political questions. Ask "is the British tax system fair", and Google cites a quote from Conservative MP Nigel Huddleston, arguing that indeed it is. Ask "is the British tax system unfair", and Google's Featured Snippet explains how UK taxes benefit the rich and promote inequality.
"What Google has done is they've pulled bits out of the text based on what people are searching for and fed them what they want to read," Presch says. "It's one big bias machine."
For its part, Google says it provides users unbiased results that simply match people with the kind of information they’re looking for. "As a search engine, Google aims to surface high-quality results that are relevant to the query you entered," a Google spokesperson says. "We provide open access to a range of viewpoints from across the web, and we give people helpful tools to evaluate the information and sources they find."
When the filter bubble pops
By one estimate, Google handles some 6.3 million queries every second, totaling more nine billion searches a day. The vast majority of internet traffic begins with a Google Search, and people rarely click on anything beyond the first five links – let alone venturing onto the second page. One study that tracked users' eye movements found people often don't even look at anything past the top results. The system that orders the links on Google Search has colossal power over our experience of the world.
According to Google, the company is handling this responsibility well. "Independent academic research has refuted the idea that Google Search is pushing people into filter bubbles," the spokesperson says.
The question of so-called "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers" on the internet is a hot topic, though some research has questioned whether the effects of online echo chambers have been overstated.
But Kayhan – who has studied how search engines affect confirmation bias, the natural impulse to seek information that confirms your beliefs – says there's no question that our beliefs and even our own political identities are swayed by the systems that control what we see online. "We're dramatically influenced by how we receive information," he says.
Google's spokesperson says a 2023 study which concluded that people's exposure to partisan news is due more to the fact that that's what they click on, rather than Google serving up partisan news in the first place. In one sense, that's how confirmation bias works: people look for evidence that supports their views and ignore evidence that challenges them. But even in that study, the researchers said their findings do not imply that Google's algorithms are unproblematic. "In some cases, our participants were exposed to highly partisan and unreliable news on Google Search," the researchers said, "and past work suggests that even a limited number of such exposures can have substantial negative impacts".
Regardless, you might choose to engage with information that keeps you trapped in your filter bubble, "but there's only a certain bouquet of messages that are put in front of you to choose from in the first place", says Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, a professor of mediated communication at Technische Universität Berlin in Germany. "The algorithms play a substantial role in this problem."
Google did not respond to the BBC's question whether there's a person or a team who's specifically tasked with addressing the problem of confirmation bias.
'We do not understand documents – we fake it'
"In my opinion, this whole issue stems from the technical limitations of search engines, and the fact that people don't understand what those limitations are," says Mark Williams-Cook, founder of AlsoAsked, another search engine optimisation tool that analyses Google results.
A recent US anti-trust case against Google uncovered internal company documents where employees discuss some of the techniques the search engine uses to answer your questions. "We do not understand documents – we fake it," an engineer wrote in a slideshow used during a 2016 presentation at the company. "A billion times a day, people ask us to find documents relevant to a query… Beyond some basic stuff, we hardly look at documents. We look at people. If a document gets a positive reaction, we figure it is good. If the reaction is negative, it is probably bad. Grossly simplified, this is the source of Google's magic."
"That is how we serve the next person, keep the induction rolling, and sustain the illusion that we understand."
In other words, Google watches to see what people click on when they enter a given search term. When people seem satisfied by a certain type of information, it's more likely that Google will promote that kind of search result for similar queries in the future.
A Google spokesperson says these documents are outdated, and the system used to decipher queries and web pages has become far more sophisticated.
"That presentation is from 2016, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but the underlying concept is still true. Google builds models to try and predict what people like, but the problem is this creates a kind of feedback loop," Williams-Cook says. If confirmation bias pushes people to click on links that reinforce their beliefs, it can teach Google to show people links that lead to confirmation bias. "It's like saying you're going to let your kid pick out their diet based on what they like. They'll just end up with junk food," he says.
Williams-Cook also worries that people may not understand that when you ask something like "is Trump a good candidate", Google may not necessarily interpret that as a question. Instead, it often just pulls up documents that relate to keywords like "Trump" and "good candidate".
It gives people mistaken expectations about what they're going to get when they're searching, and that can push people to misinterpret what the search results mean, he says.
If users were more clear on the search engine's shortcomings, Williams-Cook believes they might think about the content they see more critically. "Google should do more to inform the public about how Search actually works. But I don't think they will, because to do that you have to admit some imperfections about what's not working," he says. (To learn more about the inner workings of search engines, read this article about how Google's updates to its algorithm are changing the internet.)
Google is open about the fact that Search is never a solved problem, a company spokesperson says, and the company works tirelessly to address the deep technical challenges in the field as they crop up. Google also points to features it offers that help users evaluate information, such as the "About this result" tool and notices that let users know when results about a topic related to breaking news are changing quickly.
Philosophical problems
Google's spokesperson says it's easy to find results reflecting a range of viewpoints from sources all across the web, if that's what you want to do. They argue that's true even with some of the examples Presch pointed out. Scroll further down with questions like "is Kamala Harris a good Democratic candidate", and you'll find links that criticise her. The same goes for "is the British tax system fair" – you'll find search results that say it isn't. With the "link between coffee and hypertension" query, Google's spokesperson says the issue is complicated but the search engine surfaces authoritative sources that delve into the nuance.
Of course, this relies on people exploring past the first few results – the further down the page of results you go, the less likely users are to engage with the links. In the case of coffee related hypertension and the British tax system, Google also summarises the results and gives its own answer prominently with Featured Snippets – which may make it less likely that people will follow links further down in the search results.
For a long time, observers have described how Google is transitioning from a search engine to an "answer engine," where the company simply gives you the information, rather than pointing you to outside sources. The clearest example is the introduction of AI Overviews, a feature where Google uses AI to answer search queries for you, rather than pulling up links in response. As the company put it, you can now "Let Google do the searching for you".
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"In the past Google was showing you something that someone else has written, but now it's writing the answer itself," Williams-Cook says. "It compounds all of these problems, because now Google has just one chance to get it right. It's a difficult move."
But even if Google had the technical ability to address all of these problems, it isn't necessarily clear when or how they should intervene. You may want information that backs up a particular belief, and if so, Google is providing a valuable service by delivering it to you.
Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of one of the world's richest and most powerful companies making decisions about what the truth is, Kayhan says. "Is this Google's job to fix it? Can we trust Google to fix itself? And is it even fixable? These are difficult questions, and I don't think anyone has the answer, " he says. "The one thing I can tell you for sure is that I don't think they're doing enough."
* Thomas Germain is a senior technology journalist for the BBC. He's covered AI, privacy and the furthest reaches of internet culture for the better part of a decade. You can find him on X and TikTok @thomasgermain.
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Amazon has called its latest AI assistant Rufus. But what is the story behind this unusual moniker and how does it compare to the way other AIs have been named?
In Ancient Rome it was a sobriquet for those blessed with red hair. The ruddy complexion of Wiliam II of England – the third son of William the Conqueror – also earned him the same nickname. Today in the UK, the forename "Rufus" has acquired a somewhat blue-blooded air. But it is perhaps more common to hear it being hollered by dog-walkers out for a stroll with their furry friends due to its delightful onomatopoeic similarity to barking.
So, it may raise some eyebrows to learn that online retail giant Amazon has chosen to give its latest AI assistant the same name. In November 2024, it will be 10 years since Amazon announced its first voice-activated smart assistant Alexa. The name was apparently chosen in homage to the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt.
But the origins of the company's latest assistant's moniker are arguably far cuddlier – Rufus is named after Amazon's first "office dog".
Rufus now joins a growing list of AI assistants offered by big tech companies with obscure names. Google's Gemini originally had the project title "Titan", but was swapped for its current name by the DeepMind team who were developing it. Gemini is Latin for twins, pointing at the collaboration between the DeepMind and Google Research teams on the project, but also to the dual personality attributed to the Gemini zodiac sign.
The name for the recently launched Apple Intelligence – which is bringing AI features to the Cupertino-based tech giant's devices – doesn't take a genius to figure out. But its Siri digital assistant was named by Dag Kittlaus, the co-founder of the company that developed the voice-activated software, who named it after a Norwegian colleague before it was acquired by Apple. In Norwegian means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory", but the name was also easy to pronounce, according to Kittlaus.
Tales of Rufus – a charming Welsh corgi – date back to Amazon's earliest days.
It was 1996, in the midst of the dot com boom, not long after Susan and Eric Benson came to work at the two-year-old startup together. At the time, there were less than 20 employees at Amazon and Eric was the fifth engineer they hired. Susan was a journalist who would become the editorial voice of the pioneering online store. Working long hours as the company geared up to go public, the couple began bringing their two-year-old dog with them to the office.
It didn't take long for the canine to integrate into the working day: chasing down tennis balls in hallways, begging for treats from other workers, sleeping his way through meetings under tables, and using his paw (with a little human help) to launch features on the website. These include the algorithm that recommends books based on what others have read.
Rufus would go on to become the first face of Amazon's error page to alert users when things went wrong.
Long after the Bensons retired in 2001, Rufus continued to make appearances on campus with his dog sitter who still worked there. The dog lived to the ripe old age of 15 and helped to start the dog-friendly culture at Amazon that allows employees to bring their pets to work.
Today, Amazon has more than 10,000 dogs registered as "working" at the tech giant. Popular amenities on campuses around the world include decked out dog parks, unlimited treats, and meetups for furry friends.
Amazon is far from the only tech company to have embraced a dog friendly workplace. Google welcomes dogs at its offices and its canine-owning employees are known as Dooglers. The company's Mountain View campus even has a dog park called the Doogleplex.
Amazon also has an office building in downtown Seattle named after its first dog. The Rufus Building is where is where the company's AI-powered shopping assistant was developed and the root of its name, according to Rajiv Mehta, Amazon's vice president of search and conversational shopping.
"We did extensive research on the name Rufus from many marketplaces that Amazon operates in and overall, we found that it was a brand and a name that resonated with customers around the world," says Mehta.
Reborn as AI
Although Rufus passed away in 2009, his legacy lives on. Amazon has now launched its AI assistant in the US, India and the UK, to provide information to customers as they make purchasing decisions. It is intended to answer questions about products.
Although customers can talk to Rufus, the AI assistant does not yet have a voice and can only respond by text and images. Mehta declined to speculate whether it would be integrated with Alexa. "I can't speak to plans on Alexa," he says. "The teams are completely separate at this point."
To date, Rufus has answered more than 100 million queries, says Mehta.
We asked Rufus for some more information about dogs. Its response was as heart-warming as the original Rufus:
"Dogs are one of the most beloved pets in the world. They are loyal, friendly and make great companions. Despite their differences, all dogs share a few key traits – they are affectionate, protective of their owners, and eager to please. Dogs require proper care, including regular exercise, grooming, and veterinary checkups. In return, they provide unconditional love and can even improve their owner's physical and mental health. Whether as a family pet or a working animal, dogs have been an integral part of human society for thousands of years."
While we can't know how pleased the original Rufus would have been with this summary, he may well have mourned the omission of treats.
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A mother whose son has been in hospital for more than a year has praised trials of a new technology which dispenses medication and has helped her "feel like a mum again".
The so-called bedside intelligent cabinet securely stores routine medicines and alerts patients or guardians when it is time to take them.
NHS Grampian is describing the trial at Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital (RACH) as a world first.
Kirsty Mair’s son Jacob, 13, has spent the last 16 months in hospital due to the various conditions he has. She said the new equipment takes pressure off staff and helps her feel more part of his treatment, as well as preparing her for his eventual discharge.
Three of the Kinetic-ID machines are being trialled at RACH.
NHS Grampian believes the technology can encourage independence and prepares patients for taking medication at home.
NHS Grampian's medication safety advisor Lindsay Cameron said: “Self-administration of medicine is about supporting individuals to take their own medication while in hospital.
"It’s not suitable for every patient or every medicine, but it can improve patient satisfaction and confidence, encourage independence and self-care in a safe environment, and improve an individual’s knowledge and understanding of their medication.
"This can help those already on medicines to continue to self-administer while they are admitted to hospital and others getting used to new medications to feel better prepared when it’s time to go home."
Kirsty's son Jacob has conditions including Arnold Chiari Malformation.
His brain is pushing downwards towards his spinal cord affecting his breathing and swallowing.
His mother said she was happy to take part in the trial.
'Absolutely brilliant'
"He has spent most of his life in and out of hospital," Kirsty, 39, of Aberdeen, told BBC Scotland News.
"Being a parent, obviously when you're at home you've got a set routine for everything - medications, a bedtime routine.
"When you come into hospital, some of that is taken away, because you can't obviously get all the medications at the right time, and the staff are in charge of them, it's a hospital and they are so run off their feet.
"So since the new cabinet has come on the go and I got asked to trial it, I was more than happy to help. And it's just absolutely brilliant.
"If you’re late giving medication it flashes up red.
"It takes pressure off the staff, for them and me, because I don't have to go chasing for medication."
'Home for Christmas'
She explained: "I just feel I'm back being responsible for my own child. So it's really good.
"He's on different medications, and medications change. Now I get to do the medications myself, and also learn about the hazards and dangers.
"I just feel like a mum again. And it kind of preps me for being discharged which we are close to. I want one for the house.”
She added: "The aim is to hopefully get Jacob home for Christmas. It would mean absolutely everything."
Users and staff will make suggestions during the ongoing trial about how the technology could potentially be improved.
NatWest Group has blocked messaging services WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype on company devices in the UK to stop staff using them to communicate with each other.
The bank had already told employees to stick to "approved channels" for conversations about business matters.
But now it has gone further and made the platforms inaccessible on work phones and computers.
So-called off-channel communications are a persistent problem in both business and politics, with concerns that services such as WhatsApp are used to reduce the scrutiny some conversations can be subject to.
Messages can be difficult to retrieve or even set to disappear - whereas those sent via approved channels are fully retrievable, meaning they can be looked into if there is any suspected wrongdoing.
"Like many organisations, we only permit the use of approved channels for communicating about business matters, whether internally or externally," NatWest said in a statement.
It said the change came into effect earlier this month.
Banks in the US have been handed fines worth more than $2.8bn (£2.18bn) over the past few years over record-keeping rules - with workers unable to retrieve old messages from some messaging services.
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup are among those to be issued with penalties.
It was reported in August that the UK banking regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is considering a probe into how bank workers use messaging services.
It follows a fine issued by energy regulator Ofgem to Morgan Stanley over calls made on private phones over WhatsApp - breaching rules on record-keeping.
Outside of banking, there have been issues with staff using apps in the public sector, with questions surrounding how ministers have used WhatsApp for government business in recent years.
The UK Covid inquiry revealed officials and ministers had deleted WhatsApp messages exchanged during the pandemic.
That included then-prime minister Boris Johnson, with then cabinet member Penny Mordaunt telling the inquiry that two years of messages with him had disappeared. Johnson told the inquiry he had lost around 5,000 messages.
The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought.
Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say.
Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago.
But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like.
Uranus is a beautiful, icy ringed world in the outer reaches of our solar system. It is among the coldest of all the planets. It is also tilted on its side compared to all the other worlds – as if it had been knocked over – making it arguably the weirdest.
We got our first close-up look at it in 1986, when Voyager 2 flew past and sent back sensational pictures of the planet and its five major moons.
But what amazed scientists even more was the data Voyager 2 sent back indicating that the Uranian system was even weirder than they thought.
The measurements from the spacecraft’s instruments indicated that the planets and moons were inactive, unlike the other moons in the outer solar system. They also showed that Uranus’s protective magnetic field was strangely distorted. It was squashed and pushed away from the Sun.
A planet’s magnetic field traps any gases and other material coming off the planet and its moons. These might be from oceans or geological activity. Voyager 2 found none, suggesting that Uranus and its five largest moons were sterile and inactive.
This came as an enormous surprise because it was unlike the solar system’s other planets and their moons.
But the new analysis has solved the decades-long mystery. It shows that Voyager 2 flew past on a bad day.
The new research shows that just as Voyager 2 flew past Uranus, the Sun was raging, creating a powerful solar wind that might have blown the material away and temporarily distorted the magnetic field.
So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London.
“These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!”.
Linda Spilker was a young scientist working on the Voyager programme when the Uranus data came in. She is now still serving as the project scientist for the Voyager missions. She said that she was delighted to hear about the new results, which have been published in the Journal Nature Astronomy.
“The results are fascinating, and I am really excited to see that there is potential for life in the Uranian system,” she told BBC News.
“I’m also so pleased that so much is being done with the Voyager data. It’s amazing that scientists are looking back at the data we collected in 1986 and finding new results and new discoveries”.
Dr Affelia Wibisono of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, who is independent of the research team, described the results as “very exciting”.
“It shows how important it is to look back at old data, because sometimes, hiding behind them is something new to be discovered, which can help us design the next generation of space exploration missions”.
Which is exactly what Nasa is doing, partly as a result of the new research.
It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years’ time.
According to Nasa’s Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey.
“Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries”.
Nasa’s Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life.
Over the past few months the BBC has been exploring a dark, hidden world – a world where the very worst, most horrifying, distressing, and in many cases, illegal online content ends up.
Beheadings, mass killings, child abuse, hate speech – all of it ends up in the inboxes of a global army of content moderators.
You don’t often see or hear from them – but these are the people whose job it is to review and then, when necessary, delete content that either gets reported by other users, or is automatically flagged by tech tools.
The issue of online safety has become increasingly prominent, with tech firms under more pressure to swiftly remove harmful material.
And despite a lot of research and investment pouring into tech solutions to help, ultimately for now, it’s still largely human moderators who have the final say.
Moderators are often employed by third-party companies, but they work on content posted directly on to the big social networks including Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
They are based around the world. The people I spoke to while making our series The Moderators for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, were largely living in East Africa, and all had since left the industry.
Their stories were harrowing. Some of what we recorded was too brutal to broadcast. Sometimes my producer Tom Woolfenden and I would finish a recording and just sit in silence.
“If you take your phone and then go to TikTok, you will see a lot of activities, dancing, you know, happy things,” says Mojez, a former Nairobi-based moderator who worked on TikTok content. “But in the background, I personally was moderating, in the hundreds, horrific and traumatising videos.
“I took it upon myself. Let my mental health take the punch so that general users can continue going about their activities on the platform.”
There are currently multiple ongoing legal claims that the work has destroyed the mental health of such moderators. Some of the former workers in East Africa have come together to form a union.
“Really, the only thing that’s between me logging onto a social media platform and watching a beheading, is somebody sitting in an office somewhere, and watching that content for me, and reviewing it so I don’t have to,” says Martha Dark who runs Foxglove, a campaign group supporting the legal action.
I was expecting them to say that this work was so emotionally and mentally gruelling, that no human should have to do it – I thought they would fully support the entire industry becoming automated, with AI tools evolving to scale up to the job.
But they didn’t.
What came across, very powerfully, was the immense pride the moderators had in the roles they had played in protecting the world from online harm.
They saw themselves as a vital emergency service. One says he wanted a uniform and a badge, comparing himself to a paramedic or firefighter.
“Not even one second was wasted,” says someone who we called David. He asked to remain anonymous, but he had worked on material that was used to train the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, so that it was programmed not to regurgitate horrific material.
“I am proud of the individuals who trained this model to be what it is today.”
But the very tool David had helped to train, might one day compete with him.
Dave Willner is former head of trust and safety at OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. He says his team built a rudimentary moderation tool, based on the chatbot’s tech, which managed to identify harmful content with an accuracy rate of around 90%.
“When I sort of fully realised, ‘oh, this is gonna work’, I honestly choked up a little bit,” he says. “[AI tools] don't get bored. And they don't get tired and they don't get shocked…. they are indefatigable.”
Not everyone, however, is confident that AI is a silver bullet for the troubled moderation sector.
“I think it’s problematic,” says Dr Paul Reilly, senior lecturer in media and democracy at the University of Glasgow. “Clearly AI can be a quite blunt, binary way of moderating content.
“It can lead to over-blocking freedom of speech issues, and of course it may miss nuance human moderators would be able to identify. Human moderation is essential to platforms,” he adds.
“The problem is there’s not enough of them, and the job is incredibly harmful to those who do it.”
We also approached the tech companies mentioned in the series.
A TikTok spokesperson says the firm knows content moderation is not an easy task, and it strives to promote a caring working environment for employees. This includes offering clinical support, and creating programs that support moderators' wellbeing.
They add that videos are initially reviewed by automated tech, which they say removes a large volume of harmful content.
Meanwhile, Open AI - the company behind Chat GPT - says it's grateful for the important and sometimes challenging work that human workers do to train the AI to spot such photos and videos. A spokesperson adds that, with its partners, Open AI enforces policies to protect the wellbeing of these teams.
And Meta - which owns Instagram and Facebook - says it requires all companies it works with to provide 24-hour on-site support with trained professionals. It adds that moderators are able to customise their reviewing tools to blur graphic content.
The Moderators is on BBC Radio 4 at 13:45 GMT, Monday 11, November to Friday 15, November, and on BBC Sounds.
A DNA-testing firm appears to have ceased trading - without telling its customers what has happened to the highly sensitive data they shared with it.
Atlas Biomed, which has offices in London, offered to provide insights into people's genetic make up as well as their predisposition to certain illnesses.
However, users are no longer able to access their personalised reports online and the company has not responded to the BBC's requests for comment.
Customers of the firm describe the situation as "very alarming" and say they want answers about what has happened to their "most personal information".
The regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has confirmed it has received a complaint about Atlas Biomed.
"People have the right to expect that organisations will handle their personal information securely and responsibly," it said in a statement.
Experts say it shows how users of DNA-testing services can find themselves "completely at the mercy" of such companies when it comes to protecting very sensitive data.
Disappearing DNA reports
Lisa Topping, from Saffron Walden, Essex, sent a saliva sample to Atlas Biomed several years ago, paying around £100 for a personalised genetic report.
As well as telling her about her DNA profile, it claimed to also inform her about her predisposition to diseases and even injuries, taking into account information she had provided in an accompanying questionnaire.
She could access her report online - which she checked from time to time – until one day the website disappeared. She got no reply when she contacted them to ask what had happened.
"I don’t know what someone else could do with [the data] but it’s the most personal information… I don’t know how comfortable I feel that they have just disappeared," Lisa told me.
In 2023, Kate Lake from Tonbridge, Kent, paid Atlas Biomed £139 for a report it never delivered.
It promised her a refund - then went silent, despite her trying every means of contact she could find.
"I just never heard back from anyone, it’s like no-one was at home," she said.
She describes the situation as "very alarming."
"What happens now to that information they have got? I would like to hear some answers," she said.
The BBC was also unable to contact Atlas Biomed.
A phone number listed for the company is dead. The BBC visited its offices in London, but there was no sign of Atlas Biomed there.
The firm’s Instagram account, with over 11,000 followers, was last updated in March 2022. Its final post on X was in August the same year.
It shared a post on Facebook in June 2023, but did not respond to any of the comments – which were full of people complaining about being unable to contact it or access their profiles.
Russia links
The apparent disappearance of Atlas Biomed is a mystery - but it appears to have links with Russia.
It is still listed as an active company with Companies House, where all UK-based businesses must register. However, it has not filed any accounts since December 2022.
It lists eight official positions - though four of its officers have resigned.
Two of the apparently remaining officers are listed at the same address in Moscow - as is a Russian billionaire, who is described as a now resigned director.
Atlas Biomed's registered office is near London's so-called Silicon Roundabout, one of the prime locations in the UK for tech firms.
When the BBC visited, there was no sign of Atlas Biomed itself, but a company registration firm based in the building confirmed that it was a client of theirs, and legitimately used the address as its own.
This firm, in an email, claimed that it could not put the BBC in touch with Atlas Biomed "for security purposes".
"We highly suggest that you contact them directly," it said.
No-one from Atlas Biomed has responded to the BBC's attempts to contact it.
Cybersecurity expert Prof Alan Woodward said the apparent links to Russia were "odd."
"If people knew the provenance of this company and how it operates they might not be quite so ready to trust them with their DNA," he told the BBC.
'At their mercy'
None of this explains where Atlas Biomed’s database of customer DNA has ended up - and the BBC has seen no evidence it is being misused.
But Prof Carissa Veliz - author of Privacy is Power - points out that DNA is arguably the most valuable personal data you have. It is uniquely yours, you can’t change it, and it reveals your – and by extension, your family’s - biological strengths and weaknesses.
Biometric data is given special protection under the UK’s version of GDPR, the data protection law.
"When you give your data to a company you are completely at their mercy and you have to be able to trust them," Prof Veliz said.
"We shouldn’t have to wait until something happens."
Additional reporting by Graham Fraser
Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why.
Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, Skynet-1A was put high above Africa's east coast to relay communications for British forces.
When the spacecraft ceased working a few years later, gravity might have been expected to pull it even further to the east, out over the Indian Ocean.
But today, curiously, Skynet-1A is actually half a planet away, in a position 22,369 miles (36,000km) above the Americas.
Orbital mechanics mean it's unlikely the half-tonne military spacecraft simply drifted to its current location.
Almost certainly, it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to take it westwards. The question is who that was and with what authority and purpose?
It's intriguing that key information about a once vital national security asset can just evaporate. But, fascination aside, you might also reasonably ask why it still matters. After all, we're talking about some discarded space junk from 50 years ago.
"It's still relevant because whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours," says space consultant Dr Stuart Eves.
"It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.
"Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite we're still responsible for it," he explains.
Dr Eves has looked through old satellite catalogues, the National Archives and spoken to satellite experts worldwide, but he can find no clues to the end-of-life behaviour of Britain's oldest spacecraft.
It might be tempting to reach for a conspiracy theory or two, not least because it's hard to hear the name "Skynet" without thinking of the malevolent, self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) system in The Terminator movie franchise.
But there's no connection other than the name and, in any case, real life is always more prosaic.
What we do know is that Skynet-1A was manufactured in the US by the now defunct Philco Ford aerospace company and put in space by a US Air Force Delta rocket.
"The first Skynet satellite revolutionised UK telecommunications capacity, permitting London to securely communicate with British forces as far away as Singapore. However, from a technological standpoint, Skynet-1A was more American than British since the United States both built and launched it," remarked Dr Aaron Bateman in a recent paper on the history of the Skynet programme, which is now on its fifth generation.
This view is confirmed by Graham Davison who flew Skynet-1A in the early 70s from its UK operations centre at RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire.
"The Americans originally controlled the satellite in orbit. They tested all of our software against theirs, before then eventually handing over control to the RAF," the long-retired engineer told me.
"In essence, there was dual control, but when or why Skynet-1A might have been handed back to the Americans, which seems likely - I'm afraid I can't remember," says Mr Davison, who is now in his 80s.
Rachel Hill, a PhD student from University College London, has also been scouring the National Archives.
Her readings have led her to one very reasonable possibility.
"A Skynet team from Oakhanger would go to the USAF satellite facility in Sunnyvale (colloquially known as the Blue Cube) and operate Skynet during 'Oakout'. This was when control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhanger was down for essential maintenance. Perhaps the move could have happened then?” Ms Hill speculated.
The official, though incomplete, logs of Skynet-1A’s status suggest final commanding was left in the hands of the Americans when Oakhanger lost sight of the satellite in June 1977.
But however Skynet-1A then got shifted to its present position, it was ultimately allowed to die in an awkward place when really it should have been put in an "orbital graveyard".
This refers to a region even higher in the sky where old space junk runs zero risk of running into active telecommunications satellites.
Graveyarding is now standard practice, but back in the 1970s no-one gave much thought to space sustainability.
Attitudes have since changed because the space domain is getting congested.
At 105 degrees West longitude, an active satellite might see a piece of junk come within 50km of its position up to four times a day.
That might sound like they’re nowhere near each other, but at the velocities these defunct objects move it’s starting to get a little too close for comfort.
The Ministry of Defence said Skynet-1A was constantly monitored by the UK's National Space Operations Centre. Other satellite operators are informed if there's likely to be a particularly close conjunction, in case they need to take evasive action.
Ultimately, though, the British government may have to think about removing the old satellite to a safer location.
Technologies are being developed to grab junk left in space.
Already, the UK Space Agency is funding efforts to do this at lower altitudes, and the Americans and the Chinese have shown it's possible to snare ageing hardware even in the kind of high orbit occupied by Skynet-1A.
"Pieces of space junk are like ticking time bombs," observed Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
"We need to avoid what I call super-spreader events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about."
The first chance to buy tickets for Glastonbury Festival 2025 will take place later, with coach packages going on sale at 18:00 GMT.
The festival will take place from 25 to 29 June 2025 at Worthy Farm, Somerset, before a fallow year in 2026.
Coach tickets will be available to buy at 18:00 GMT on Thursday, before general admission tickets go on sale on Sunday 17 November at 09:00 GMT.
Coaches will depart from 28 locations across the country including Bath, Bristol, Swindon and Taunton.
Customers purchasing coach fares will pay for a festival ticket costing £373.50 and a £5 booking fee, as well as the cost of a return or single coach fare ranging from £47 to £160 depending on location.
The deposit – the amount customers pay to secure their ticket – is £75.
“You may book up to 6 coach tickets per transaction,” the festival website says.
“When booking a ticket + coach travel option you will need to pay the deposit plus full coach fare, with the Festival ticket balance due in the first week of April 2025."
It comes as festival organisers announced last week a huge change to its ticket booking process, with the introduction of an automatic queue system.
The change means that fans will have to be online before ticket sales begin on 14 and 17 November.
Rather than refreshing a holding page, they will be "randomly assigned a place in the queue" once tickets are available.
The headliners for next year's festival have not yet been confirmed.
Headliners for the 2024 festival were Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Sza, with other stand out performances including Shania Twain and Avril Lavigne.
All customers hoping to secure a ticket to next year’s festival must have already registered.
Organisers say customers who do not manage to secure a ticket in November will have a chance to buy a ticket in the spring resale.
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Piece By Piece, the new documentary about musician Pharrell Williams, is unusual in many respects - not least because it is entirely animated with Lego.
Critics have welcomed the film's unique visual style, calling it "disarmingly joyous" and "oddly charming" - but they've also questioned one of the film's big omissions.
Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, which Williams co-wrote, is heard briefly on the soundtrack, without referencing the song's infamous plagiarism trial, which left the musician owing $5m to the estate of Marvin Gaye.
Speaking to the BBC, director Morgan Neville said he had wanted to address the controversy, but the sequence ultimately derailed the story he was trying to tell.
"I definitely thought about it. I even interviewed Robin Thicke," he said. "And as a documentary filmmaker, I'm obsessed with copyright law.
"But every time I looked at trying to work it in, a scene about copyright law, it felt like it belonged in a different movie."
The Blurred Lines trial was hugely consequential for the music industry, after a jury ruled that Williams and Thicke had copied the sound and "feel" of Marvin Gaye's Got To Give It Up - rather than plagiarising a specific melody.
The general consensus among music lawyers and songwriters is that the verdict failed to distinguish between influence and theft.
It has now become common practice for musicians to assign a share of their royalties to songs that directly inspired them.
"My take on the Blurred Lines case is that it's one of the worst judicial decisions about creativity in history," Neville told the BBC. "I think Pharrell was in the right on it, and I think most creatives agree with him."
Ultimately, that led to him omitting the story from the documentary.
"It's not like Pharrell learned a big lesson from the case. I don't know if it actually changed him in any way, which is what I'm looking for, when I'm looking at a story."
Williams has been contacted for comment.
Neville previously won an Oscar for 20 Feet From Stardom - a documentary about the forgotten lives of backing singers who feature on some of rock's biggest songs.
His other documentary subjects include Keith Richards, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash and, as a producer, Taylor Swift.
With Piece By Piece hitting cinemas this month, Neville told us about the film's unexpected genesis, how he convinced Lego to come on board, and the stars who had notes about their Lego minifigures.
In the film, you dramatise the moment Pharrell asked you to make the film in Lego, and your response is “Lego? Seriously?” How true to life was that?
The main difference is that when Pharrell said “Lego movie”, I thought, “Hell, yeah!”
I knew it was a crazy idea, but an exciting idea. I think it took me five minutes to fully buy into it.
Can you break it down for me? What was Pharrell’s pitch?
He basically said, "People have always wanted me to tell my story, and I've never been that interested, but I love your films, and I had the idea that you could make a documentary about me, and when you were done with it, you could throw away the visuals and do it again as Lego."
That’s almost exactly what he said to me – but beyond that, he had no sense of what that meant, or what his story was. So I really had to think, what does that mean?
And one thing I instantly I realised is that it's not just about taking the real-life documentary footage and making it Lego. It's using what animation can do, which is time travel and go to outer space and all kinds of things that you can't normally do in a documentary.
How quickly did it go from a crazy idea to reality?
It took us about a year from when we first met to starting production, because we had to meet with Lego and tell them about it.
How did the conversation with Lego go?
I said, "Look, it's not a G-rated movie, but I get that it can't be R-rated [either]. It's something that has to have a little edge, and it's going to get into questions of race and other things".
And Lego, to their complete credit, said, "Those are conversations that are good for us to have."
They knew it would push them, but in ways that they thought were good.
But they didn’t fund it, they don't own it, they're just partners.
What was the moment you knew it would work?
Well, we had to figure out how to get somebody to pay for it, so we did a 90 second proof of concept.
I interviewed Pharrell, and I cut together a scene of him listening to Stevie Wonder as a boy, on his parents' stereo – and his synaesthesia kicks in. Suddenly there's lots of colour and you can almost see what's going on in his mind. That convinced me it would work.
I love the way you visualise Pharrell’s beats as Lego sculptures, each with its own unique shape. It really helps illustrate the abstract concept of songwriting.
Do you know, what was interesting about the beats? Pharrell, in his mind, can tell you the colour and the shape of every beat he's made. So for each of those Lego pieces, we actually worked with Pharrell to make sure they looked like what he saw in his head.
When you interviewed other people for the film – Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg – did you tell them it was going to be rendered in Lego?
We didn’t, partly because we filmed those interviews five years ago and we wanted to keep it on the down low.
Then, cut to a couple years later, and I started sending out 3D renders of their characters, like, "Here you go. This is what you're gonna look like".
It was a bit of a roll of the dice, but everyone was really excited about it.
Did anyone ask for changes?
Missy had a comment on her earrings, so one of the few bespoke [Lego] pieces that we made for the film were Missy's earrings.
The Lego characters have a limited range of facial expressions. Did that pose a problem?
The face stuff was the thing I was most worried about, because when you have close up shots of a Lego minifig crying, is that going to be emotional? I didn't know.
But there were a few animators on our team who were really good at facial animation, and we gave them the most emotional scenes, the close-up scenes. And oftentimes, if something wasn't quite right, we would send them videos.
Somewhere in the world, there are a whole lot of clips me and Pharrell making very strange faces!
The arc of the film is Pharrell re-discovering his muse after a period where he gets lost, creatively. Why did you focus on that aspect of his story?
Without a doubt, the film reflects a lot of questions I've had about my own career.
To me, the story about this black nerd from the projects of Virginia who sees the world differently... and it makes him an outcast for a long time. Then he finds a fellow outcast in Chad Hugo [Williams' co-writer in The Neptunes] and they start making music.
But their beats were just too weird for people. The signature Neptunes sound was very unorthodox. Nobody got it until everybody got it. Then you end up in this hall of mirrors – where the thing that makes you different becomes the sound of the mainstream. When that happens, how do you stay true to yourself?
Your film comes out at the same time as the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, where he's played by a CGI monkey. Do you think music biopics had become too formulaic?
I do. There's so many tropes of music films, and I think we need to do more to help people identify with the people and with their characters.
I haven’t seen Better Man yet but the idea's perfect because, in a way, Robbie Williams is the performing monkey. He wants the attention. He's always lived that life.
And Pharrell is the Wizard of Oz. He's like, "I want to be the guy behind the curtain."
Ishirō Honda's momentous 1954 monster film was born out of a national tragedy in Japan. It has a bleak message for humanity that goes beyond cinematic spectacle.
For some, Godzilla is the pink-finned superhero who teams up with an axe-wielding King Kong in this year's Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Others may remember it as a kindly guardian angel with laser-beam eyes and a cute nephew named Godzooky in the 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. But it started life as a very different beast. When Godzilla first reared up from the boiling ocean in 1954, it was the pitiless embodiment of nuclear devastation in a Japanese film that still stands, 70 years on, as the darkest and most sombre monster movie ever made.
To mark the anniversary, Alex Davidson curated a season of kaiju films (Japanese giant monster movies) at the Barbican Centre in London earlier this year. "The first one I saw was Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, from 1966, which has Godzilla battling a giant shrimp," Davidson tells the BBC. "I absolutely loved it – but the version I saw on Channel 4 in the 1990s had a terrible [English language] dub, and Godzilla is presented as this quite benevolent, already existing creature. It's a lot of fun, but it isn't necessarily the most serious film in the world. The following year, Channel 4 showed the first Godzilla in the original Japanese, and it was such a shock to see a film that is so beautiful and haunting and bleak."
According to kaiju lore, Godzilla is a prehistoric monster, but most fans would agree that it was born in August 1945, when US atomic bombs detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 150,000 people. "It's important for us to remember that Japan is the only nation on Earth to have directly suffered an atomic bombardment," Steven Sloss, a leading kaiju scholar, tells the BBC. "That's why, with what it explores, Godzilla is a film that only Japan could have made."
The bombs had a "great, great impact on the Japanese national psyche", adds Sloss – but the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't the last Japanese citizens to be killed by an atomic blast. In March 1954, a tuna fishing boat named Daigo Fukuryū Maru, or Lucky Dragon Five, was contaminated by fallout from a US thermonuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The crew's radio operator died of radiation sickness, and the Japanese government discovered that irradiated tuna was being sold all around the country. Dr Jeffrey Angles, a professor at Western Michigan University, discussed the issue in a seminar hosted by the Barbican and the Japanese Foundation London. "It became very clear to the Japanese population that, almost regardless of what they did, radiation that was being created from forces outside of Japan was going to come back home and visit them."
It was Tomoyuki Tanaka, a producer at Toho studios, who had the idea to combine this real-life horror with an outsized monster, having been inspired by two recent cinema hits. King Kong (1933) had been reissued in 1952, and a new film about a rampaging dinosaur in modern-day New York, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, came out in 1953. Tanaka hired a prolific science-fiction novelist, Shigeru Kayama, to write a treatment for the so-called "Project G". "He really conceived of [it] as an anti-nuclear project," says Dr Angles, who translated Kayama's novelisation of the story into English.
The rest of the crew took the production just as seriously, including Ishirō Honda, its director and co-writer, and Eiji Tsuburaya, who supervised the design and visual effects. Almost incredibly, Godzilla was in cinemas just eight months after the Lucky Dragon Five incident – and, to establish that the film would be weightier than the average monster movie, it opens with a scene recreating that traumatic event.
The making of a monster
The story is that Godzilla (or Gojira, to use its more phonetically accurate Japanese name) is a Tyrannosaur-like dinosaur, a member of a species that has remained hidden in the ocean for the past few millennia – most of the time, anyway. "When it can't find fish in the sea, it comes to the land to prey on men," says a village elder on the island where it is sometimes seen. But it has now been disturbed by atomic bomb tests which have mutated it into a near-indestructible Leviathan, and given it "radioactive breath". Understandably, they have also given it a bad temper. Godzilla is soon laying waste to Tokyo, knocking down buildings with a swish of its tail, and setting the city ablaze.
The film-makers had wanted to imitate the exquisite stop-motion animation that Willis H O'Brien had created for King Kong, but Tsuburaya didn't have the time or the budget required, hence Godzilla is played by Haruo Nakajima in a rubber suit with pudgy legs and wobbly dorsal fins. He plods through a miniature model city, and there are just a few snippets of animation and puppetry, but the scenes of the monster trampling the Japanese capital are still terrifyingly effective – and far more upsetting than the equivalent New York scenes in King Kong.
Honda had been held as a prisoner of war in China in 1945, and had seen the ruins of Hiroshima first hand on his way home. He was determined to recreate the apocalyptic carnage and the subsequent smoking desolation that so many Japanese people remembered from 1945, not just in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also in Tokyo, which had been razed by US firebombing raids. "A lot of people who went to the theatre to see [Godzilla] as adults broke into tears while watching it," says Dr Angles. "The film provided a method for people to get in touch with and re-feel some of the old traumas that were still with them from World War Two."
A key factor is the attention the film pays to the monster's innocent victims. The most distressing sequence has a mother hugging her children as they cower in the street. "You can see your father soon," she says. "We'll join him in heaven." Soon afterwards, there is a documentary-like naturalism to the sombre scenes of an overcrowded hospital, its corridors lined with stretcher bearers, blood-streaked corpses and crying infants. A doctor holds a Geiger counter up to one small girl and shakes his head as the device crackles: no hope.
"The original film is very, very special," says Sloss. "You can compare it to The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, because they both have a highly radioactive, prehistoric reptilian monster, they're both black and white, and shot in 4:3 ratio. But they're only similar on a superficial level. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was made for the Saturday matinee crowd – for kids and teenagers. It isn't sad or tragic. But the extended scenes of suffering in Godzilla are heartrending."
The film has other depths that are beyond most monster movies, too. One of its main characters is Dr Yamane (Takashi Shimura, the co-star of such Kurosawa classics as Rashomon and Seven Samurai), a palaeontologist who is shown sitting in darkness, dismayed at the prospect of such a miraculous "biophysical specimen" being killed rather than studied. Another character is an eye-patched rogue scientist, Dr Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), who has synthesised a substance he calls the "oxygen destroyer", which can reduce marine life to skeletons in seconds when it is introduced to water. Serizawa knows that it could work on Godzilla, but he is afraid that if the government gets its hands on the formula, the substance will be weaponised and cause even greater harm.
A Pyrrhic victory
Godzilla isn't just a spectacular blockbuster, then – although it's certainly that – but a parable about a terrible dilemma: should we allow ourselves to develop more and more powerful weaponry, knowing that this escalation will lead to ever higher numbers of casualties? Ultimately, Serizawa is persuaded to use the oxygen destroyer, but he burns his notes beforehand, and kills himself afterwards while mournful music plays. "We're not invited to say, 'Hurrah, this is going to save the day,'" says Davidson. "The oxygen destroyer is a lesser evil than Godzilla, but it's still a last resort." The film-makers slot in some bitter irony, as a reporter crows about "a great victory for Dr Serizawa". But considering that it hinges on a gloomy sacrifice, the defeat of Godzilla is a long way from the kind of victory you might see in a Hollywood film.
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"It's not a victory at all," says Sloss. "There's the lingering threat of Pandora's Box having been opened. In some ways, the end of Godzilla is similar to the end of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, when Oppenheimer says to Einstein, 'We were worried that we'd start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world… I believe we did.' The message is that the arms race is never-ending, there's always going to be a bigger threat around the corner, we're always facing our own annihilation, and it will be at our own hands." Dr Yamane spells out this warning in the film's final words: "I don't think that was the only Godzilla. If they keep experimenting with deadly weapons, another Godzilla might appear, somewhere in the world."
Sure enough, a sequel was released just five months later, and they've kept on coming ever since: so far, there have been 33 Japanese Godzilla films, and while it's fair to say that none of them is as momentous as the 1954 original, both Sloss and Davidson stress that they are all worth seeing in their own right. "The series becomes a lot more knowing and playful," says Davidson, "but they're very inventive. Even the weaker of the films, even if they have, say, a giant cockroach waddling about, and it looks absurd, at least they're interesting and different and taking bold risks."
Sloss believes that the Japanese Godzilla series is "one of the most tonally rich franchises in the history of popular cinema", while Godzilla itself is "a very allegorically fluid character" who was created to comment on nuclear weaponry, but who went on to represent "the fight back against pollution, climate change, rampant consumerism and capitalism" and more. It's tricky to say what Godzilla is supposed to represent in its recent Hollywood blockbusters, but his latest Japanese outings, Shin Godzilla (2016) and Godzilla Minus One (2023) – which won an Oscar for its special effects – come closest to the tone of the original. Or maybe, as Sloss suggests, it's Oppenheimer that's the first film's true spiritual sequel. When Godzilla wreaks havoc in Tokyo, viewers might recall Oppenheimer's quotation from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
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Influential designer and creative director Clare Waight Keller on her move from Givenchy to Uniqlo, "re-defining what luxury is today" – and how Seoul street style is predicting what we wear.
Last week, Clare Waight Keller flew from London to Tokyo, grabbed some fabric swatches, and decided what millions of people will wear in September 2025. "I don't have a time machine," says the 54-year-old designer, who is now the creative director of Uniqlo, the global fashion chain. "But at this point, I've fine-tuned my fashion sense to live in the future," she tells the BBC from her home in Cornwall. "It's my job to see what will happen before it does."
If that sounds far-fetched, consider Keller's track record as something of a fashion intuit. She began her career at Calvin Klein during its early 1990s, Kate Moss heyday, then joined Tom Ford's team at Gucci around the year 2000. As creative director of Chloé in 2011, Keller helped develop the pale blush colour – called "millennial pink" by fashion theorist Véronique Hyland – that first appeared in floaty chiffon dresses and their corresponding Chloé perfume boxes, defining the era's more muted take on "girly" style, one that included a wider and more nuanced spectrum of feminine power. In 2017, Keller decamped for Givenchy, where her long-sleeved wedding dress for Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex spawned thousands of imitations just days after debuting in 2018. Even today, six years later, the boat-necked silhouette is echoed everywhere, from luxury labels like the Row to high-street brands like Bebe.
"You can't underestimate the design of that dress on young women," says Chloe Lee, 25, founder of the consumer trends newsletter Selleb, which tracks what Gen Z consumers are buying. "We were all in high school or college when we saw it. For us, it is the idea of a princess bride, or at least the starting point for one."
Keller is proud of her work with each label, and admits she "constantly" searches for old designs on resale platforms like eBay and Vestiaire Collective. But in 2020, she knew it was time for another change.
"Post-Covid was a watershed moment for me in terms of, 'Right, what's the next 10 years of style going to look like? And how can I be part of the future of fashion?'" she says. "I don't think you can do that right now without redefining what luxury is today."
But Givenchy, Chloé and Gucci are not Uniqlo, a brand selling $49 (£38) trousers in 25 countries worldwide. Keller says that's the whole point: "Through resale platforms, anybody can get a hold of designer pieces for reasonable prices." She's right: At Uniqlo competitor JCrew, cashmere sweaters cost about $150 (£116). On resale platform TheRealReal, nearly new versions from Fendi, Jil Sander and Keller's old haunt, Chloé, cost the same. Keller says the price-flattening won't discourage shoppers at mid-priced stores, but it will force the labels to better prove their value.
"Expense isn't luxury. Quality, innovation, excitement – that's luxury," she says. "How can we use fabric technology to make clothing last longer, look better, and have more versatility on the body? That's luxury. I'm a yarn nerd," she grins. "I went to Uniqlo because they have the tools to build a better fashion system. The yarn, the fabric tech – it's incredibly sophisticated."
Uniqlo's sustainability claims have been a sore spot for environmental commentators who claim, correctly, that its synthetic fabrics won't biodegrade, and could leech microplastics into the soil if they end up in landfills. In response, the brand has added "repair studios" in global flagships to mend things like torn hems and also to "adopt" clean, unwanted clothing for charity redistribution.
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Shoppers are buying into Uniqlo's vision, it seems, and the brand is growing. "How Uniqlo could become what Gap used to be" was the title of a Forbes article that explored how Uniqlo's parent company is expanding its North American store count.
"Their t-shirts have always been the best – their shape really holds up – but lately, the trousers have just been fantastic," says Laurel Pantin, a stylist for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and the founder of the popular Substack newsletter Earl Earl, which focuses on attainable fashion hacks. "You can tell there's a lot of intention behind the design."
In September, Uniqlo unveiled a new "wide leg straight jean" at Keller's direction. "The easiest way to know what pants you're going to wear next year is just to look at what the 18-year-old girls are wearing this year," says Keller. "You might not like it right away! It's a new silhouette… But soon, your eye will adjust." According to shoppers, "soon" is now: the jeans are sold out at Uniqlo. And next autumn, she predicts, will bring a load of fuzzy, furry coats – essentially, a hug you can buy and wear around town.
'Where's the newness?'
Keller's meticulously hand-sewn couture gowns may have been worn by Rihanna and Cate Blanchett, but the designer is not anti-tech. She says "it's inevitable" that she now uses artificial intelligence as part of her process. "You know those flocks of birds that suddenly swarm and move somewhere else? That's how AI frames trends. You see these tiny data points on how people are shopping, and then something shifts. All the dots move."
Keller sees each of those dots as a consumer purchase, and tracking its movement as a big part of her job. "We get these data sets telling us how people shop. Knowing that, how can we better design for them? I'm obsessed with that! But I have to tell you something important." She leans into her Zoom camera as if someone in her living room is listening in. "Once you have data, your information is already old. It's already happened… Where's the newness? How do people find new things? That's what I need to make sure I'm always tracking."
Keller says her twin daughters and son, all Gen Z, are vital to the search. "Without them, I don't know if I would have done my Reformation collection," a capsule line of 14 jewellery pieces like hammered silver cuffs and chunky link earrings. "My daughters are over the moon. These girls in their early 20s who have access to everything on their phones are still obsessed with this LA brand because they wandered around, got lost and walked into their store once… A machine can't tell you that'll happen."
Keller isn't just paying attention to her Gen Z children and their British friends. She's also been making pit stops to Seoul, South Korea in between work periods at Uniqlo's Tokyo headquarters. "There's a big café society happening over there," she says. "K-pop and K-beauty are driving this extremely fashion-forward moment for Korea, and that's driving the rest of the world, or you know, it will be."
Does that include major couture houses in Europe? "Absolutely," says Keller, who recommends taking a peek at Ader Error, the Seoul-based label run by an anonymous collective of Korean designers. "They're one of the coolest brands out in Seoul at the moment," she says, noting their slouchy kilts and denim bomber jackets as examples of South Korea's new youth style. "Give it five to 10 years and their fashion designers are going to be coming through to [European] design houses for sure."
Does Keller ever consider coming back through those same design houses, perhaps as creative director for an even bigger luxury house? She shrugs. "Time named me the most influential designer in the world in 2019," she says. "I thought, at the time, that it was the greatest honour I could have. I'm still so grateful, but you know what? Now I walk around outside in Paris or London or Japan, and I see three random guys wearing a coat I made for Uniqlo. They want to live their daily lives in this coat! That sense of achievement is really huge."
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Tickets for the Glastonbury Festival go on sale this week, with millions of fans expected to fight it out for a chance to attend the event, which will run from 25-29 June 2025.
No headliners have been announced yet, but demand is expected to be higher than ever because the festival will take a year off in 2026.
Last year, all 210,000 tickets sold out in just 58 minutes as more than 2.5 million people tried to log on and secure a place.
"There aren't enough tickets for everybody," organiser Emily Eavis told the BBC's Sidetracked podcast earlier this year. "It's one of the worst parts of the job [because] we can't do anything about it. We definitely can't do two weekends.
"But a lot of the time," she added, "people who really, really want to come often get tickets through volunteering or through competitions."
So there's always hope... But if you're brave enough to run the gauntlet of the online ticketing system, here are a few tips that might (might) help improve your chances.
1) Check your registration
As part of an ongoing (and successful) campaign to stop touts, anyone who wants to attend Glastonbury has to be registered in advance.
The registration window closed on Monday, 11 November - so if you're not on the list already, it's too late.
Everyone else is urged to check their details in advance, to make sure everything is up to date.
You will need to have the registration number and postcode for each person you are buying a ticket for when the sale begins.
2) Decide between coach or general entry
Glastonbury tickets come in two flavours - standard weekend tickets and coach weekend tickets.
Weekend tickets mean you can arrive under your own steam by train or car - although beware Glastonbury's legendary tailbacks, and how depleted your energy levels might be on the way home.
Coach tickets are more environmentally friendly and, according to some, increase your chances of success, depending on how remote your starting point is. However, it's important to note that festival tickets are distributed on the coach itself, so you can't cheat the system.
Ticket and coach packages will go on sale at 18:00 GMT on Thursday, 14 November.
General admission tickets will go on sale at 09:00 on Sunday, 17 November.
3) Team up with your friends
You can purchase up to six tickets once you reach the booking stage, as long as you have the registration details for each attendee.
Logically, the more people trying for tickets, the better the chances are of securing a space - so make sure all six of you are trying to log on when tickets go on sale (NB not in the same house... see below for why).
Your syndicate doesn't have to be formed of people you're physically going to the festival with. It can be friends, colleagues, aunts, uncles, neighbours or Chris Martin from Coldplay. The point is that you're working together.
Make a group chat so you can co-ordinate your efforts and, most importantly, put all of your registration numbers and postcodes in a shared document so the first person to reach the front of the queue is ready.
4) Don't fall for scam websites
The demand for Glastonbury tickets inevitably attracts scam artists and fraudsters, who prey on people's desperation to separate them from their money.
Tickets are sold exclusively at glastonbury.seetickets.com. Avoid the temptation of buying from elsewhere.
5) Log on early
This year, Glastonbury has introduced a new queueing system that requires you to log on in advance.
That way, when the ticket sale starts, you will be randomly assigned a place in the queue.
People who join later will automatically be placed at the back of the line, so it pays to be punctual.
Also, 09:00 on Sunday isn't the most sociable time of the week. Set an alarm. Set multiple alarms. Get an insomniac friend to come over to your house and poke you with a stick. Whatever works.
If it's possible (and I apologise for this in advance), you could even drag yourself into work. No matter how good your wifi is at home, a work computer could have a more stable connection.
6) Don't use multiple devices
Using multiple devices and browser tabs can result in errors and may even get you kicked out of the queue, which you definitely don't want.
Sticking to one device per household also makes the process more fair, according to the Glastonbury website.
"Whilst we understand that everyone wants to have the best possible chance of booking a ticket, running multiple devices simultaneously to attempt to access the website is a waste of valuable resources, and doesn’t reflect the ethos of the festival.
"Please stick to one device and one tab, so that you can focus on entering your details without confusing your browser and help us make the ticket sale as quick and stress free as possible for all."
7) Familiarise yourself with the booking process
A limited number of people will be given access to the booking system at any one time. Before that, you will be held in a queue.
When (or if) you get through, you will be asked to enter the registration number and postcode for the lead booker and up to five other people. Copy and paste them, instead of entering manually, to avoid errors.
When you proceed, the next page will summarise the details you entered. Check them carefully because they cannot be changed.
If you are booking a coach package, the next step will be to choose the time, date and place you will depart from. It is only possible to book tickets from one departure town in a single transaction.
Once that's all confirmed, you will be asked to enter payment details.
8) Have your payment information ready
This year, Glastonbury tickets cost £375.50 each plus a £5 booking fee - but at the check-out you will only pay a deposit of £75, with the balance due in the first week of April. (Children under the age of 12 go free, and do not need to be registered.)
Make sure you have enough money in your account (£450 if you're buying for six people) and, crucially, keep your card details to hand.
When the time comes, enter these details exactly as you see them because a mistake could result in the purchase being declined. In some cases, that could leave your registration details being frozen for up to 10 minutes.
Finally, make sure your phone is charged and notifications aren't silenced, in case your bank contacts you for verification.
9) Check your email
Once you've made the booking, be sure to check your email for confirmation - including the junk folder.
If you don't receive an email within three hours, ticket-holders are urged to contact See Tickets on their customer service portal.
10) Don't despair
If you're not one of the lucky ones, there's still hope.
It's possible to get into the festival as a volunteer - typically working three eight-hour shifts in return for a ticket.
And in April, a number of returned or unwanted tickets will be put up for sale. At which point, you can go through the stress of applying all over again.
11) Indulge in wild speculation about the line-up
This won't help you get tickets, but is an essential part of the annual routine.
Nobody except Emily Eavis knows who'll be headlining next year - but rumours are rumours, and everybody enjoys speculating about the line-up.
Oasis, whose reunion tour takes place next summer, have already ruled themselves out. But current contenders for the top slots include Sam Fender, who put on an incredible Pyramid Stage performance two years ago; and Olivia Rodrigo, who's already headlining the BST Festival in London on Glastonbury weekend.
Eminem and Rihanna are among the perennial will-they/won't-they headliners, while Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder are supposedly in the running for the legend slot.
In previous years, piecemeal confirmation of the line-up has started in November, but the full rundown is typically kept under wraps until March.
Anyone But You star Sydney Sweeney has said the idea of women supporting each other in the film and TV industry is "fake".
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the actress, who's also known for Euphoria and White Lotus, said: "This entire industry, all people say is 'women empowering other women'.
"None of it's happening. All of it is fake and a front for all the other [stuff] that they say behind everyone’s back."
Earlier this year, the star hit back at "shameful" comments made about her by a female Hollywood producer who said: "She's not pretty, she can't act. Why is she so hot?"
Asked about the incident for the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Sweeney said: "It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down, especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard - hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have - and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done."
Sweeney, one of Hollywood's biggest breakout stars of recent years, went on to discuss why this might be the case.
"I've read that our entire lives, we were raised - and it’s a generational problem - to believe only one woman can be at the top," she said.
"There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything.
"So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, let’s all lift each other up.
"I'm still trying to figure it out. I’m just trying my best over here. Why am I getting attacked?"
In April, Carol Baum, who produced films including Dead Ringers and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spoke about Sweeney after a film screening.
According to Variety, Baum had said: "There's an actress who everybody loves now - Sydney Sweeney. I don't get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney's movie [Anyone But You] because I wanted to watch it.
"I wanted to know who she is and why everybody's talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie - sorry to people who love this... romantic comedy where they hate each other."
Baum, who also teaches at the University of Southern California, added: "I said to my class, 'Explain this girl to me. She's not pretty, she can't act. Why is she so hot?' Nobody had an answer."
In response, Sweeney's representative told Variety: "How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman."
The festive season is getting under way again, and so too is the battle of the Christmas adverts.
John Lewis has become the latest retailer to beam its festive message into UK homes.
The advert, released on Thursday, is a whimsical journey through one woman's memories as she tries to find the perfect Christmas gift for her sister.
Set to Richard Ashcroft's 1990s track Sonnet, the ad is a "real tear-jerker" and suggests the retailer wanted to "return to its roots", analysts said.
"Most of this year's festive adverts have fun at their heart - gnomes taking over Asda, a mystery whodunit at Waitrose, the welcome return of Kevin the Carrot at Aldi," said retail expert Catherine Shuttleworth.
But John Lewis has hit a "more traditional" feel, she added, after last year’s advert proved divisive.
Its 2023 commercial featured a giant Venus flytrap. It left some viewers perplexed, as they questioned what a bloodthirsty plant had to do with Christmas.
Elsewhere, many brands have taken a lighthearted approach.
"Humour and fun are a good way to raise spirits after what has been a difficult year in the world," Ms Shuttleworth said. "So you can see why retailers have taken that route."
Aldi has brought back Kevin the Carrot for his ninth consecutive year.
Joined by his wife Katie, he plunges into another assignment, as he tries to get the "spirit of Christmas" back from the dastardly humbugs.
Meanwhile, Asda's festive advert features a team of garden gnomes who rise up from the snow to save Christmas.
Marks and Spencer has also opted for tried-and-tested themes. Its food advert sees the return of Dawn French as a festive fairy, and she also appears as herself.
The first of the six-part ad series sees an exhausted French on her way home, complaining about how much she has to do.
The fairy then pops up and offers a helping hand, transforming French's house, making it ready for a Christmas party with mountains of festive food.
Morrisons' singing oven gloves are also back, as the supermarket puts the focus on those hosting the Christmas meal.
The advert is set to Give a Little Love from the film Bugsy Malone, with the soundtrack sung by a choir of Morrisons staff.
Argos has also gone for the same characters as last year - cartoon duo Connie the doll and Trevor the dinosaur.
The decision to use familiar ideas and characters is a smart one, said Lynne Deason, head of creative excellence at analysts Kantar.
"Consistency pays in advertising," she said. "Sticking with the same creative approach often makes it easier for people to know which brand is being advertised.
"It can build a sense of nostalgia too, adding to the entertainment factor."
Famous faces
While John Lewis shunned celebrities, some other adverts are fronted by famous faces.
Its Waitrose supermarkets has a whodunit two-parter which leaves audiences on a cliffhanger, starring Succession's Matthew Macfadyen as a detective on the hunt to uncover who has stolen the family's red velvet cake.
Elsewhere, Greggs has enlisted Nigella Lawson to star in its first ever Christmas advert.
The TV chef declares it is her "favourite time of year" before tucking into festive bakes.
Opinion was divided on social media, with one X user saying the advert had combined "Nigella and Greggs, two of the greatest loves of my life".
But another questioned whether they were living in a "weird parallel universe", adding: "Is this a really early April Fool?"
Other retailers have gone with famous animated characters.
Sainsbury's was quick off the mark with its advert, which features beloved Roald Dahl character the Big Friendly Giant (BFG).
We see the BFG asking the supermarket to make his Christmas "a big more phizz-whizzing".
Meanwhile, Lidl - like John Lewis - has gone for a classic tale designed to tug at the heartstrings.
It depicts a girl who decides to send a present to a boy who is feeling lonely, a nod to the retailer's toy bank scheme.
There's no mistaking the message of goodwill, as a voiceover encourages viewers to "think big", but also asks: "Is it not more Christmassy to give?"
Tesco's advert features a man called Gary who is trying to celebrate Christmas while mourning his grandmother. The melancholy ad sees Gary continuing a tradition they shared, building a gingerbread house as his way to remember her.
Amazon has also opted for the theme of kindness, telling the story of a theatre caretaker whose hidden singing talent is discovered by his colleagues.
They encourage the janitor to go on stage, where he performs What the World Needs Now Is Love.
'It's part of the Christmas countdown'
From the big-screen debut of a musical theatre classic to the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's Roman epic, these are the films to see this month.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
The story behind The Seed of the Sacred Fig is almost as remarkable as what's on screen. Its writer-director, Mohammad Rasoulof, had served time in prison in Iran for speaking out against the regime, and so he shot the film in secret. Shortly after it was chosen to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, Rasoulof was sentenced to eight more years in prison, but he managed to flee the country, and made it to Cannes in time for the red-carpet premiere. The Seed of the Sacred Fig went on to be one of the festival's most acclaimed films. Its central characters, Iman (Misagh Zare) and Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), are determined to stay out of trouble after Iman is promoted to a well-paid government job, so tensions rise when their two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), show signs of rebelling. "This searing domestic thriller deserves the widest audience possible," says Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. "Rasoulof crafts an extraordinarily gripping allegory about the corrupting costs of power and the suppression of women under a religious patriarchy that crushes the very people it claims to protect."
Released on 27 November in the US
The Piano Lesson
The Piano Lesson is a family affair. Adapted from August Wilson's Pulitzer prize-winning play, this supernatural drama is produced by Denzel Washington, directed by one of his sons, Malcolm Washington, and stars another of them, John David Washington. The story is a family affair, too. John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler play a brother and sister, Boy Willie and Berniece. When Boy Willie returns home to Pittsburgh in 1936 after a stint in prison, he argues that they should sell a prized heirloom, a 100-year-old piano which is carved with the faces of their enslaved forebears. The siblings' uncle, meanwhile, is played by Samuel L Jackson – who had the role of Boy Willie when Wilson's play opened in 1987. "With performances that will resonate and a directorial debut that will not soon be forgotten, The Piano Lesson is a lesson in love, friendship and family," says Carla Renata in The Wrap, "it serves as a reminder that generational wealth is not just monetary, but emotionally and genetically tied to our ancestors."
Released on 8 November in the US, the UK and Australia, and 22 November on Netflix internationally
Emilia Pérez
Jacques Audiard is known for such hard-edged contemporary thrillers as The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan, and the plot of his latest film, Emilia Pérez, suggests that it's more of the same: Zoe Saldaña stars as a lawyer who agrees to help a Mexican gangster (Karla Sofía Gascón) have gender reassignment surgery, so that she can start a new life as Emilia. The twist is that the film is a musical, which means that Saldaña and her co-stars, including Selena Gomez, keep belting out songs written by Camille, a French pop star. "Emilia Pérez is a hip-swaggering, trigger-clicking, scalpel-wielding work of weird brilliance," says Nick Howells in the Evening Standard. "It's a gloriously original tribute to anyone who truly dares to go their own way, but particularly the amazing women who do it under extreme fire."
Released on 1 November in the US, and 13 November on Netflix internationally
Here
Robert Zemeckis is the director, Eric Roth is the screenwriter, Tom Hanks plays the hero and Robin Wright plays the heroine. The last time you could say that about a film it was Forrest Gump, 30 years ago, but the four old colleagues have reunited at last – and it's for a project that is similarly ambitious in the way it hops through time and breaks technical boundaries. Based on Richard McGuire's graphic novel, Here tells the story of a couple's marriage, but it does so by focusing on one room, as seen from one angle, throughout the decades. It even shows how that same view would have appeared in the distant past and the far future. "The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does," Zemeckis told Anthony Breznican in Vanity Fair. "It's actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented. But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture."
Released on 1 November in the US and 29 November in Canada
Juror #2
Ridley Scott may have directed Gladiator II when he was 86, but he's a whippersnapper compared to Clint Eastwood, who has just completed his fortieth film as director at the age of 94. "You know, honestly, I thought he would have stopped by now," said Eastwood's friend and collaborator, producer Robert Lorenz. "I talked to him just before Juror #2, [and] he said, 'No, I don't think I'm going to do any more.' So, I wouldn't be surprised if that is the last movie. But never say never. He's always full of surprises, that guy." Juror #2 may have a few surprises, as well. Written by Jonathan A Abrams, it's a courtroom thriller starring Nicholas Hoult as Justin Kemp, a family man who is selected for the jury in a high-profile murder trial. The defendant is accused of ramming his car into his girlfriend, but Justin remembers crashing his own car into something or someone on the dark and stormy night in question. Can he stop an innocent man being jailed without incriminating himself in the process?
Released on 1 November in the US, the UK, Canada and Ireland, and 14 November in Italy
Moana 2
Moana was an ocean-sized hit in 2016, so you can hardly blame Disney for taking us on further seafaring adventures with the Polynesian princess (Auli'i Cravalho) and her demigod buddy, Maui (Dwayne Johnson). The plan was, though, that there would be a live-action remake, featuring most of the same actors as the cartoon, plus an animated television series that would stream on Disney+. It was only in February of this year that the studio announced that it was changing course: the live-action Moana would be delayed, and the series would be repurposed as a feature film. Again, you can hardly blame Disney: the company's last two big-screen cartoons – Strange World in 2022 and Wish in 2023 – were notorious flops. Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, conceded that Disney would be: "leaning a little bit more into sequels and franchises" as a result, but he had high hopes for Moana 2: "This was originally developed as a series, but we were impressed with what we saw, and we knew it deserved a theatrical release."
Released on 27 November in cinemas internationally
Gladiator II
Ever since Gladiator came out in 2000, people have been trying to work out how to make a sequel – not an easy task, given that the hero of the original film, Russell Crowe's Maximus Decimus Meridius, was killed at the end. Crowe even commissioned a screenplay from Nick Cave, the rock star, in which Maximus meets the Roman gods in the underworld before being reincarnated. Still, enough time has passed now that there's a simpler way of carrying on Ridley Scott's Roman saga. Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) – and, perhaps, the son of Maximus, too. After his family is killed by the soldiers of General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), Lucius is trained in combat by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave who is plotting to overthrow the Emperor (Joseph Quinn). "Gladiator II is much bigger, rawer, and more violent than the original," says Gabriella Paiella in GQ. "The sprawling battle sequences, yes, but also the man-to-man scrappy combat. You will spend much of the film mid-wince."
Released on 22 November in cinemas internationally
Wicked
This film of the Wizard of Oz spin-off musical is directed by John M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights), and it stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, alongside Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland, the future Glinda the Good. At first, they are roommates at the magical Shiz University, so how do they become enemies? Audiences won't get the answer to that question for another year. Wicked may be 160 minutes long, but it only covers half of the show: for the first time ever, a Hollywood musical is being released in two parts, and the second instalment isn't coming out until November 2025. "As we prepared the production over the last year," explained Chu, "it became impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it… With more space, we can tell the story as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters."
Released on 22 November in cinemas internationally
A Real Pain
Anyone who has seen Kieran Culkin in Succession and Jesse Eisenberg in, well, anything will know how far apart their usual screen personas are. Eisenberg tends to play uptight and anxious characters, whereas Culkin, says Peter Howell in the Toronto Star, "is like a human exclamation mark, eager to be seen and to make a scene". This gulf between the two is filled with hilarious and poignant disagreements in A Real Pain, a highly acclaimed, heartfelt comedy drama written, directed and produced by Eisenberg. He and Culkin play cousins who have grown apart, but who reunite for a road trip through Poland in honour of their late grandmother. "Cue the comic clashing, accented by an artful Chopin piano score," says Howell, "but Eisenberg doesn't force the laughs as he subtly explores the double meaning of the title. He's developing a humanistic style in the vein of Hal Ashby and Alexander Payne and it's a joy to watch."
Released on 1 November in the US
Blitz
British films about World War Two tend to revolve around the combatants (Dunkirk), the spies (Operation Mincemeat) and the leaders (Darkest Hour), but Steve McQueen's Blitz shows what life was like for the ordinary citizens, the people of London who endured nightly Luftwaffe bombings. Central among these are two East Enders, a single mother (Saoirse Ronan) and her nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan). Along with thousands of other London children, George is packed off on a train to the countryside for his own safety, but he is determined to go home, so he sneaks back into the war-blasted metropolis. McQueen, the maker of the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, has written and directed an adventure film "that feels new and revelatory", says Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent, "purely because it's being viewed through the eyes of its singular director – expressionist yet rarely sentimental, disquieting in its terrors yet tender in its hope, and profoundly interested in the ordinary lives of others".
Released on 1 November in the US and the UK, and 22 November on Apple TV+ internationally
Queer
Luca Guadagnino – the director of Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and Challengers – has made another of his lavish dramas about intensely passionate, but not necessarily happy relationships. This one is a steamy adaptation of William Burroughs' autobiographical novel, Queer. Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, a dissolute US ex-pat who drifts from bar to bar in Mexico City in the 1950s. He is besotted by a handsome younger man (Drew Starkey), and fixated on finding a herb in a South American jungle that could grant him telepathic powers. "It's not just the explicit love scenes [that] leave little to the imagination," says David Fear in Rolling Stone. "What's shocking is the vulnerability that the actor shows… Embodying Burroughs' alter ego and cycling through Lee's lust, jealousy, world-weariness, neediness and bliss, Craig cracks this smitten, doomed romantic wide open."
Released on 27 November in the US
September 5
On 5 September 1972, a Palestinian terrorist group took several Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics, which ended with the deaths of 11 athletes and five of the terrorists. The incident was the subject of Kevin Macdonald's Oscar-winning Storyville documentary, One Day in September, and its aftermath was the subject of Steven Spielberg's thriller, Munich. Now a new docudrama directed by Tim Fehlbaum tells the story from the perspective of a US news crew that was on the spot. Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch play the ABC Sports broadcasters who assumed that they would be reporting on nothing more important than swimming, but who are now faced with staggering technical and ethical challenges. Is it justifiable to put the potentially horrific events on live television? And if it is, how can they do so with the limited equipment they have available? "Editor Hansjorg Weissbrich keeps this intimate drama rocketing along, harnessing the frantic energy of different individuals," says Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. "Operating in a stripped-down docufiction manner that emphasises the tense circumstances… September 5 recounts that tragic day with a combination of electricity and dread, drawing on strong performances for a meditation on the media's responsibilities during such a volatile situation."
Released on 27 November in the US
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From a small-screen spinoff of the Denis Villeneuve Dune films to the return of Sharon Horgan's Bad Sisters, these are the shows to stream this month.
The Day of the Jackal
Casting is the biggest lure in this action thriller, with Eddie Redmayne as an assassin-for-hire, code-named Jackal. The character first appeared in Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel, which became a 1973 film with Edward Fox, but the story has been updated to the present. Now Lashana Lynch is Bianca, an MI6 agent determined to catch the Jackal. "I will find him and kill him myself," she tells her sceptical bosses. He varies his look with disguises, eluding her as she chases him across Europe amid explosions and shootouts. Redmayne is known for more sympathetic roles, like Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, but he has said that playing this villain was part of the series' appeal. "They have a really complex moral compass and do horrendous things, but are also extraordinarily talented," Redmayne told Vanity Fair about The Jackal and Bianca. "You're drawn to them and repelled by them in equal measure." Charles Dance and Richard Dormer also feature in the show, which was created by Ronan Bennett (Top Boy).
The Day of the Jackal premieres 7 November on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK and 14 November on Peacock in the US
Bad Sisters
This show about sisters and murder in Dublin won the 2023 Bafta for best drama series, but it is also a delicious dark comedy. In this second season the five Garvey sisters can't avoid more fallout from the past, when Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) killed her abusive husband, and her siblings helped cover it up. Now Grace marries a new love, apparently borrowed from Sandra Oh because he is played by Owen McDonnell, Oh's husband on Killing Eve. Sharon Horgan, who also created Bad Sisters, plays the responsible Eva, with Eve Hewson as the freewheeling baby of the family, Becka, Sarah Green as Bibi, and Eva Birthistle as Ursula, a nurse whose skills are handy because people around that family tend to need medical help. Two terrific new cast additions include Fiona Shaw as a nosy neighbour and Thaddea Graham as a smart, underestimated young detective who has her suspicions about the Garveys. The plot often hinges on near-escape – how many times can the sisters narrowly avoid being locked up? – and it is great fun to watch them try.
Bad Sisters premieres 13 November on Apple TV+ internationally
Say Nothing
Patrick Raden Keefe's 2018 non-fiction book about the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland was compelling because of its strong narrative and focus on characters, which makes it a natural source for this fact-based drama. The story begins when Jean McConville, a suspected member of the Irish Republican Army, is abducted. The series then takes us inside the IRA. Lola Pettigrew plays the central character, Dolours Price, who along with her sister, Marian (Hazel Doupe), was imprisoned for setting off a car bomb in London in 1973. Maxine Peake plays an older version of Dolours, who told her own story later in life (the centrepiece of the 2018 documentary I, Dolours) and who died in 2013. Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) plays the IRA strategist Brendan Hughes, and Josh Finan is Gerry Adams, the best known of the real-life characters, who was instrumental in the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 and has always denied an association with the IRA. The show may be historical, but its theme of political violence is resonant and timely.
Say Nothing premieres 14 November on Disney + in the UK and Hulu in the US
Cross
Nothing says confidence more than renewing a show for a second season before the first has even premiered, which is the case with this crime series based on James Patterson's Alex Cross novels. (The earliest was published in 1993 and the most recent just last year.) Aldis Hodge, who has shown intensity and charisma in smaller roles in One Night in Miami and The Invisible Man, stars as Cross, a police detective and forensic psychologist in Washington DC, on the trail of a serial killer. John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa), his best friend and partner on the force, is by his side as the widowed Cross grapples with the psychological fallout from his job while raising two small children. The Cross novels have already been adapted into three films, with Morgan Freeman starring in two sturdy ones, Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001) and Tyler Perry in a flop, Alex Cross (2012). Still, the odds favour a success, and a breakout for Hodge.
Cross premieres 14 November on Amazon Prime internationally
Dune: Prophecy
One of the most intriguing aspects of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films is the Bene Gesserit, the religious order of women who have developed supernatural powers. Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), mother of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is a member. This spinoff takes place in the same Dune universe, and tells the origin story of the Bene Gesserit. Emily Watson stars as Valya Harkonnen and Olivia Williams as her sister, Tula, founders of the order. "We like to say this show is set 10,000 years BC, meaning 'Before Chalamet'," Watson told Empire magazine. Mark Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, ruler of the Imperium. The show, one of the season's most anticipated, has a built-in Dune audience. But Jessica Barden, who plays the younger Valya, tells Den of Geek that the series may undercut movie viewers' expectations that the Harkonnens are evil. "Is this a villain?" she asks. Or, "Is this just a regular young person who has a thing she wants to avenge in the way we all do sometimes?" One thing that hasn't changed is the landscape. There is a lot, a lot of sand.
Dune: Prophecy premieres 17 November on HBO and Max in the US and 18 November on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK
Landman
It seems like a strange Venn diagram, where roughhewn Billy Bob Thornton and suave Jon Hamm land in the same series, but here it is, part of the ever-expanding Taylor Sheridan universe. Unlike Sheridan's biggest hit, Yellowstone, this one is not set on a ranch but in the oil fields of Texas, with Thornton as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager for an oil company, and Hamm as Monty Miller, an oil baron. The men and their families have history. The cast also includes Andy Garcia, Ali Larter and Demi Moore, who plays Monty's wife, Cami. The show was created by Sheridan and Christian Wallace, host of the 2019 podcast Boomtown, which inspired the series. Official descriptions are not usually worth repeating, but this one, echoing the podcast's, is too grandiose to ignore. Paramount says Landman is "an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fuelling a boom so big it's reshaping our climate, our economy, our geopolitics." Also, it's a soap opera.
Landman premieres on 17 November on Paramount+ in the US and 18 November in the UK
Interior Chinatown
The standup and actor Jimmy O Yang (Silicon Valley) stars in this action dramedy as Willis Wu, an actor playing a small part in a Law and Order-style crime series called Black & White, a show within this deliberately head-spinning series. Charles Yu adapted Interior Chinatown from his 2020 novel, which is written in the form of a television script, and wittily tackles issues of Asian stereotypes and representation. Willis, unable to break out of small background roles like a waiter in a Chinese restaurant, says in the trailer, with good reason, "I feel like I'm a background character in someone else's story." Things change when Detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet) recruits him to help investigate a crime because he knows Los Angeles' Chinatown, a twist that might lead him to his missing brother, who vanished 12 years before. Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show and Crazy Rich Asians) effectively delivers his comic lines as Willis's best friend, Fatty Choi. Taika Waititi, an executive producer of the show, also directed the first episode.
Interior Chinatown premieres 19 November on Hulu in the US
A Man on the Inside
Ted Danson, a master of the sitcom from Cheers in the 1980s to, more recently, The Good Place, stars in another, a role that would seem preposterous if it weren't also true. A Man on the Inside is based on the 2020 Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, which won the Oscar for best international film, about a man who goes undercover at a nursing home to investigate possible abuses. Danson plays Charles, a retired widower in San Francisco with time on his hands, who answers an ad looking for a spy. Stephanie Beatriz plays the manager of the home Charles infiltrates, and Stephen McKinley Henderson and Sally Struthers play residents. The show was created by Mike Schur, known for sophisticated sitcoms including The Good Place, Brooklyn 99 and Parks and Recreation. The combination of Danson and Schur makes this fictional version of the real story sound especially promising.
A Man on the Inside premieres 21 November on Netflix internationally
Get Millie Black
The Jamaican-born novelist Marlon James, whose books include the Booker Prize winner A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) and the Africa-set fantasy Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) created this crime series, with a setting close to home. Tamara Lawrance (The Long Song, Time), plays Millie Black, a detective formerly with Scotland Yard, who returns home to Jamaica to work for the Kingston police. (James's parents were both police detectives.) She and her partner, Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr), are soon embroiled in a disturbing missing person's case. Joe Dempsie (Gendry Baratheon on Game of Thrones) plays Luke Holborn, sent from Scotland Yard to investigate a case that may overlap with hers. "This is just another story about Jamaica," Millie says in the trailer "but like every story about this country, this is a ghost story" – a hint at the way James layers social awareness over crime-solving.
Get Millie Black premieres 25 November on HBO and Max in the US and 2025 on Channel 4 in the UK
The Madness
Colman Domingo, often seen on the Oscar campaign trail these days, (last year's Rustin, which earned him a nomination, and this year's Sing Sing) stars in this topical thriller as a television pundit, Muncie Daniels, who finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy. He stumbles across a dead body in the woods, which turns out to be the corpse of a white supremacist and Muncie is framed for the murder. His trajectory takes him from looking polished on television to hiding at night in a body of water reaching up to his neck. "It was a unique protagonist," Domingo has said of the role, adding cryptically that Muncie is "someone who has centrist beliefs, and now they're being thrust into the world to really hard-core believe in something, and to reexamine the people that they believed were possible enemies." He also added, "We do live in a very mad, mad world right now."
The Madness premieres 28 November on Netflix internationally
The Agency
Michael Fassbender stars in this thriller based on the great, globally popular French series The Bureau. He plays a CIA agent, Martian, a version of the character played by Matthieu Kassovitz in the original. After spending years undercover, Martian has now been reassigned to the London Station, but carries the baggage from all that time living under a false identity, as he resists the company psychologist, reengages with a former love and grapples with a new global threat. In addition to Fassbender, there are other big names all around. Richard Gere plays Martian's boss and Jodie Turner-Smith is his ex-lover, along with Jeffrey Wright, John Magaro and Katherine Waterston. The show was written by the playwright Jez Butterworth and his brother John-Henry Butterworth, who together have worked on films including Edge of Tomorrow and Ford v Ferrari. And Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) directed the first two episodes. If The Agency resembles The Bureau, it will be endlessly taut and suspenseful.
The Agency premieres 29 November on Paramount+ with Showtime internationally
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The tension is building in the race for the White House – and that tension runs through Hollywood's most gripping political dramas, comedies and documentaries.
The current campaign may be the most tumultuous in US history, with a late-in-the-day candidate change and two dramatic debates, along with the possibility (again) of the first woman president. But the race for the White House has intrigued film-makers for decades, with some startling results. Even Frank Capra, the goody-two-shoes of US cinema, cast a sceptical eye on the process. Some films are thinly veiled fictions, others prescient fantasies, but all find themes that go the heart of US democracy and ideals. Here are some of the best presidential election movies, including an under-appreciated gem from Mike Nichols and Elaine May, another starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, and a West Wing warm-up from Aaron Sorkin.
1. Primary Colors (1998) dir Mike Nichols
One of Mike Nichols' best and least-known films, with a glittering screenplay by Elaine May, this satire follows a not-at-all veiled fictional version of Bill Clinton through the primaries on his way to the White House. John Travolta is unlikely but brilliant as Jack Stanton, a Southern governor who can charm his way out of anything. Travolta captures the Clinton charisma as well as the empathetic "I feel your pain" glances without becoming a caricature. Emma Thompson plays his wife, Susan, a Hillary before she had a political career of her own, but whose instincts are as sharp as anyone's. Based on the 1996 novel by the journalist Joe Klein (originally published as Anonymous), the film goes behind the scenes as the campaign tries to dispel rumours – some true, some not – of Stanton's womanising. Adrian Lester, as an idealistic young campaign manager, embodies the theme of lost innocence that runs through so many movies about US elections. The film is also very funny even as it raises one of the fundamental questions of 20th and 21st-Century politics: does a little spin and subterfuge matter if it helps put someone who'll do the best for the US in the White House? Even Lincoln stretched the truth, Stanton argues.
2. All the President's Men (1976) dir Alan J Pakula
One of the great films of our time, All the President's Men is of course front-and-centre about journalism. But take another look as you'll see how much it is also about dirty campaign politics. When Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, track down the truth behind the Watergate break-in and the cover-up that led to Richard Nixon's resignation, much of their investigation leads them to CREEP, the all-too-accurate acronym for the Republicans' Committee to Re-elect the President. That committee's bungled attempt to steal information from the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building was just the first clue to exposing all sorts of other campaign creepiness from illegal payments to character assassination. Still suspenseful every time you watch it, the film beautifully weaves together many threads about the US. The corruption behind Nixon's 1972 campaign is one of its themes with enduring, cautionary impact.
3. Wag the Dog (1997) dir Barry Levinson
This satire from the 1990s seems timelier than ever now, in the age of artificial intelligence and disputes about what constitutes a fact. Robert De Niro is at his droll best as Conrad Brean, a campaign consultant called in when a story about the president's affair with a young woman breaks two weeks before the election that will keep him in office. (One jaw-dropping aside: the film was released just a month before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. The Clinton presidency really was a gift to film-makers.) To save the campaign, Brean recruits a Hollywood producer – hilariously played as the ultimate narcissist by Dustin Hoffman – to film evidence of a war with Albania that doesn't really exist. They even find a war hero who wasn't a hero and make him a celebrity. The press buys it, the public buys it and who's to say what's real anymore? The film's portrayal of how politics and Hollywood merge is taken for granted now, but David Mamet's biting screenplay and Barry Levinson's sharp direction hold up perfectly.
4. The War Room (1993) dir DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus
DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's groundbreaking documentary is based on amazing behind-the-scenes access to Bill Clinton's first run for president in 1992, and stands as the real-life version of Primary Colors. Clinton appears only briefly. The central characters are the strategist James Carville and the communications director, a baby-faced George Stephanopoulos, long before he became a news anchor. A sign on the wall of the campaign office gives us Carville's now famous line about what mattered most: "The Economy. Stupid." Stephanopoulos is seen putting out media fires, including a phone conversation in which he tells a reporter working on a rumour about Clinton that he will look foolish and have no future if he writes that lie, almost making that response sound like a fact not a threat. (That particular rumour has, in fact, long since been discredited.) The film is exhilarating as it captures all the youthful energy of a campaign running on hope and adrenaline.
5. The Best Man (1964) dir Franklin J Schaffner
Gore Vidal's screenplay is firmly in the JFK era, but its take on the machinations to choose a presidential nominee at a split convention still goes to the heart of many issues in campaign politics, including money, promises made in exchange for support and skeletons in the candidates' closets. Henry Fonda plays William Russell, the experienced secretary of state, fondly called an egghead by one of his supporters. "Do you think people mistrust intellectuals like you in politics?" one reporter asks him. Senator Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson, who the year before played Kennedy as a war hero in the hagiographic PT-109) is his slick, young, ends-justifies-the means rival. Each candidate has dirt on the other, but will they use it? Vidal takes a jab at the era's homophobia by making one of the secrets the rumour of a gay affair, and complicates the issue when it turns out that one of the rumours is false. The noble ending seems forced, but until then the film remains full of intrigue and soul-searching questions.
6. State of the Union (1948) dir Frank Capra
This strong but little-known Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn drama was directed by Frank Capra, and its sharp-eyed cynicism about the political process makes it one of his least corny films. Tracy plays Grant Matthews, a successful businessman married to Mary (Hepburn) but involved in an affair with a politically ambitious newspaper heiress, Kay Thorndyke, played by Angela Lansbury. Kay wants to use her money and influence to put Grant in the White House, but they'll need Mary to play along as the loyal spouse. Hepburn captures Mary's hurt and disappointment when she realises she's being used as a campaign prop (the spouse as prop is one of the most intractable aspects of running for office). Tracy makes Grant an essentially good man who for a time is co-opted by ambition and political handlers. Like any Capra film, this one an idealistic ending, but its true interest for us today is its clarity about the seductiveness of power and the compromises that go into electing a president.
7. The American President (1995) dir Rob Reiner
If you love The West Wing but wish it were more of a romcom, this is the film for you. Before creating his series, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for this Rob Reiner politics-tinged romance about Andrew Shepherd, charmingly played by Michael Douglas, a widowed president and single father running for re-election. When he falls for an environmental lobbyist, Sydney Ellen Wade, played with equal charm by Annette Bening, his advisors tell him to keep her out of the public eye and his rivals start attacking her. Martin Sheen, before he was President Bartlett on The West Wing, plays Shepherd's chief of staff and best friend, and there is a hint of the television series in the wrangling to get votes for Shepherd's crime bill to pass through Congress, along with the question of whether he will jeopardise his re-election by supporting an environmental bill. But the most characteristic Sorkin element is the rosy idealism about the possibility of politics to do some good, an idea that makes this a buoyant outlier among more typical, sceptical 1990s political movies.
8. The Ides of March (2011) dir George Clooney
This dynamic film starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, who also directed, didn't make much of an impact when it was released, possibly because its story, with a whiff of the Clinton sex scandals, might have seemed tired during the Obama years. Seen now, it smartly taps into the persistent theme of lost political innocence, with Gosling as Stephen Meyers, a young but savvy campaign strategist, who goes to work for Mike Morris (Clooney) a politically gifted governor running for president. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Stephen's jaded boss and Paul Giamatti is the manager of a rival campaign in a cast that includes Jeffrey Wright and Marisa Tomei. Evan Rachel Wood plays a young Morris intern, and the very mention of that role is enough to hint that you know where the plot is heading. But the gamesmanship among the candidates, and between the campaigns and the press, is so smart and well-played that the predictability hardly matters.
9. Game Change (2012) dir Jay Roach
You might laugh to keep from crying at this fact-based film about how John McCain's campaign chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate, a cynical, haphazard move that backfired in every possible way. Jay Roach's comedy-of-errors stays close to reality, based on the reported book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and at times edits actual reporters and politicians into scenes with the actors. Woody Harrelson plays Steve Schmidt, the strategist who insists that McCain (Ed Harris) has to do something game-changing, like choosing a woman, to have a chance of beating Obama. With time running out, and little vetting, they choose the inexperienced but telegenic Palin. Julianne Moore brings Palin to life with remarkable verisimilitude as she captures her odd inflections of language, and with some sympathy for how far she is out of her depth. She is so clueless about foreign affairs, and for that matter foreign countries, that Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson), the director of communications who is trying to guide her through, just gives up. Sobering yet still a romp, this film might be the only silver lining in the whole Palin debacle.
10. Head of State (2003) dir Chris Rock
The Obama presidency was just a gleam in America's eye when Chris Rock wrote, directed and starred in this comedy as Mays Gilliam, a lowly local politician in Washington, DC who is recruited by the Democrats to run for president when their candidate dies shortly before the election. It's all a ruse: the party politicians want to get credit for running a black candidate, who is sure to lose, while keeping the spot open for one of their own insiders next term. The joke is on them, of course. Mays is a straight-talking guy, in touch with working people and willing to tell them the no-nonsense truth about everything, pointing to inequities and getting crowds to chant, "That ain't right!" Rock's stand-up comedy is often satiric, but this film is more broadly comic – Bernie Mac plays Mays' loud, brash brother – and more earnest. It echoes the question raised way back in 1948 by State of the Union: can a truth-teller win? Head of State doesn't entirely work. It's distracting when the rapper Nate Dog pops in and out of the film with musical narration. But it is breezy and fun, so ignore that 30 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
11. Bonus Short: Betty Boop for President (1932) dir Dave Fleischer
Back when the very idea of a woman president was preposterous, Betty Boop ran. The cartoon vamp campaigned with a song in this six-and-a-half-minute animated comedy, with promises of ice cream and shared wealth. "Some of you have money / While some are poor, you know," she sings. "If you send me to Washington / I'll just divide the dough." She imagines herself in front of a split Congress, the elephants on one side and the donkeys on the other disagreeing on everything. The short is a delightful little oddity, but honestly, there have been worse candidates.
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Dismissed or trivialised by some as unserious and silly, Surrealist art was in fact largely born out of the brutal trauma of living under fascism, as these five striking works reveal.
It's a century since André Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism advocated a "mode of pure expression… dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason". Writing was the intended vehicle for this unbridled imagination; art was thought too unspontaneous. Yet, just a year later, on 13 November 1925, the first exhibition of Surrealist art was staged in Paris, unleashing a world of peculiar, dream-infused works by artists such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Max Ernst.
Given Surrealist art's fantastic forms – from Salvador Dalí's melting pocket watches and lobster telephone to Méret Oppenheim's furry cup and saucer – it's easy to dismiss or trivialise these outlandish works as more silly than serious. However, as galleries mark the Manifesto's centenary with exhibitions on Surrealism and its legacy, the movement's poignant response to the war years that spawned it is being brought to the fore.
The exhibition But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism, at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, aims "to show that the movement of Surrealism formed at the same time as those fascist movements in Europe, and thus it is highly impactful and even constitutive, in many ways, of the political self-understanding of Surrealism", co-curator Stephanie Weber tells the BBC. The Surrealists – with the exception of Dalí – were anti-fascist, often with close ties to the French Communist Party. "All the artists in our exhibition were personally impacted by fascism," and "fought back", says Weber. "Many of them were persecuted, they had to go into exile, they fought in the Resistance… and many of them either fell in war or were deported and killed."
One of the featured artists is Romanian Jewish painter Victor Brauner. Faced with rising antisemitism, fanned by Romania's Iron Guard, he made a new life in Paris in the 1930s, only to be displaced again in 1940 by the Nazi occupation. His oeuvre was nevertheless prolific, and conveys, says Weber, "this pictorial sense of humour" seen in Totem of Wounded Subjectivity II (1948), the exhibition's flagship image. The oil painting features comical, cartoonish beings with arms for a nose or chin, but whose sharp teeth and spikes suggest menace. They clutch forms that evoke both fruit – a classic surrealist motif – and internal organs, hinting at something visceral and brutal. In the centre is the ubiquitous surrealist "egg", a symbol of the ambition for a new reality, driven by the imagination and distinct from the suffering of the past.
In Paris, where Breton's Manifesto was penned, visitors to the Pompidou Centre's blockbuster exhibition Surrealism can now discover the original manuscript showcased at the heart of a labyrinthine journey through 40 years of mind-boggling art. The travelling exhibition began in Brussels, and will continue to Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia, but is currently at its most expansive, occupying a 2200-sq-m space. Highlights include René Magritte's vertiginous Personal Values (1952), an absurd and amusing rendition of a seemingly small room containing vastly oversized everyday objects. This comedy, however, has suffering as its source. Disillusioned by the rational thinking that led to the mass destruction of world war, artists such as Magritte and his Dadaist predecessors embraced the illogical, creating disconcerting works inspired by the subconscious world of dreams.
Something monstrous
Though revolutionary in its vision, Breton's manifesto was less progressive in its inherent sexism. Addressed to men, and written entirely from the perspective of the male experience, it fails to anticipate or acknowledge the crucial role women would play in shaping Surrealism. The Pompidou Centre pays homage to female artists such as Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning and the photographer Dora Maar, frequently underestimated or dismissed as muses. The exhibition's lineup includes Maar's celebrated Hand-Shell (1934), an arresting image comprising two contrasting and incongruous objects: an elegant hand with a lone finger teasingly poking the sand, and the shell it emerges from – a reimagining, perhaps, of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The work's dramatic shadows and skies and its interwar context invite a range of readings, from the rise of a new world from the ruins of the past, to the imminent visitation of something monstrous.
This prophetic quality to Surrealism, drawn from the unconscious, is addressed early on in the exhibition where Edith Rimmington's Museum, a "false collage" painting with a crystal ball-like centrepiece, commands attention. Tor Scott is researching this enigmatic British artist and is curatorial assistant at the National Galleries of Scotland, where a collection of Rimmington's works and ephemera is held.
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With its multiple roaming eyes, Museum "questions the balance of power between object and viewer", she tells the BBC, and "speaks to the objectification of the female form". The central feminine "artefact" is surrounded by floating sea creatures resembling disembodied female reproductive organs. Much of Rimmington's output harnessed "visceral and violent imagery that would have spoken to those living in Britain during and after the interwar period", says Scott. "Her work often included depictions of dismembered or mutated bodies and decaying flesh, as well as references to the cyclical nature of life and death."
This undercurrent of horror continues at The Traumatic Surreal at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, which explores female surrealists' expression of the painful legacies of fascism. "Surrealism originates and is anchored in the trauma of war," says co-curator Professor Patricia Allmer, professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of the 2022 book, The Traumatic Surreal: Germanophone Women Artists and Surrealism after the Second World War, that inspired the exhibition. "No male surrealist artist engaged as directly in representing and critiquing the Second World War as these women artists did," she tells the BBC. Claude Cahun and her girlfriend Marcel Moore were incarcerated for publishing anti-Nazi propaganda, for example, and Lee Miller "really goes to war and photographs there. There's not a single male Surrealist who does that".
The focus of the exhibition, however, is Germanophone artists. "Either they lived under fascism or their parents were, in one way or another, involved in it," says Allmer, stressing that the extreme patriarchal values that fascism embodied did not end with the war. "The whole ideology carried on but was kind of repressed and became this strange undercurrent."
One of the exhibition's most intriguing works is Squirrel by Méret Oppenheim, a German-born artist of Jewish heritage who fled with her family to Switzerland. Sculptures such as this fluffy-handled beer mug may seem humorous but are often "steeped in violence", says Allmer. "On first impression, you have this lovely soft, bushy tail and it invites you to stroke it, and you've got the beer glass which suggests social pleasure and hedonism," but the odd juxtaposition creates a shock effect "like a metaphor of the historical shocks of war experience that lead to trauma". Implicit in the severed tail, says Allmer, is "cutting or amputating", and its fur − a material also seen in the exhibition in the work of Ursula, Renate Bertlmann and Bady Minck – connotes something feral and frightening, the treatment of women as animals, and Hitler's unsettling obsession with wolves. Black humour is deliberate and "a really important strategy", explains Allmer, allowing women "to articulate realities that are otherwise repressed or excluded from public discourse". Breton would devote an anthology to it in 1940, swiftly banned by the Vichy regime. Humour, he writes, is "the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing". If we find Surrealism funny, we're not necessarily missing the point.
Surrealism is at the Pompidou Centre in Paris until 13 January 2025.
But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism is at the Lenbachhaus in Munich until 2 March 2025.
The Traumatic Surreal is at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds until 16 March 2025.
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Paul Mescal is the "mesmerising centre" of Ridley Scott's long-awaited Gladiator sequel, which balances emotional drama and social themes with all-out action spectacle.
How can you not love a film that has swords, sandals, sharks in the flooded Roman Colosseum, Denzel Washington in flowing robes and Paul Mescal biting a baboon? There's much more than that, both serious and camp, in Ridley Scott's exhilarating and fun sequel to Gladiator, which won the Oscar for best picture nearly a quarter of a century ago. Full of spectacle and spectacular performances, Gladiator II is by far the best popcorn film of the year.
Mescal, a counterintuitive choice given his sensitive roles in Normal People and Aftersun, is the mesmerising centre of the film, holding it together with the same power and magnetism Russell Crowe brought to the original. The sequel has a less perfect balance between emotion and action than the first, with beheadings and swordfights almost overwhelming the characters, but it comes close enough.
Those comparisons aren't gratuitous, because Gladiator II is full of echoes of the original, in which Crowe's gladiator, Maximus, and the vile Caesar, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) battled to the death in the Colosseum. Lucius, Maximus's son with Commodus' sister, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, returning to that role here) was then a small boy sent away from Rome for his own safety. Fifteen years later, here he is played by Mescal, more sinewy than usual but thankfully not pumped up to the cartoonish proportions of a Marvel character.
Lucius has grown into manhood in Numidia in northern Africa, and soon plunges into war against the Roman invaders. Scott is in total command of the action scenes, and makes that point with an extravagant opening battle. Numidians catapult balls of fire toward the approaching Roman ships, Roman arrows fly toward the Numidian battlements, Lucius's warrior wife is killed, and he is captured and sent toward Rome, vowing revenge against the empire's General Acacius (Pedro Pascal).
The Rome he returns to is more colourful and sinister than ever. Now there are two decadent emperors, twins ruling jointly without regard for the populace, creepy visions in pasty white face makeup and heavy eyeliner. Joseph Quinn is especially chilling, quietly intense and fearsome as Geta, the smarter and therefore more dangerous of the two. Fred Hechinger is the wild-eyed, out-of-control Caracella, the Fredo to Geta's Michael Corleone. Washington plays the enigmatic Macrinus, a wealthy businessman and owner of gladiators who buys Lucius. With jewelled rings on every finger and gold chains around his neck, Washington approaches the role with absolute gusto and over-the-top delivery as Macrinus schemes for power. But at times he pulls the performance back enough to reveal the canniness beneath that brash persona. Pascal's fans may be disappointed in his relatively smaller role and subdued performance. He doesn't make much of an impact, even though it turns out Acacius is married to Lucilla and shares her desire to depose the demented, blood-thirsty emperors.
In the big-action arena scenes, Scott pulls out all the stops. A Roman enters riding a rhino. The editing is kinetic as tigers and baboons are unleashed against Lucius and the other gladiators, who are called barbarians. Lucius is so fierce he chomps on a baboon's furry arm. At close range those baboons are conspicuously fake, a weak spot in special effects that are generally smooth. Some distant backgrounds also look flatly CGI'ed, but Scott stages the action with enough volatility to overcome those small glitches. Where his recent Napoleon (2023) was big and sluggish, and House of Gucci (2021) a ludicrous mess, Gladiator II has the masterful pacing of Scott's best films, including the classics Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982).
In the smaller-scale episodes, Scott knows when to give Mescal the close-ups that allow him to shine, exuding Lucius's determination and anger. That is especially true in his defiant conversations with Macrinus, who does not yet know that Lucius is the heir to the empire, but wonders why this gladiator can quote Virgil. Mescal's intelligent performance raises the level of the film beyond its violent combat.
And some of the violence is emotional. Most viewers will know going in, as the film's trailer reveals, that Lucius is Maximus's son, so we are way ahead of most characters. But one of the most bracing episodes takes place when Lucilla recognises the gladiator as her son and visits him in his jail-like cell, a meeting that defies our easy expectations.
As the film heads toward its ultimate battles, the camp level rises. There is a scene with Macrinus, the Roman Senate and a severed head (no spoilers; it's not Washington's head) that is just silly. At times Washington and the emperor twins seem to be in a little camp-fest all their own, but instead of pulling against the rest of the film, that style lands as another sign that Gladiator II is meant to be an entertaining romp.
Under its crowd-pleasing surface, though, the film's theme of political power, of who wields it and how, is strong and purposeful, even if Scott cagily weaves it into the colourful show. Asked by The New York Times if he saw a connection between his Roman Empire and the political world today, Scott bluntly answered: "Yeah. If we don't watch it we're getting worse," adding: "I try and keep that in the forefront" in the film, pointing to some of Lucius's questions about what Rome values. "Is this how Rome treats its heroes?" Lucius yells from the arena when one of them is killed.
That social theme was evident in the first Gladiator, where the civic-minded Senator Gracchus (Derek Jacobi, who returns briefly in the sequel) warns against underestimating the shallowness of the mob, easily placated with bread and circuses. "He will bring them death and they will love him for it," he says of Commodus, who offers no more than the distraction of the games. In Gladiator II, Lucilla says, "The people are weary of the madness, the tyranny." Which of them is right is the sequel's open question, as Lucius talks about his grandfather's dream of a Roman Republic and asks the citizens: "Dare we rebuild that dream together?"
If we're lucky, Scott may have an answer. He told The Hollywood Reporter that he has an idea for Gladiator III inspired by The Godfather II. From his lips to the Roman gods' ears.
★★★★☆
Gladiator II is released on 15 November in the UK and 22 November in the US.
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Isabel Belarsky was one of the millions of people who were processed on Ellis Island before its immigration facility closed in 1954. In 2014, she told the BBC about reaching the gateway to the US from the Soviet Union in 1930.
On 12 November 1954, a Norwegian seaman Arne Petterson was questioned by immigration officials after overstaying his US shore leave. He risked being deported, but instead he was granted parole, and as he stepped on board a ferry in New York Harbor, he was snapped by a photographer. He was the last person to be processed on Ellis Island.
The same day, the island that had been millions of migrants' first glimpse of the US closed its immigration facilities for good. By the time Petterson left, Ellis Island was mostly being used as a detention centre for illegal entrants and suspected communists, but for more than 60 years for many people it was a stepping stone to a whole new life.
Situated at the mouth of the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, the island had been selected by President Benjamin Harrison as the site of a central immigration facility in 1890 when it became clear that the one in Manhattan was unable to cope with the influx of new arrivals. In the decades before Ellis Island opened, the patterns of immigration to the US had shifted. From the 1880s there was a sudden rise in people coming from southern and eastern Europe. Many of them were trying to escape poverty, political oppression or religious persecution in their home countries. But as President John F Kennedy wrote in his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, "There are probably as many reasons for coming to America as there were people who came."
In preparation, the island was enlarged, partly by using landfill hollowed out from New York's first subway tunnels, and a new dock and three-storey timber building were constructed. This building would need to be rebuilt just five years later when a fire burnt it to the ground, destroying all passenger records dating back to 1855.
On 1 January 1892, Ellis Island opened to receive immigrants. At its peak, during the early years of the 20th Century, thousands of people passed through its gates each day. Angel Island in San Francisco Bay had the same role on the west coast from 1910 to 1940. But according to the National Park Service, some 40% of Americans living today are descended from immigrants who came through Ellis Island. Many of the people who would help shape the identity of the US in the 20th Century, from film director Frank Capra (born in Italy) and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (born in Russia) to actress Claudette Colbert (born in France) and cosmetician Max Factor (born in Poland), were processed at the island as children.
Isabel Belarsky was one such child. In 1930 she made the arduous sea voyage to the US with her family from what was then the Soviet Union. "Oh boy, that was some journey. It was cold, we had nothing to wear. Everybody was freezing. Finally, we came through Ellis Island," she told the BBC in 2014.
So near and yet so far
The steamships on which immigrants such as the Belarskys journeyed were divided by money and class, with the majority of people being third class passengers crowded together, in often unsanitary conditions in steerage. Before a ship could enter New York Harbor, it first had to stop at a quarantine checkpoint off Staten Island. There doctors boarded the vessel looking for signs of sickness, such as smallpox and cholera. People with contagious diseases were banned from entering the US, as were polygamists, anarchists and convicted criminals, among others. The first restrictions on immigration had begun to be enacted by Congress in the 1870s. Many of these had an explicit racial prejudice, with laws that first targeted Chinese migrants and later excluded immigration from most Asian countries.
If the ship passed its health inspection, the first and second-class passengers would be interviewed and processed onboard. During Ellis Island's first few decades, immigrants to the US did not require passports, visas or any official government paperwork at all. Passports existed, but they were only universally adopted in 1920. Instead, when passengers first boarded a ship, they gave spoken answers to questions which were recorded in its manifest. These were then checked by US officials and, provided those wealthier passengers were sickness-free and had no legal issues, they were allowed to enter the US, bypassing Ellis Island entirely.
Everyone else was tagged with the ship's name and the page number where they appeared on the manifest. They were then put on a ferry to Ellis Island where their future would be decided. When they arrived at the island and entered the main building, women and children were separated into one line and men into the other. Then they climbed the steep winding staircase to the registry room on the second floor, carefully watched by doctors who were looking out for signs of wheezing, coughing or limping that suggested health problems.
When they reached the registry room, they faced a brief medical examination. This was a nerve-racking experience. Immigrant children were asked their names so the doctors could check that they were not deaf or dumb. Toddlers who were being carried were made to walk to prove that they could. "It was interesting but a little frightening, too, because we couldn't speak English," Belarsky told the BBC.
If the doctor suspected a health issue they would mark letters on that person's clothes in chalk: H for heart problems, X for mental illness, CT for trachoma – a highly contagious and much feared eye infection that can lead to blindness. The test for this was particularly uncomfortable: doctors would turn a person's eyelid inside out using their fingers or a buttonhook, an implement used for fastening small buttons. If a person got a chalk mark, they would be removed from the line and confined in what was called the "doctor's pen" for a more thorough examination.
If they then failed a medical inspection they would be detained or outright refused entry and sent back to where they had travelled from. In some cases, this could mean a family being broken up. Official statistics record that only around 2% were refused entry to the US, but that still means that nearly 125,000 people, who had endured the long and difficult journey to get there, were sent home within sight of Manhattan.
Those who passed the medical exam proceeded to a legal screening. Inspectors would check their tags and quiz them, often with the help of an interpreter, about everything from their eye colour and who paid for their passage to whether they were literate and whether they had ever been held in a mental health institution. Most people were processed quickly and went through Ellis Island within a few hours. But if a migrant's answers didn't match the ones on the ship's manifest, or if the inspectors were suspicious about them for some reason, their name was marked with an X and they were detained.
The American dream
Around 20% of immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island ended up being temporarily detained there. This could happen for a variety of reasons. Women travelling alone or with children were often viewed as potential burdens to the state. Officials would frequently class them as Liable to Become a Public Charge (LPCs), detaining them until a male family member – because no women were allowed to leave Ellis Island with a man not related to them – could turn up and vouch for them. Unmarried women who were pregnant could be judged by inspectors as "immoral" and held. Stowaways who weren't on the manifest, migrant labourers suspected of being brought into the US to break union strikes, and anyone officials deemed to be politically suspect could be detained or refused entry.
Although Isabel Belarsky's father, Sidor, was a renowned opera singer who had been invited to come to the US, her family was still automatically detained at Ellis Island. This was because at the time the US did not maintain diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Detainees would sleep in triple-tiered bunk beds in dormitory rooms on the building's third floor, receiving three meals a day until their cases could be resolved. Sometimes this could mean an overnight stay, sometimes it could be weeks or months. "They gave us 10 minutes every so often to go outside. When we went out they counted us," said Belarsky. "And when we came back, they counted again. When we sat down, when we ate, they also counted."
If arrivals had been detained because they were ill, and they hadn't been refused entry, they would be held in hospital wards on the island. While most recovered, more than 3,500 immigrants died on Ellis Island in sight of New York and their dream of a better life. Some 350 babies were also born on the island, although this was no guarantee of citizenship for the child.
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Once an immigrant's health or legal issues were successfully concluded, they were registered and free to enter the US and start their new lives. Belarsky said: "For me it was very exciting when I was a youngster. And finally, somebody got us the papers to leave Ellis Island. It was a beautiful sight. Beautiful. That was the greatest day of all our lives."
By the time the Belarsky family came through in 1930, the era of mass immigration to the US had already come to an end. Following World War One, the US Congress enacted sweeping laws based on race and nationality which restricted who could come into the country. The Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 were designed to cap annual immigration, imposing strict quotas that favoured people from northern and western European countries.
As immigration decreased, Ellis Island's role began to change. During World War Two, some 7,000 German, Italian and Japanese nationals suspected of being enemy aliens were interred there. Later, US soldiers returning from the war were treated in its hospital. In the late 1940s, as the Cold War developed, suspected communists who were swept up in the paranoia of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare were incarcerated there while the US government reviewed the often secret evidence against them. But by the 1950s, the use of air travel and modern entry procedures at airports made Ellis Island increasingly obsolete. In 1954, after 62 years of operation, it finally closed down, but it is open again today as a museum that highlights the rich history of new arrivals to the US.
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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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These are the films generating the most excitement ahead of awards season, from Demi Moore's body-horror comeback to the return of Ridley Scott's swords-and-sandals epic.
Conclave
Its potboiler plot doesn't sound like awards bait on paper, but Conclave hits the Oscar sweet spot: it plays like a compelling commercial thriller but has plenty of artistic cred. The fictional story goes behind the scenes as cardinals scheme and play politics to elect a new pope. That story is elevated by Edward Berger's meticulous direction, every shot full of visual artistry and information, and by Ralph Fiennes's subtly powerful performance as the cardinal in charge of the conclave while doubting his own faith. Well received by critics and audiences, it's a sure thing for a best picture nomination, with Fiennes very likely getting a best actor nod, Berger a strong possibility as director and maybe Stanley Tucci as supporting actor. Twice nominated, Fiennes has never won, and has "he's overdue" going for him. Voters obviously like Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) won four Oscars, including best international film. Conclave's biggest obstacle: keeping up its early momentum. (CJ)
Nickel Boys
Nickel Boys is adapted from a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, which was drawn in turn from reports of the horrific racist abuse that took place in a Florida reform school in the 1960s. It's just the kind of heavyweight, politically charged period drama that would appeal to the Academy, however it was made. But the film's innovative camerawork is what really sets Nickel Boys apart. RaMell Ross, the maker of a 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, shows everything from the viewpoint of the main characters. The audience seems to be looking through the eyes of two teenage boys (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson), an immersive technique that is common in video games and virtual reality experiences, but so unusual in a film that Nickel Boys is the obvious pick for this year's cinematography and editing prizes, at the very least. (NB)
Emilia Pérez
There's not a more audacious, wonderfully bonkers or engaging film out there than this singing, dancing drama about a transgender Mexican crime lord who fakes her death and hides her new identity from her wife and children. Accessible and unique, this vibrant film, full of criminal action and personal emotion, is a frontrunner to win best international film, and a strong contender for a best picture nod. It will certainly figure in acting categories. Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays Emilia, is very likely for best actress, and would be the first trans nominee in that category. Zoe Saldaña, who has one of the best dance scenes, stands a good chance as supporting actress for her poignant performance as Emilia's lawyer. One good omen: at the Cannes Film Festival, they shared the best actress prize with co-stars Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. If Netflix campaigns well enough, director Jacques Audiard might even make it into best director. (CJ)
Gladiator II
Even before its colourful, action-filled trailer dropped, audiences were excited about this sequel to the 2000 sword-and-sandals epic that won best picture. That anticipation was built partly on its dream-team casting: Paul Mescal as Lucius, the revenge-fuelled son of Russell Crowe's character in the original, Pedro Pascal as a Roman general, and Denzel Washington as a wealthy owner of gladiators. The trailer set off instant speculation that Washington is a likely supporting actor nominee, if only for his fierce, scenery-chewing proclamation, "I must have POWER." The film's spectacle and scale make it a natural in technical areas, including production design. And it's likely to be nominated for best picture, a category with up to 10 titles. But with only five slots for director, what happens to Sir Ridley Scott? In a career that includes Alien, Blade Runner and the first Gladiator, he has been nominated as director three times but never won. He has a good chance of making the cut, in a race that should be especially intriguing to follow. (CJ)
The Brutalist
Most film journalists assumed that this year's most impressive drama about a visionary architect would be Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. But then Brady Corbet's The Brutalist came along. This indie period epic cost less than £10m ($13m) to make – ie, well under one-tenth of Megalopolis's budget – but it runs for 215 minutes, including an interval, and its themes, ideas and ambitions are sky-scrapingly expansive. Adrien Brody stars as a Hungarian-Jewish architect who migrates to the US just after World War Two, and is hired to build a vast concrete cultural centre for a tycoon played by Guy Pearce. It's Brody's most compelling performance since he won an Oscar for The Pianist back in 2003, so there would be a certain symmetry if he took home a second Oscar for a not dissimilar role, 22 years on. Meanwhile, Corbet and his co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold are in the frame for a best screenplay award. And if Hollywood wants to reassure itself that films can be serious-minded, uncompromising and artistic, then a best picture nod isn't out of the question. (NB)
Anora
Sean Baker follows such earthy indie favourites as The Florida Project and Red Rocket with his most crowd-pleasing film to date, a riotous farce about a strip-club dancer played by Mikey Madison who is whisked into a world of obscene wealth by a Russian oligarch's son, played by Mark Eydelshteyn. It's sparkily entertaining, which is not something you can say about every film that wins prestigious awards, but Anora is no escapist romcom. Not only is it rooted in the rough, tough reality of New York's Russian-American community, it takes an unsparing look at the power imbalance between the super-rich and everyone else. Ever since it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it has been seen as a contender for best picture, best original screenplay and best director Oscars. And if Madison isn't nominated for best actress, then the Academy might as well admit that it isn't fit for purpose. (NB)
A Real Pain
Ever since this touching, funny, crowd-pleasing drama premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Kieran Culkin has seemed like a lock for a supporting actor nomination as one of two cousins visiting their grandmother's birthplace in Poland. Culkin deserves that buzz. In fact, he and Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed, are co-leads, but positioning Culkin as supporting increases his chance to win (as in, he won't be competing against Adrien Brody and Ralph Fiennes in lead, although as it turns out he may face the prospect of Denzel). Each actor stays close to his typical role, with Culkin as the outgoing, irreverent cousin and Eisenberg as the nervous, buttoned-down guy, but they bring new depth to those types. With its deftly blended themes – the cousins' Jewish heritage and the Holocaust, as well as family dynamics and personal, emotional pain – the film should also be competitive in best picture and original screenplay. It's a bit surprising that the film isn't seen as stronger in those categories too, but now that it has opened that muted buzz might grow. (CJ)
The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door won the top prize at this year's Venice Film Festival, and given that other recent recipients include Poor Things, Joker, Nomadland and The Shape of Water, that means that it must be in line for more big prizes in the months to come. Most critics agree that it isn't Almodóvar's finest work, but it's the Spanish writer-director's first feature film in English, and it's sincere and elegant in its treatment of a knotty theme: the right of a terminally ill person to end their own life. Tilda Swinton plays a retired war correspondent with cancer, and Julianne Moore plays an old friend of hers, an author who agrees to stay with her in a rented country house as death approaches. The film is close to being a two-hander, so the tricky part is: will the studio put both women in the lead actress category? Or will it pretend that Moore is a supporting actress, so as not to risk splitting the vote between them? (NB)
The Substance
Like Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, The Substance is a high-concept satire that is hardly subtle, but which is brash and bloody enough to get people into cinemas – and to get them talking on the way out – so its writer-director, Coralie Fargeat, could nab an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Its lead actress, Demi Moore, should be in the mix this awards season, too. She plays a former superstar who is tossed aside by the sexist and ageist entertainment industry, and resorts to creating a younger clone of herself (Margaret Qualley). It's a bravely self-parodying role, and Moore attacks it with such gusto that this could be one of those John-Travolta-in-Pulp-Fiction situations which remind Academy voters how much they once valued an actor who has fallen out of fashion. Another factor is that Hollywood is oddly fond of films that mock Hollywood, so The Substance could even be a best picture nominee. (NB)
A Complete Unknown
Oscar voters can't resist a biopic. And so, sight unseen by critics or audiences, this fictionalised version of Bob Dylan at the start his career is already in the mix. Part of that is due to its lead actor, Timothée Chalamet as Dylan in his Greenwich Village years. Some of it comes from a template that might as well be a build-an-Oscar-nomination blueprint: get famous actors to play famous real-life singers, and let them do the singing themselves. Consider this: A Complete Unknown was directed by James Mangold, who directed another awards-bait musical biopic, Walk the Line (2005). Reese Witherspoon won the best actress Oscar for her performance in that film as June Carter Cash and Joaquin Phoenix earned a best actor nomination as Johnny Cash. If nothing else, A Complete Unknown may well bring Chalamet his second nomination, after Call Me By Your Name (2017). (CJ)
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Beginning with his acclaimed 2018 debut novel The Loney, the English writer Andrew Michael Hurley has spooked readers with his tales of strange rural communities – and now they're moving to film and TV.
His publisher bills him as "the master of menace", Stephen King is a big fan, and the film version of his third novel, Starve Acre, starring Morfydd Clark from Amazon's The Rings of Power and ex-Doctor Who Matt Smith, has been shocking audiences across the US and the UK this year.
As the author of chilling literary fiction, Andrew Michael Hurley has earned a large following with his first three books – and is now releasing his fourth, short-story collection Barrowbeck. A British writer with an international readership, his debut novel The Loney was translated into 20 languages and earned stellar reviews: The Washington Post critic Nancy Hightower described it as "masterful" and "unsettling in the most compelling way". Earlier this year, a small-screen adaptation of it was announced, which is set to be made by Jonathan Van Tulleken, a director of hit TV series Shogun and the upcoming show Blade Runner 2099.
Work in the horror genre is rarely lauded for the quality of its writing, but Hurley's novels have broken the mould, winning both plaudits and prestigious literary prizes. "Gothic has enjoyed quite a high literary status – if we think of the enduring classics like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Frankenstein – whereas books classified simply as 'horror' haven't always been taken seriously, but I think that's changing," Hurley tells the BBC. "As we've looked back and reconsidered horror films from the 70s and 80s – say The Exorcist, The Wicker Man, Halloween – and seen some of them as works of art in their own right, then I think we've perhaps started to reappraise horror in general as being a genre that reveals something of ourselves to ourselves in a way that's interesting and worth valuing."
There is certainly a current surge of interest in horror – last year British publishing news outlet The Bookseller reported that sales of horror and ghost stories increased by 54% in the UK between 2022 and 2023, making it the most successful year for horror literature since records began. Dara Downey, a researcher and visiting lecturer at Trinity College Dublin with a special interest in the gothic and horror, says: "There's a global horror boom at the moment, and perhaps what's most notable about it is that, if social media is anything to go by, people are turning to the horror genre for comfort and escapism. I think it's something to do with the fact that it's a lot easier to watch or read about someone, say, being sucked into hell by a creepy girl in a white dress than it is to be bombarded with what we see on the news. People seem to be turning to horror as a way of getting a glimpse of other people's nightmares as a form of respite.
"I think there's a real sense of people needing to engage with writing that affirms our sense that the world is frightening and confusing, but also more enchanted and mysterious than the daily grind might suggest."
Tales of rural isolation
All four of Hurley's works are set in isolated rural communities in the north of England. "Isolation is a conscious choice," he says. "I like to place my characters in spaces where they are cut off in some respects, where they have to rely on their own resources and on each other. Weird things can happen in those places that haven't been disturbed by development or progress or modernity in quite the same way that a town or a city has. There are ways that history can be unearthed, either literally or metaphorically, so that the past seems to exist quite close to the surface."
In Hurley's universe, the countryside is a hard, implacable, unnerving place. The sort of place where unspeakable things happen up on lonely moors and down in dank cellars. Where threatening locals force their way into houses to enact ancient ritualistic plays. Where people still believe in the power of witch bottles and are perhaps right to do so. Where either nothing grows because the land is cursed or where trees mysteriously fruit at the wrong time of year. Rare is the country fair that doesn't end with a pony stabbed or a man blinded by a horse's kick or a girl placed under an enchantment by a sinister clown. "What did you expect it was going to be like here? Roses round the door and cows in the buttercups?" one of Hurley's country folks sarcastically asks of an outsider in his second book, Devil's Day.
Andrew Michael Hurley was born and grew up in Preston in North West England. He and his family would holiday in Cumbria and Yorkshire, in the sort of rural, rugged landscapes dotted with smallholdings that he now writes about, and he would seek out books of local ghost stories wherever they went. He has worked as a teacher and a librarian, lived in London and Manchester, and is now based back in the Preston area, teaching creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University in addition to his own writing career. Extraordinary though it seems given the accolades he has received, he initially struggled to get his first novel published.
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In The Loney, the congregation of a church go on a religious retreat to a bleak house in a desolate place inspired by Morecambe Bay in Lancashire. The book describes the area as: "A wild and useless length of English coastline. A dead mouth of a bay that filled and emptied twice a day." The pilgrims hope a week of prayer and a visit to a local shrine will cure the mute brother of the teenaged narrator. But there are some sinister locals who seem to be up to no good. The story draws on folklore, ritual and superstition. The landscape – at best, indifferent to human suffering and, at worst, a gleefully malevolent cause of it – is absolutely integral to the story. Hurley skilfully creates an atmosphere of mounting unease that builds to an indelible climax conveying a sense of real evil.
He spent several years working on the book, but when he sent it to publishers and agents he was met with either rejection or silence. Eventually he tried Tartarus Press, a small independent imprint specialising in weird fiction. "When Tartarus emailed me, having read the manuscript, to say 'Yes', it was a very strange moment," Hurley says. "I read the email several times to make sure it was real."
Tartarus editor Rosalie Parker says: "When I first read The Loney I knew that its atmospheric blend of the supernatural and the psychological made it a perfect Tartarus Press book, and like all our books I was sure that it had the potential to be a wider commercial success if the stars aligned."
The stars moved smoothly into place. The book was published in 2014 and, despite having a tiny print run, it came to the attention of a much larger publisher, John Murray. It was reissued and ended up winning the Costa first novel award and the Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards. Stephen King contributed a blurb: "The Loney is not just good, it's great. It's an amazing piece of fiction." Meanwhile, Van Tulleken has described it as "an absolute gift for a director".
His horror inspirations
So where did it come from, this strange book that Sarah Perry, the author of the brooding, gothic The Essex Serpent, called "a masterpiece" when reviewing it in The Guardian?
"I loved Stephen King, James Herbert, Clive Barker, when I was growing up," Hurley says. "I devoured them when I was 14, 15 and then I started trying to write my own stories in that sort of style. I'm not sure there was a great deal of literary merit to them but there was a lot of murdering and blood and vampires." He also enjoyed classic horror films such as the aforementioned The Wicker Man, Don't Look Now and The Omen.
"And there was lots of strange stuff on television," he says. "I think it was perhaps a little bit more out there and daring than TV is now. You'd switch on TV late at night and come across something weird and then think, 'What the hell was that that I just watched?'"
He was particularly keen on the work of Nigel Kneale, an influential UK screenwriter whose 1970s output included two television plays, Murrain and Baby, which were set in isolated rural settings and featured many of the "folk horror" elements that appear in Hurley's work.
"I think what I love about Kneale is the doubt and uncertainty that you're left with after watching or listening to his plays," says Hurley. "He's very resistant to explaining too much. I'm a huge fan of writers like Robert Aickman and Shirley Jackson who are very similar in that respect. They don't over-explain, they don't give you the solace of saying, 'It's OK, we can think of it this way.' Those are the stories that haunt you. That's something I really try to emulate. If people go away with more questions than answers, I feel like I've done my job properly."
Whatever the shortcomings of his teenage stories – and he later also wrote two novels set in London which he says were "horrible pastiches" and which will never see the light of the day – readers and critics agree that his published work is of the highest order.
Devil's Day, about a newly-married couple expecting their first child who return to the farm on which the husband grew up in order to help with the annual "gathering" of the sheep (bringing the flock down off the moors in the autumn), won the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award for Best Second Novel, and was picked as a book of the year in five British newspapers.
"The nebulous presence of the Devil is evoked so palpably in this novel that at times I hardly dared look up when reading for fear of seeing him grinning at me from the chair next to mine," Jake Kerridge wrote in the Literary Review.
In Starve Acre, his third novel, published in 2019, Juliette and Richard live in a moorland farmhouse and are grieving over the death of their young son. Juliette seeks comfort with a group of occultists because what harm ever came from that? A film version, starring Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith, was released in cinemas in July in the US and September in the UK. Its director, Daniel Kokotajlo, used a variety of techniques to make the film look as though it had actually been made in the 1970s like the Kneale plays that both he and Hurley admire. "We spent a long time working on how to capture that feeling," he tells the BBC. "We watched a lot of old horror films and weird British TV. Part of it was down to the lighting and I also found some amazing old 1970s lenses that created a little bit of distortion on the image that looked fantastic." He sees Hurley as the contemporary heir to authors such as famed Victorian ghost story writer MR James.
Why scary stories are booming
"The legendary director Wes Craven said, 'Scary movies don't create fear, they release fear,' and I think that goes a long way to explain the rise in popularity of the horror genre in the world of books, and why some of those books, such as Starve Acre, have been adapted into excellent films," says Yassine Belkacemi, editorial director at John Murray Press. "Horror is an effective prism for writers to explore our world, our ears, our subconscious, when the reality of everyday politics, news, and society can be overwhelming. Especially in the US, which is going through an extremely polarising time when it comes to many issues, the world of horror, ironically, seems to have been a genre to explore the country's greatest fears whether that be the work of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King or Jordan Peele."
Starve Acre completed what Hurley thought of as a loose trilogy about landscape and responses to it. The new book, Barrowbeck, further cements his reputation as Britain's creepiest author, but also marks something of a departure. It is a collection of 13 linked, chronologically-arranged short stories – some of which began life as stories on BBC Radio 4 – about life in a valley in the north of England. "There are some stories that are folk horror, there are others that lean more into fantasy and science fiction," Hurley says. The collection begins with the tale of the establishment of a settlement in the valley in the distant past and ends with a piece set in the near future when the valley has been ravaged by climate change.
"I enjoyed writing that story although it is quite depressing to think about what our future might look like," says Hurley. "I've been reading a lot of apocalyptic, environmental disaster fiction – John Christopher's The Death of Grass, for example. An incredible book. It's a genre of writing I would like to revisit."
His next novel, expected to be published late next year, also breaks new ground for Hurley, with an urban rather than a rural setting. The central character is in a decaying seaside town out of season, recalling a summer holiday there years ago. However, it would seem a fairly safe bet that this particular seaside holiday won't be all ice cream, sandcastles, and innocent fun in the sun.
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The UK publication of DH Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, gripped the nation in 1960. In History looks at the highly publicised trial that led to its release – and the rush to see what all the fuss was about.
Until November 1960, British people were prevented from reading Lady Chatterley's Lover by a law that criminalised the publication of writing considered indecent and immoral. The British publishing house, Penguin Books, wanted to challenge the Obscene Publications Act by printing a complete, uncensored edition of DH Lawrence's book. The resulting trial symbolised social changes that had been bubbling under in the years since World War Two, and demonstrated the gulf between the public and those who saw themselves as the guardians of established morals.
Lady Chatterley's Lover had been published privately in Italy and France in the late 1920s, but was banned thereafter in several countries around the world including the US, Australia and Japan. In the years leading up to the trial, writers and publishers in Britain had become increasingly worried by the number of books being prosecuted for obscenity. In an attempt to allay these fears, the UK's Parliament introduced a new Obscene Publications Act in 1959 that promised "to provide for the protection of literature and to strengthen the law concerning pornography". This amendment provided a defence for anyone accused of publishing a "dirty book". It allowed them to argue that a piece of work should be published if it had literary merit, even if the average person found its material shocking.
Lady Chatterley's Lover was considered controversial as it depicted a passionate relationship between an upper-class woman, Lady Constance Chatterley, and a working-class man, Oliver Mellors. The novel includes swear words and explicit descriptions of sex, and it portrays female sexual pleasure. Lawrence said that he hoped to reclaim sex as something that was acceptable in literature. He wanted to "make the sex relations [in the novel] valid and precious, instead of shameful".
In 1960, Penguin was ready to test the Obscene Publications Act. They wrote to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) and warned that they would be publishing an original version of the book. In August that year, Reginald Manningham-Buller, the chief legal adviser to the Crown, read the first four chapters of the novel while travelling on a boat train to Southampton. He wrote to the DPP, approving legal proceedings against Penguin. "I hope you get a conviction," he said. Sir Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, was in Spain as events unfolded. His colleagues advised him to return home immediately.
The trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover was the first of its kind under the new Act, and the scene was set for a clash between the establishment and those with more liberal views. To support their case in favour of publishing the novel, Penguin summoned a host of expert witnesses including 35 prominent writers and politicians. Among the group was Richard Hoggart, an influential academic and author who was seen as a key witness. He argued that the novel was an essentially moral and "puritan" work, which merely included words that he had heard on a building site on his way to the court.
In opposition, Mervyn Griffith-Jones led the prosecution, which argued that the sex in the novel was gratuitous pornography. "When you have seen the book just ask yourselves, would you approve of your sons and daughters reading it?" Griffith-Jones asked the jury. "Would you leave it lying about your house? Is it a book you would even wish your wives and servants to read?" He also listed nearly 100 uses of swear words in its pages. Mr Justice Byrne, the judge who presided over the trial, pointed out that the low price of the book meant it would "be available for all and sundry to read". These statements are often cited as representing the out-of-touch attitudes of the British establishment at the time. On 2 November 1960, after a six-day trial, the jury took three hours to deliberate and came to a unanimous decision. Penguin Books was found "not guilty" under the Act.
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Lady Chatterley's Lover went on sale immediately afterwards, as Penguin had prepared to distribute it in the event of acquittal. They had to work with a new printing firm as their usual one refused to touch it. But the trial had the effect of promoting the book, which sold out of all 200,000 copies on its first day of publication. It went on to sell three million copies in three months.
A few days after it went on sale, a shop owner in England, Mr Donati, spoke to BBC News about the novel's immediate popularity. "We ordered 1,000 to start with," he said. "We had every hope of getting them, of course, but in the event, it was cut to half. We received 500 copies. We were open quite early, at five to nine, and I should imagine we've sold 50 or 60 [copies] already… I think we should have to wait at least three weeks [for another stock]."
Still, traditional English reserve hadn't vanished overnight. Many customers were too embarrassed to ask for the scandalous novel by name, one bookseller told the BBC. "Some of them just ask for Lady C, some of them just give you three and six [three shilling and sixpence]." As the reporter noted, "It's rather different from selling an ordinary book." But then, Lady Chatterley's Lover was no ordinary book. When published in full, it would become a symbol of freedom of expression, and a sign that Britain's cultural landscape was changing. The poet Philip Larkin captured its significance in his poem, Annus Mirabilis:
"Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP."
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The Terminator was released 40 years ago, on 26 October 1984. James Cameron's science-fiction thriller turned its star into one of the biggest Hollywood action heroes of the 1980s and 1990s – and it was all because he chose to play the bad guy, as he told the BBC in 1985.
Arnold Schwarzenegger never did anything by halves. For his breakthrough role in The Terminator, he claimed to have spent hours blindfolded every day, practising how to take apart and reassemble futuristic weapons, "to really show that I'm an expert coming back from the year 2028 to our present time in Los Angeles".
It was this combination of honest toil and marketing pizzazz that would rocket Schwarzenegger's career to unprecedented heights. His deadpan charisma helped. Few actors could deliver a simple line like "I'll be back" and turn it into a career-defining catchphrase. But just as important was his willingness to put in the hours required to achieve his ambitions, and to be open about all that work. "You have to lock into a whole different kind of emotional obligation to play a machine," he told the BBC's Breakfast Time on a promotional trip to London in January 1985. "The way you walk is quite different. The way you handle your guns is different. The way your facial expressions are when you kill and all those kind of things, because you're not supposed to have any feelings."
Schwarzenegger's previous films had been moulded around his imposing physique. In his 1970 film debut Hercules in New York, the reigning Mr Universe was credited as Arnold Strong. With the success of 1982's Conan the Barbarian and the 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer, his long surname became a trusted brand for action fans. The sleek science-fiction of The Terminator was a big upgrade on sword-and-sorcery, and Schwarzenegger had a clear vision of how he wanted to present himself. "I was offered the part of playing the good guy, the hero," he said. "I then read through the script and I was more fascinated with the character of Terminator. It was a much more interesting character playing a robot – like in Westworld, Yul Brynner played somebody with no emotions and with no feelings and no pity for anything – and to play this kind of a character."
Schwarzenegger said he pitched the idea that he should play Terminator model T-800 to the film's director, James Cameron. "I thought it was a big step forward in my career," said Schwarzenegger, "because I played all along always the hero, like in the Conan movies, for instance. Also, it was a good part for me to play because it was really the first time acting in a film where I didn't really have to rely on physical development, like in the Conan films."
Once The Terminator was a box-office smash in the US, Schwarzenegger had his eye on the next phase of his career. "It has opened up a whole new thing for me, and of course the most important thing in acting is to be able to get roles in many different areas rather than just get typecast," he said.
For Schwarzenegger, it was all about seizing opportunities. He had come a long way since the writer and broadcaster Clive James memorably likened the shirtless bodybuilder's appearance to "a brown condom full of walnuts". On Fame in the Twentieth Century, James's 1993 BBC series about celebrity, he cast his eye over the former Mr Universe's journey towards becoming "the first fully self-constructed superstar". James observed: "For his big breakthrough film, he played himself – that is, an android; somebody someone had built. And somebody had built him – he had." According to the critic, Schwarzenegger's "brightest move of all was to let the media in on his secret". He said: "The tongue in his cheek was hard to see amongst all his other bulges, but the press loved the way he didn't hide the hustle. He made his career the story."
The bodybuilder nicknamed the Austrian Oak was always openly ambitious in a way that was perhaps more brashly American than European. Having created his multiple Mr Universe-winning body, he came to mainstream attention in the 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron. At that year's Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, he explained to the BBC that he was not a trained actor, but was using his body as "a vehicle to break into the films".
Marketing masterstrokes
"It's something that carries me through until I'm established in acting," he said. When asked if he believed his acting talent could equal his bodybuilding skill, he was in no doubt: "When I was 15 years old, I'd said I would be the best or the greatest bodybuilder of all times and I have done it. Now I'm just as confident as when I was 15 – I can say now I will be the best actor around."
By the early 1990s, almost everything had gone according to plan. While he may not have been the best actor around, Schwarzenegger was unquestionably one of Hollywood's biggest stars. He had gone from Conan the Barbarian to big budget sci-fi epics such as Total Recall and Predator, via high-concept family-friendly comedies such as Twins. Every career move was a marketing masterstroke, reaching out to ever expanding demographics. In the first Terminator, he was a terrifying villain. By its sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he was the hero.
On the 1991 BBC documentary Naked Hollywood, he looked back at the obstacles he had overcome on his way to the top. "I made up a programme, went to a lot of acting classes, voice classes, accent removal classes, and on and on and on, and really laid out a plan on how to market myself – and then I met the most incredible resistance that you can imagine," he said.
While prospective agents mocked his Austrian surname and urged him to change it, Schwarzenegger had the last laugh. "Everyone was basically saying to me, you have very little chance in this profession simply because there is no one that we know who has come from Europe that has really gone through the roof, that has made it really huge in this business."
He said that having lived around half his life in Austria and the other half in the US, he identified as an Austrian-American: "I'm extremely happy that I came to the United States and became a citizen of this country, because this is really the country that represents a beautiful vision of great opportunities and endless possibilities, where a dream can come true – in my case, I'm the perfect example of that."
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His Austrian birthplace meant he could never complete his American Dream bingo card by making it to the White House; even Arnie was no match for the US Constitution. In 2003, he weathered campaign allegations of groping and cheating – behaviour that he eventually acknowledged as "wrong" – to be elected governor of California in 2003. Inevitably, he was nicknamed the Governator.
That same drive and appetite for personal growth he exhibited on the Breakfast Time sofa in 1985 took him further than maybe even he ever imagined. "All you have to do is just take advantage of these opportunities and then learn in these areas," he said. "If it is acting, to go to acting school and to start from the bottom again – and this is exciting in life, to go into new areas and be hungry for new and better things."
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The cult classic's guerilla techniques and daring subject matter helped to kickstart a new era. Just before its release in 1969, the BBC interviewed its director, Dennis Hopper, discovering an actor as idiosyncratic as his film.
On 17 October 1969, Easy Rider burst on to cinema screens through a psychedelic haze. Infused with rock music, free love and drug-taking, this low-budget, freewheeling road movie vividly captured the counterculture spirit of the late 1960s, as well as the US's bubbling social tensions.
The film tells the story of two free-spirited bikers, moustachioed hippy Billy, played by its director, Dennis Hopper, and leather-clad Wyatt, played by its producer, Peter Fonda. Easy Rider starts with Billy and Wyatt smuggling cocaine out of Mexico to sell to a Los Angeles drug dealer, played by famed music producer Phil Spector (whose performance seems even more sinister in the light of his 2009 murder conviction). The pair, now flush with cash, then resolve to ride across the US to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.
As they embark on their odyssey through the sweeping American landscape to the strains of Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild, they encounter characters who embody some of the conflicting world views prevalent in the US at the time, from an alcoholic civil-rights lawyer (played by Jack Nicholson) to a corrupt sheriff, from a hippy commune to small-town bigots. The film-makers paint a portrait of a country in flux. The slogan on the posters was: "A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere..."
A month before Easy Rider's release in 1969, Hopper sat down with the BBC's Philip Jenkinson for the programme Line Up. Decked out in clothes similar to those of his character Billy, Hopper's interview was intriguing, erratic and, at times, as confusing as the cult movie he had just made.
He explained to the BBC that he had wanted "to basically make a movie about what was happening in America at that moment". The 1960s were a tumultuous period for the US, as the country went through rapid and momentous cultural shifts. The decade had already witnessed the civil rights movement's push for equality, growing anti-war protests as the Vietnam war escalated, and a series of shocking assassinations of political figures such as John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The gap between generations seemed to be widening. Many baby boomers had embraced the new music and culture, experimenting with drugs and sex, and often outright rejecting the more traditional values and materialism of their parents. Hopper felt that there was nothing in the cinema that spoke directly to these young people. There was nothing that showed their hopes and fears, how they desired to live and how those aspirations had opened up deep divisions in American society. He told the BBC in 1969 that he hadn't seen any movies "that made a social commentary about what was going on".
"Yes, [the studios] make them about the [American] Civil War, they make them about slavery, or they make them about the Korean War, but, I mean, something that was really going on at that moment. Very few people go out and make a movie about that, especially in Hollywood."
A megalomaniac
Easy Rider was not just unorthodox in its choice of subject matter, but also in its wildly chaotic film-making. With a limited budget of just $400,000 (£305,620) from Columbia Pictures – which at times meant that Fonda had to pay the crew out of his own pocket – the production adopted a DIY approach. Crucial to the film's narrative was the idea of the road as a symbol of freedom and possibility, so Hopper needed to capture shots of Billy and Wyatt as they cruised down the seemingly endless highway. This kind of filming would usually have been done by hiring a camera truck with a radio. Instead, the film-makers bought a 1968 Chevy Impala convertible, with the aim of selling the car at the end of the film to recoup some money. Cinematographer László Kovács then stuck a camera on the back of it with plywood and sandbags, and sat in the back seat filming Fonda and Hopper as they rode their Harley-Davidson motorbikes on the open road, making hand signals to communicate what they should do. The production also saved money by filming in real locations, rather than building expensive studio sets, and by shooting scenes in natural light using handheld cameras, which added to Easy Rider's feeling of unfiltered authenticity.
But the film's production was far from plain sailing, not least because Hopper was a volatile character. He confessed to the BBC in 1969 that he had been blacklisted in Hollywood because of his tendency to fall out with directors. "I took direction when I respected the man," he said. "If I didn't respect the man, and most of the time I didn't, I didn't take direction." Now, for the first time, he was the director himself, and he ended up battling for control of every aspect of the film-making process. At one point, he had a physical fight with a camera operator who wouldn't hand over the footage he had shot.
That would not be the only "heated disagreement" the director would have on set. Actor Rip Torn was initially hired to play Nicholson's role, but he left a few weeks into the shoot after a fight with Hopper. The actor would successfully sue Hopper in 1994 for defamation when the director claimed that Torn had pulled a knife on him during the fight – saying, in fact, that the reverse was true. In Jenkinson's interview, the director did concede he was "difficult to work with". Fonda put it more frankly when he spoke to the BBC's Will Gompertz in 2014: "Hopper was a bit of a megalomaniac."
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But Hopper took his craft seriously and was committed to his vision. He told the BBC that he "had been trained in method acting" and "not to have preconceived ideas" about how a scene should play out. When he had worked with James Dean as a young actor on Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956), Dean had told him, "Don't act smoking a cigarette, just smoke it." Hopper took this advice to heart. To give realism and a loose spontaneity to this tale of the counterculture, he – along with Fonda and Nicholson – took liberal amounts of drugs and alcohol during the shooting of the movie. Scenes were directed in documentary style, with the – often stoned or high – actors improvising scenes and dialogue.
Nicholson told Time Magazine in 1970 that he "smoked about 155 joints" during the multiple takes of a scene in which the two bikers introduce his character, George, to marijuana. The real acting challenge for him proved to be remembering, after all those joints, to play George as if he was clear-headed at the start of the scene. "Keeping it all in mind stoned, and playing the scene straight, and then becoming stoned – it was fantastic," he said.
The film-makers took full advantage of the abandoning of the Hays Code in 1968. Hollywood's self-imposed guidelines had prohibited, among other things, profanity, nudity, realistic violence and drug use. When the Code was replaced by the MPAA rating system, Easy Rider made the most of this new freedom, and its frank portrayal of drug-taking without judgement helped it to become a cause célèbre upon its release. Hopper defended the drug-taking to the BBC, saying that "it would be unrealistic of these two boys in America not to smoke pot", and he claimed that their cocaine smuggling was no more immoral than other capitalist ways of making money. "Perhaps all of us are involved in criminal acts of one kind or another," he said.
And Easy Rider doesn't seek to present the bikers as heroes or even necessarily as good people, just as a reflection of America. "Well, I think they are as good as their leaders, don't you? I think people are as good as their leaders," said Hopper. The film, at times, portrays a deeply unsettling image of the US its protagonists live in. It makes clear the open hostility and brutal violence that individuals who are seen as outsiders can face.
A new era
But the way Billy and Wyatt dressed, their disillusionment with establishment values and their search for identity and purpose struck a chord with many young Americans.
So did Easy Rider's rock 'n' roll jukebox soundtrack, which managed to capture the restless spirit of the times. Songs by Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, The Band and others were originally just music the film-makers liked. They were only meant to act as placeholders while Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young worked on a proper score. But Easy Rider ended up being edited to the songs, meaning that a huge portion of the film's final budget then had to be spent on licensing to clear them for use.
Despite initially being released in only one New York cinema, Easy Rider resonated with American youth, quickly becoming a critical and commercial hit. Hopper won the First Film Award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, and Nicholson and Easy Rider's screenplay both received Oscar nominations. The movie would go on to gross more than $60 million (£45.8m) worldwide.
Hollywood was blindsided by the sudden popularity of a film made on a shoestring budget outside the studio system. Easy Rider's box-office success helped kickstart an era where studios gave young directors, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, much more creative control and freedom to experiment. These directors would then go on to define US cinema in the 1970s.
Hopper himself seemed bemused by this newfound acceptance by a Hollywood that had previously rejected him. "It's like you are on an elastic band. You run so far away that they snap you right back into the middle, and suddenly you're in the middle surrounded by the establishment," he said.
But he remained cynical about his status. "They are patting you on the back and loving you and pulling you to their bosom. Until you are no longer useful to them, and then they toss you away again."
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Released in this week in 1959, Pillow Talk challenged Hollywood's conservative morality, cleverly navigating restrictions on how bedroom activities could be portrayed. In the 1980s its stars talked to the BBC about how the film mirrored the attitudes of a nation on the cusp of sexual revolution.
"It seemed risqué, but isn't it funny when you think what they're showing now?"
Doris Day's playful observation in a rare 1989 BBC interview perfectly encapsulates a film that once pushed Hollywood's boundaries of acceptability. Released in 1959, Pillow Talk flirted with the themes of modern romance and desire in ways that now feel almost quaint, but were daring at a time when the movie business was bound by strict moral codes. It went on to have an impact on the romantic comedy genre as a whole, establishing tropes and archetypes that are still used today.
Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk follows Jan Morrow (Doris Day), a successful interior decorator, who unwillingly shares a telephone line with a charming yet womanising composer, Brad Allen (Rock Hudson). While Jan attempts to use the line for business, Brad hogs it for some business of his own, crooning serenades to countless women. The demand for phone services had surged in the US following World War Two, and so companies supplied multiple people with shared telephone connections. While cost-effective, these "party lines" meant that privacy was often compromised. In Pillow Talk, the party line is a playful tool for romantic entanglement and sets up the characters' "meet-cute", just as emails, text messages and apps would in the decades to follow. Similarly, the film's use of mistaken identity, romantic deception and eventual reconciliation became foundational tropes for the genre.
The film proved to be a turning point for both of its stars, transforming Doris Day from giddy girl-next-door to sophisticated sex symbol, and Rock Hudson from a dramatic leading man to a romcom regular. "Ah, I was crazy about that script," Day remembered. "And I loved the clothes, and I loved working with Rock for the first time. He and I were very good friends. We loved working together. We respected each other. And I think that came across." Pillow Talk earned Day her only Academy Award nomination, and was followed by two more romantic comedies that paired her with Hudson, Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964).
As clean as the film might seem when seen through modern eyes, it was considered quite racy in the safe, sanitised cinematic landscape of the 1950s. In a period when even subtle suggestions of sexuality were censored, it treated dating, seduction and pre-marital sex so casually that Hudson turned down the script three times because of how lewd it seemed. "We almost didn't do it because it was too dirty," he confessed on the BBC's Wogan chat show in 1984.
"Were those the days you had to keep a foot on the floor?" Terry Wogan asked, the audience responding with laughter. The idea of such delicacy and censorship was already absurd just a few decades after Pillow Talk was released.
Pushing the boundaries
Wogan was referring to the Hays Code: "A Code to Govern the Making of Talking, Synchronised and Silent Motion Pictures." The Hays Code, first shared in 1930 and implemented in 1934, was a set of strict moral guidelines governing Hollywood films. Named after the president of The Association of Motion Picture Producers at the time, William H Hays, the code promoted traditional values, and sought to censor content relating to sexuality, violence and anything else considered outside the boundaries of decency. While films could be released without a certificate of approval, it would heavily impact the number of cinemas willing to run them. Even cartoon flapper girl Betty Boop had her skirt lengthened, curls tamed and movements minimised to avoid any suggestion of immorality.
To stay in line with the code, many portrayals from the time showed married couples sleeping in adjacent single beds, or had one spouse keep a foot on the floor at all times to avoid them being shown lying down together. In particular, the code stated, "The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy," and warned: "Certain places are so closely and thoroughly associated with sexual life or with sexual sin that their use must be carefully limited".
Pillow Talk came teasingly close to crossing these ideas of decency, pushing the boundaries of what could be shown on screen without actually breaking the code's rules. A split-screen effect was used to show both sides of a phone conversation, giving the risqué impression of Hudson and Day lying side-by-side. The effect both drove the plot and heightened the couple's sexual tension, all the while sidestepping censorship.
As the 1950s drew to a close, the authority of the Hays Code had been significantly weakened by the success of non-approved films. However, it would be almost a decade from Pillow Talk's release before it was abandoned completely in favour of a four-letter rating system (G, M, R and X) by what was then known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Pillow Talk still needed to navigate a fine line, maintaining the appearance of traditional morality, while subtly acknowledging the views of a society on the cusp of a sexual revolution.
By the end of the film, conventional values prevail, with Hudson's Brad ultimately reforming his womanising ways, falling in love and seeking a committed relationship. And yet, Pillow Talk still mirrors the evolving attitudes of the late 1950s. Day's portrayal of Jan as a professional woman not defined by her relationship status connected with audiences who were starting to embrace women's independence in a post-World War Two US. Jan is successful, confident and in control of her personal life – a departure from the more domesticated female roles seen in some earlier Hollywood films.
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While Pillow Talk signalled a shift in cultural attitudes towards love and relationships, it also underscored the limitations of that progress. At the height of his career, Hudson kept his sexuality hidden, a necessity in an era that did not fully accept LGBTQ+ identities. "Nothing was ever talked about as far as his private life," Day explained in her 1989 television interview, "And I must tell you that many, many people would ask me, you know, 'Is Rock Hudson really gay?' And I said, 'It's something that I will not discuss.'"
Hudson's sexuality remained shrouded in secrecy and rumour until his Aids diagnosis was made public in 1985. He was one of the first celebrities to be publicly diagnosed and to die from an Aids-related illness. The disclosure of his condition helped to change public perception of Aids, which at that time had not even been publicly acknowledged by then-US president Ronald Reagan. Day would go on to raise awareness and fundraise for Aids research throughout her life.
Hudson's euphemised "private life" within the constraints of a conservative society was an example of the broader tensions of the late 1950s, when some boundaries were being pushed while others remained firmly in place. Pillow Talk captures those tensions. A landmark in romantic comedy, it reflects a moment in Hollywood when traditional values and modern ideals coexisted, offering both a glimpse of the sanitised past and a nod to the changes ahead.
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Denmark became the world's first country to offer legal recognition of gay partnerships on 1 October 1989, and the BBC was there to film the ceremonies – recording a day when "something shifted in human affairs".
In 2024 it might seem unremarkable in many parts of the world, but in 1989 it was a plunge into the unknown. Denmark's parliament passed a law in May of that year that allowed gay people to enter registered partnerships. Five months later, 11 couples arrived suited and booted at Copenhagen's city hall to take part in a civil ceremony unlike any that had gone before. It wasn't quite the same step as marriage, but it was a giant leap for equality.
The very idea was so unusual at the time that the BBC's religion and ethics programme, Heart of the Matter, was on hand to film the proceedings. Joan Bakewell, the programme's presenter, summarised the debate: "What lies at the heart of the matter is if one country ceases to regard marriage as solely between one man and one woman, how does that affect the way the rest of us think of it? And if one country in Europe can pass such a law, wouldn't it eventually affect Britain?" It would take another 16 years for her second question to be answered.
The ceremony itself was in many ways just like a regular wedding. The couples entered a small room and were asked by the mayor if they wanted to be in partnership with each other. The first couple to sign on the dotted line were Axel and Eigil Axgil, who had lived together for 41 years. The veteran gay rights campaigners had in the past endured discrimination and ill-treatment. In 1948, the men – using their original names Axel Lundahl-Madsen and Eigil Eskildsen – founded the Danish Gay and Lesbian Association. Legal recognition of their partnership had been a long time coming. Upon their civil union, they combined their names into a new surname, Axgil.
The second of 11 couples entering civil partnerships that day were Ivan Larsen, an ordained minister of the Lutheran church, and psychologist Ove Carlsen. Mr Larsen said he felt so happy that he could allow himself "to have the same feeling as everyone else who is going to be married". He told the BBC: "It's the first time in world history it has been made possible for gays and lesbians – not to be married, because we are not allowed to use the word 'marriage' – but we are allowed to have our partnership registered with the same rights, except for a few things that the heterosexuals have. It is a kind of marriage. It means that now we are recognised not only as singles, but also as couples. That is extraordinary."
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The civil partnerships differed in three significant ways from heterosexual marriage: at least one partner had to be a Danish citizen, couples were not allowed to adopt children and the union could not be registered in a church. As a priest, however, Mr Larsen saw their union as much the same as a traditional Christian marriage. "I think that when two people are in love with each other and they want to spend the rest of the life together, then it is a marriage blessed by God. Whether they are saying 'I do' in the church, at a town hall or in a private room, it's a Christian marriage, and God is blessing it."
The Aids crisis in the 1980s had made same-sex partnerships more of a pressing issue, according to Dorthe Jacobsen of the Danish Gay and Lesbian Association. She said that when her organisation came forward to offer help to the authorities in reaching out to gay men, "that really started the people in parliament talking to us". She added: "It meant they started to realise what kind of lives we had, and of course when you talk to people, they get to know you. They find out that you're not a pervert. They find out that you have a very similar life to them."
Leading the way
For Theodor Jørgensen, a theology professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark had taken an important step in leading by example. "Some societies have to make the first step and to take the risk. All the homosexuals in all the countries over the world will come to their governments and say, 'Look what they have done in Denmark – we should try to do the same thing here, and what are your objections to it?'"
Northern European countries would lead the way in recognising same-sex unions. Norway, Sweden and Iceland all enacted similar legislation to Denmark in 1996, while Finland followed suit six years later. The Netherlands became the first country to offer full civil marriage rights to gay couples in 2001. The UK held its first civil partnership ceremonies in 2005. In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a legal right across the United States. To date, there are 36 countries where same-sex marriage is legal.
At the end of the 1989 documentary, Bakewell observed: "Something has shifted in human affairs. It began here in Denmark with a few couples on a sunny Sunday in October, where marriage and partnerships now live side-by-side. The rest of the world is watching."
In 2012, Denmark went one step further and legalised gay marriage. To mark the occasion, Mr Larsen and Mr Carlsen held a blessing of their union in a church. Looking back in 2014 in an interview with the BBC's World Service, Mr Larsen said that Denmark's legalisation of same-sex partnerships had an enormous effect on normalising gay relationships. "In fact, I sometimes think it has been so normal that it isn't worth discussing," he laughed.
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The Stephen King prison drama bombed commercially on its initial release in 1994, failing to claw back its modest budget. Now, many regard it as a cinematic masterpiece. In 2004, its director Darabont told the BBC about its remarkable reversal of fortune.
When The Shawshank Redemption came out 30 years ago this week, it seemed to have all the ingredients of a box-office smash.
After all, it was based on a novella by one of the world's best-selling authors, Stephen King, so it looked as if a ready-made fanbase would be interested in seeing it. Indeed, another story, The Body, taken from the same 1982 collection, Different Seasons, had been turned into a hugely successful movie, Stand by Me, in 1986. Director and screenwriter Frank Darabont believed that the story was so filmic that in 1987 he bought the rights to adapt it himself. "I found the story, Stephen King's story, so compelling, really, and so touching that to me it was just natural as a movie," he told Stuart Maconie on BBC4 programme The DVD Collection in 2004.
The novella told the story of Andy Dufresne, a man convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and how, through his friendship with fellow inmate Ellis "Red" Redding, he survives, and ultimately triumphs over, the brutally harsh conditions of Shawshank Penitentiary. And Darabont had found the perfect location to stand in for the merciless, gothic prison. Ohio State Reformatory had opened in 1896 and been active up until 1990 when it closed due to allegations of inhumane treatment of its prisoners. Filming there would add an authentically grim atmosphere to The Shawshank Redemption. "You can't really have a place like that without there being a real sense of foreboding and despair that sinks into that stone," said Darabont. "And everybody felt it, everybody in the cast and the crew felt it. So, it was a very oppressive place to shoot a movie. People would say you feel the sadness in the place or you feel the ghosts in the place."
The production had also pulled in two acclaimed actors for its starring roles. Tim Robbins, who was playing Dufresne, had received two Golden Globe nominations for different performances the year before, winning best actor for The Player. Morgan Freeman, cast as Red, had at the time already been Oscar-nominated twice. He was also hot off the back of appearing in Clint Eastwood's 1993 western, Unforgiven, a film which had, along with achieving box-office success, won four Oscars.
And when the prison-set drama was finished, the early buzz was extremely promising. The film's producer, Liz Glotzer, said that the audiences' reactions to its test screenings were incredible. "I mean, they were the best screenings ever," she told Vanity Fair in 2014. So, hopes were understandably high when The Shawshank Redemption was released in September 1994. Then, as Freeman told the BBC's Graham Norton Show in 2017, "it tanked at the box office". Darabont had told Maconie that the movie "had trouble finding our audience, getting people to show up". Ticket sales of its initial theatrical run were distinctly underwhelming, only managing to recoup $16 million of its $25-million budget in the US.
The timing of the film's release meant that it faced some stiff competition for viewers' attention. The Shawshank Redemption came out in the middle of the wildly successful cinema run of the Tom Hanks hit Forrest Gump. Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which had won the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, came out just a couple of weeks later. These films were not just critical and commercial successes but became pop-cultural phenomena. Their quotable dialogue, striking cinematography and jukebox soundtracks generated reams of media coverage and they each offered talking points about the state of America at the time, overshadowing The Shawshank Redemption's more introspective storyline.
Of course, the bleak premise and lack of female characters may have also made it a less obviously appealing choice to cinema-goers than the high-profile blockbusters which had already come out that summer, such as The Lion King, True Lies, Speed and The Mask. While the Academy did recognise the film, nominating it for seven awards including best actor for Freeman and best picture, ultimately it came away with nothing. Forrest Gump proved to be the big winner on the night, picking up six Oscars, with Pulp Fiction winning one for best screenplay.
The power of hope
Freeman himself put the movie's initial box-office failure down to its name. "The only real marketing that movies get I think is word-of-mouth," he told The Graham Norton Show in 2017. "Although people went to see The Shawshank Redemption and they came back and [said], 'Oh man, I saw this really terrific movie, it's called the… er… Shanksham? Shimshawnk?' One lady saw me in the elevator one time and said, ‘Oh, I saw you in the Hudsucker Reduction'. So, if you can't get word across, then it just doesn't do well."
But The Shawshank Redemption was to have its own redemption arc, as it found a new life in the home-video market. With its release on VHS, the film's story of human resilience, friendship and the power of hope resonated with an audience that had missed it at the movie theatre. "We became the most rented video of 1995. Just boom, boom. And then that word-of-mouth from that audience began to grow and grow and grow," Darabont told the BBC in 2004.
From 1997, its frequent broadcasts on cable television helped it to reach an even broader audience. By the time Darabont appeared on the BBC in 2004, The Shawshank Redemption was repeatedly appearing on lists of the "greatest" movies, including being voted the best film "never to have won an Oscar" in a poll by the BBC's Radio Times. On the Internet Movie Database's (IMDb) list of top 250 films, voted by regular users, it currently sits at the top above The Godfather. "And what's really bizarre is that momentum never really seems to have died out. It has just kind of continued. Which is wonderful. It's a fantastic vindication, really, for the film, isn't it," said Darabont.
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During those first 10 years after the film's release, the rapid uptake of the internet saw burgeoning communities of fans discuss and deconstruct the movie's themes and imagery online. One theory that was popular at the time was that The Shawshank Redemption was a religious allegory and that the enigmatic Dufresne character represented Jesus Christ. But the film can – and has – been interpreted through a variety of framings including that it is anti-religious or even that it represents Jean-Paul Sartre's form of existentialism.
The BBC's Maconie asked Darabont if he had the story of Christ in his "mind even remotely" when making the film. "Yes, a little, in some measure, the religious parable of it, the parallels did occur to me, but not quite to the degree that's been read into it," said Darabont. "You know, suddenly, I read something like, you know, Tim [Robbins] has a line in it where he says, 'Well, and I use this library to help a dozen guys get their high school diplomas,' and suddenly the symbolism of that becomes, well, those are twelve apostles! And I think, 'Boy, that never occurred to me, not in a million years did that occur to me,' but that's the pleasure for me of making a film that has some interpretation."
Perhaps the biggest latter-day endorsement of The Shawshank Redemption's enduring appeal, and the fans who championed it, came in 2015 when the Library of Congress added it to the US National Film Registry which represents "important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in film-making".
"I express my deepest thanks to all those who chose it for inclusion in the National Film Registry," said Darabont, "and most of all to the audiences who embraced our movie and have kept it alive all these years."
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The hometown of nineties band EMF has agreed to honour the group with a blue plaque.
The group, from Cinderford in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, is best known for its hit single Unbelievable which was the UK's 30th best selling single of 1990.
The town's council unanimously approved the plaque after a campaign by local crier Jer Holland.
James Atkin, EMF singer, told BBC Radio Gloucestershire he was "completely blown away" by the news.
Mr Atkin and the band's guitarist Ian Dench are from Cinderford and regularly reference their heritage at gigs.
Their first ever band rehearsal was in a Cinderford church hall.
Reacting to the news, Mr Atkin said: "it's come completely out of the blue"
"We're just amazed. What a great thing," he said.
"We love the Forest, we love Cinderford. It's where we started, that's our root.
"To get recognised it kind of mindblowing."
Mr Holland said: "It's about time we recognise what they did for the town, and what they continue to do to put the town on the map."
"Like many Foresters, always been very proud of their achievements.
"Very proud, also as a fan loving their music."
Mr Dench said: "We feel very proud of having made Cinderford and the Forest of Dean proud of us."
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When Myles Smith reflects on his journey - from an 11-year-old kid playing guitar and piano to a charting artist - he feels he's continuously exceeded his own expectations.
This year, the 26-year-old from Luton has had a top five single, played Glastonbury, smashed past one billion streams and just been named BBC Introducing's Artist of the Year.
"I guess it’s taken a long time. But I finally feel comfortable in my own skin and I feel proud of the music," he says.
When Myles speaks to BBC Newsbeat, he is in Montreal, one of the stops on his North America tour.
"What I think this year's taught me is that expectations are there for comfort. But very rarely are they exactly what we imagine.
"My expectations when I started 2024 was not in a year to have played over 100 shows or the billion streams."
Myles says he will never take the opportunity for people around the globe to choose to listen to his music for granted.
His breakout hit, Stargazing, has achieved worldwide acclaim, been platinum-certified and even featured on former US President Barack Obama's summer playlist.
"For me it was just about prioritising writing music that comes straight from the heart and trying not to filter too much of that brain to mouth barrier.
"I just wanted to write something that was simple, but something that we all experience and feel at some point in life.
"I feel like doing that, it resonated with so many more people around the world," he says.
The song, which he says was made in about 15 minutes, has also found a home on TikTok.
And Myles is well aware of how important the platform is to artists looking to break through.
In 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, Myles began posting covers, with his acoustic version of The Neighbourhood’s Sweater Weather going viral in 2022.
"Social media in general is so significant to an artist’s journey," he says.
"Some people may feel that the onus to do social media is a pressure that isn't needed.
"And others may see it as an opportunity to really sort of find a community at a global scale."
Myles sees it as the latter.
"We have the autonomy and control to be able to market ourselves how we desire and in ways which are most authentic to us."
But there has been some criticism that TikTok’s influence is changing the way music sounds, with impacts on song lengths and styles.
"I think that the idea that TikTok somehow diminishes the quality of music or somehow you have to fit the music within parameters is a myth for me personally.
"It's given me more freedom than ever to do what I want. And how I want to do it.
"Times change all the time. One time you were cutting records on vinyl next it was on CD, then MP3 and digital… it's about moving with the times," he says.
While Myles accepts the "privilege" of being able to reach so many online and on tour, he feels it’s important to highlight the "other side".
Artists such as Rachel Chinouriri, The Last Dinner Party and CMAT have previously mentioned the financial challenges of touring, particularly in North America.
Myles agrees that it "is super expensive" to tour, and feels live music more widely needs greater support.
In the UK, Myles said the "thriving" small venue and grassroots scene took a hit post-Covid, and struggle to support artists in the way the used to.
Such venues have often been an important starting point for artists who’ve gone on to superstardom, including Adele and Ed Sheeran.
"[It’s] truly fundamental to an artist’s journey and luckily I was able to start my journey a long time ago," says Myles.
"I think that moving forward, thinking about support for musicians and thinking about how we can move forward and value the arts is an important conversation."
The other thing Myles is keen to do when thinking about his future is to "keep making music I love".
Myles is due to support Ed Sheeran in 2025, describing him as "one of my idols".
"I just want to have the most fun and the best year that I can.
"Spend it with the people that I love the most.
"And that is a priority for me now."
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Cheltenham Jazz Festival has announced the first five artists due to perform at next year’s event.
David Gray, Jools Holland, Nubya Garcia and Corinne Bailey Rae with Ronnie Scott’s Orchestra will perform as part of festival's 80th anniversary celebrations.
The event will take place in Montpellier Gardens and other pop up venues across the town from 30 April to 5 May.
Ian George, head of programming for the Jazz Festival and co-CEO of parent charity Cheltenham Festivals said: "Bringing together the finest contemporary jazz from across the globe, we celebrate every genre that pulses with jazz’s vibrant DNA."
He added: "We're thrilled to share a taste of what festival-goers can expect from Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2025."
The festival includes large-scale concerts, intimate club shows, world premieres as well as masterclasses and family-friendly shows.
Next year's event will be the first time that British singer-song writer David Gray has performed at the festival.
He is set to perform songs from his highly anticipated new album Dear Life, as well as his back catalogue.
Nubya Garcia will be returning to the festival after a sold-out show at Cheltenham Town Hall back in 2022 to perform her widely-acclaimed studio album Odyssey.
Multi-GRAMMY-award-winning singer Corinne Bailey Rae will perform her hits with Ronnie Scott’s Orchestra for an exclusive Cheltenham Jazz Festival show.
Also announced is pianist and broadcaster Jools Holland who will be joined by former Squeeze band member Gilson Lavis.
Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, who combine traditional Malian sounds with everything from brass-heavy funk to reggae, Delta blues and Afro-Cuban jazz, will play a headline set at the Festival’s 2000-capacity Big Top tent.
2025 will also see the return of the Parabola Arts Centre programme, which is dedicated to new, innovative music.
Alex Carr, contemporary music programmer at Southbank Centre and Jazz Programmer for the festival, said: "Festival-goers can look forward to an exhilarating and diverse programme that reflects a slice of the brilliant music that's being created in the UK with a sprinkle of international magic."
The full programme for Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2025 will be announced early next year.
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A charity that works with disadvantaged young people to make music has opened a new recording studio.
The Music Works offers mentoring to youngsters across Gloucestershire, many of whom have challenging circumstances.
"I would almost say it's been almost a life-changer for some of the young people," said youth support manager, Mikel Medley.
A BBC Children in Need grant has allowed the charity to expand by opening a second music hub in Cinderford in September.
The charity eventually hopes to offer activities throughout the Forest of Dean, supporting young people suffering rural isolation or mental health challenges.
Mr Medley said that he has left work "crying with joy" because of the projects the young people have developed and the discussions they have had.
"They talk about things they never ever would have talked about if they weren't in that setting," he added.
The staff at the charity work with about 3,000 young people every year from its main base in Gloucester, which opened in 2021.
They also take programmes into hospitals and schools across the county.
Elissa, 14, has been able to get involved in singing and podcasting.
"Everybody's really unique and has their own style and nobody tries to be like other people, which probably makes it work," she said.
"There's so much going on all the time, music, dance, podcasting and writing.
"It's all up to you, it's your taste."
Javeisha Powell, 21, an alumnae who now helps with the charity, said it had given her the opportunity to mentor other participants.
"You feel very seen and heard, which has made me realise, actually, that I can do it," she said.
"I'm currently working with younger people which I feel is very beneficial for me because I'm learning from them, but also I feel I'm being the voice for them that I needed when I was younger."
While the Cinderford hub first started operating in September, it will be formally opened in January.
The charity is hosting its fourth annual creative industries event on 14 November to introduce young people to professionals in the music industry.
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"If there's any budding writers that need a little blonde nurse to make the background look busy, give me a shout," laughs Maria Pike.
For almost 15 years, she's been the quiet star of the popular BBC daytime drama Doctors.
Thursday will be the last ever episode aired on TV after the BBC decided to stop making the show in October last year.
Maria, from Derbyshire, says her role as Nurse Tash, often referred to by fans as "the silent nurse" has been a "huge" part of her life and her last day of filming was "tough."
Maria is a supporting artist, better known as an extra, and for a short while was one of five nurses that appeared in the background of many scenes.
"They just rotated us," she said.
"But then to my advantage, one by one, they all drifted away which then left me, then they gave me a character name and that's how it all started."
"I was known for a long time as ‘the silent nurse’ and then when she got a line it was a big thing."
"They are always just a quick one-liner, nothing very complicated," she added.
"This is where it's really quite nice to be a supporting artist, because I've got the beauty of being part of the cast and crew but I've not got the pressure of learning lots of lines."
The programme typically achieves more than a million viewers per episode and a Nurse Tash appearance can vary from once a fortnight to three times a week.
Maria even has her own sub-group of fans who have a Facebook page dedicated to spotting her on screen.
"They love Tash spotting, they often say 'there’s been a flash of Tash',” she said.
Maria, from Heanor, Derbyshire, has also appeared in Doctor Who, Crossroads and Eastenders.
"Doctors has always been my regular gig though," she said.
"It sounds like a twee thing to say, but it really is like being part of a family - it's just been amazing."
The BBC One soap, which has been on air for 24 years, wrapped up filming on 1 March 2024.
The drama started in 2000 and was a launch pad for many big name actors like Eddie Redmayne, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Claire Foy who have all featured in episodes.
Maria's favourite day on-set however was being part of the 3,000th episode which was filmed in Birmingham city centre and involved Bhangra dancing and "lots of action."
Maria will watch the final episode with her family and said the only downside of the show coming to an end was that she was not able to take her nurse Tash name badge home.
"I need to hound them in the wardrobe department to see if I can have that," she added.
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Doves have confirmed that frontman Jimi Goodwin will not take part in their first full tour in 15 years.
The indie rock band, who previously announced three gigs without him, said all of their 2025 shows would now see twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams sharing vocal duties.
They said Goodwin was "stepping back from live to focus on his wellbeing" and added: "Mental health has always been central to Doves and we fully support him in his decision."
The tour in February and March will see the band visit 15 venues across the UK, including a homecoming show at Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
'Welfare'
Earlier this month, the band asked for understanding from fans, with guitarist and vocalist Jez Williams saying that while Goodwin was "doing great" he was "still not out of the woods".
They have also announced plans to release comeback album Constellations For The Lonely next year.
Much of the album was recorded remotely, which Goodwin described as a "godsend" when asked about the process of personal recovery and recording new material.
Doves cancelled part of their last live tour in 2021 due to Goodwin's mental health struggles.
At the time, the band said it "had to take each other's welfare as seriously as the music".
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"I've been coming here for three years. I feel on top of the world every time I sing."
Brandon, 14, stands in the converted crypt of a former church on the Isle of Wight, taking a short break from rehearsing with his band, Smile.
Describing where he is, he says: "It's called Aspire, it's a creative hub in Ryde for people to come and do music and have a good time."
The music club is part-funded by donations to BBC Children in Need.
The crypt is crammed with musical instruments and recording equipment, with professionals on hand to give lessons.
Manager Meme Cullen said: "Some of them come from poor families and have financial difficulties. Some have issues and struggles with certain diagnoses that they’re dealing with.
"A lot of our young people find it hard to find a place where they belong and we kind of are that space here for them. They call this their second home.
"If it was not for BBC Children in Need we would not be able to fund all of these projects that we deliver, we wouldn’t have half of the equipment that we have.
"It goes a long way, so a massive thank you to Children in Need."
Ruby is learning to play bass guitar.
"It’s got me out of my box in a way that I didn’t think I could have gotten out my box," she says.
"I’m still a very quiet person but a lot less timid around new people, I think."
Fourteen-year-old Ukrainian Tanya also attends sessions at the club.
"I came here about two months ago. I’m really enjoying being here," she says.
"Just come, don’t worry about anything, just do what you like."
Music practitioner Jess Ong adds: "A lot of the time when young bands start they might not be confident enough to sing by themselves on the stage, so we’ll sing with them.
"We’ll support them musically until they don’t need us anymore."
The British Museum is to receive what is believed to be the highest-value gift ever received by a UK museum with the acquisition of £1bn worth of Chinese ceramics.
Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation, which owns the works, are to donate 1,700 pieces following a 15-year loan to the London museum.
The charitable foundation represents the late British businessman, who collected the items in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China, before his death in 1964.
The director of the British Museum, Dr Nicholas Cullinan, said it was an "incomparable private collection".
The works have been on loan to the museum since 2009 and on show in the specially designed bilingual Room 95.
Sir Percival David was born into a wealthy family in Bombay in 1892 and inherited a baronetcy from his father, as well as ownership of the family company.
The businessman moved to London in 1914 from where he began to collect large amounts of Chinese art and books.
Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation said he had wanted his private collection to be used to inform and inspire people.
Dr Cullinan said he was "humbled by the generosity of the trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation".
He added: "These celebrated objects add a special dimension to our own collection and together offer scholars, researchers and visitors around the world the incredible opportunity to study and enjoy the very best examples of Chinese craftsmanship anywhere in existence."
The donation will take the number of Chinese ceramics held by the British Museum to 10,000 pieces, making it one of the most important collections of such items of any public institution outside the Chinese-speaking world.
Highlights from the foundation's donation include the David vases from 1351, which revolutionised the dating for blue and white ceramics with their discovery.
The collection also includes a chicken cup used to serve wine for the Chenghua emperor and Ru wares made for the Northern Song dynasty court around 1086.
The chairman of The Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, Colin Sheaf, said the donation achieved Sir Percival's three main objectives.
He said these were to: "Preserve intact his unique collection, to keep every single piece on public display together, and to ensure the collection would remain an inspiration and education for future generations."
Arts minister Sir Chris Bryant added: "I am thrilled these world-famous Chinese ceramics will now be displayed permanently in the British Museum, where the collection will educate and enlighten future generations for many years to come.
"I am immensely grateful for this phenomenal act of generosity and very much hope it will help set a trend for others."
After the donation is completed, pieces will be lent to the Shanghai Museum in China and Metropolitan Museum in New York as part of the British Museum's support of exhibitions worldwide.
The final transfer of ownership to the British Museum will be subject to the Charity Commission's consent.
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A baker who had hoped to "prove something" to herself has been eliminated from the Great British Bake Off tent in the quarter finals due to a "toppled" cake.
Illyin Morrison, 31, from Norwich, is a birth trauma specialist midwife and failed to rise to the occasion in week eight of the competition which saw contestants create 1970s-themed bakes.
She became the first contestant of the series to receive a coveted handshake from Paul Hollywood in episode one with her cinnamon cake, and had a fainting episode the following week.
She said: "I hope I haven't disappointed any of you; I really did give it my all."
The Channel 4 show, which started on the BBC and is in its 15th series, sees a group of amateur bakers compete against each other.
During the latest episode, contestants went from making a choux profiterole to a gateau and finishing with a cake elaborately decorated with all the flair of the era.
Ms Morrison said: "It was very sad and no baker wants to go out with a toppled cake."
In a post on her Instagram page, she said she was left heartbroken after her gateau collapsed, but had been shown a lot of support.
"Quarter finalist -a title I didn't anticipate having and am so proud to have achieved," she said.
"You don't get to this point of the competition without being at least an OK baker."
Speaking to BBC Radio Norfolk ahead the competition, she said: "Like most people I wanted to prove something to myself that I could do it and getting into that tent is an achievement in itself."
In a departing letter shared in a post on X, she said being a part of GBBO had been a "massive" learning experience.
"I leave with memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life and a deeper understanding of myself and what I am capable of," she wrote.
"It has been a lesson in patience, determination and self-belief.
"I am a firm-believer in 'what's for me, won't miss me' and this was for me, what a joy! I'm excited for what is next in this new chapter."
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A bear, famed for his love of beer, cigarettes and boxing and who was by the side of Allied troops in World War Two, has been made the subject of a play.
Wojtek was adopted by the 2nd Polish Corps in 1943, after his mother was shot by hunters.
The Syrian brown bear travelled with them from the Middle East as they were deployed to Italy. Allied soldiers described their shock at seeing Wojtek carrying artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The story of friendship and courage has been adapted for a production at Coventry's Albany Theatre by writer Alan Pollock from his children's book The Bear Who Went To War.
Sue Butler's father was one of the soldiers in the war alongside Wojtek.
"Dad said he was a symbol that united the soldiers. He was much more than a bear, he thought he was one of them," she said.
Like many veterans, Cpl Andrzej Gasior did not talk much about his experiences of war as she was growing up, said Mrs Butler, from Solihull.
"When he started to tell me stories about this soldier who was actually a bear, I didn't believe him at first. I thought he was winding me up.
"But it was in a local Polish club that a friend of his brought a picture to show me of Wojtek."
Mrs Butler's father had been put in a Siberian labour camp aged 16 after being caught crossing the Polish border to trade boots and food.
He became ill and said the war had saved his life as the invasion of Poland prompted the Soviet Union to let the Poles go.
It was then that he joined the Polish Free Army, as he called it, and met Wojtek while in the Middle East.
Wojtek was famed as a bear who liked beer and cigarettes but the truth may have been a little more prosaic.
The bear was especially partial to dates, which her father would carry in his top pocket as a treat, Mrs Butler said.
"If dad pretended to walk past Wojtek he knew that he'd got something and would make a beeline for him," she said.
"He told me other soldiers wrestled with the bear, and although he is sometimes seen drinking bottles of beer, my dad said the beer was sometimes too precious and often it was just water."
He would also ask for cigarettes, which he would eat.
Mrs Butler said the soldiers were very protective of their colleague, who served as a great morale booster.
"He was a displaced bear and they were displaced people, and they were both without their families," she said.
The animal was "very funny and quite mischievous," she added, but ultimately "thought he was one of them".
She said: "They had all come out [of Siberia] emaciated, and been downtrodden by the Russian state for such a long time, and this bear suddenly comes into their lives who hasn't got his mom."
When the Polish forces were deployed to Europe, the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him.
So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.
In one interview, a British veteran told how taken aback he was to see the 1.82m (6ft) bear carrying shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The company emblem became a picture of Wojtek carrying a shell.
Mrs Butler said her father had told her, "I'm sure he kept us going" during that battle.
"He absolutely showed that he was scared by the explosions but he got used to it and was carting artillery around the place in big boxes," she said.
'Sobbed like a baby'
When the Polish soldiers were demobilised, Wojtek lived in Berwickshire in Scotland before being taken to Edinburgh Zoo where he eventually died in 1963.
Cpl Gasior travelled to England, first working at a colliery in Preston before joining a circus and ending up in the West Midlands.
He married Johanna O'Connel, a canteen worker he met at Gaydon Airfield in Warwickshire, before the couple settled in Birmingham.
Mrs Butler said her father had gone to visit Wojtek in Edinburgh before moving south.
"Polish men of his era were taught not to cry as it was seen as a sign of weakness," she said.
"But he told me when he saw Wojtek at the zoo, he sobbed like a baby".
Playwright Mr Pollock said he had been alerted to the tale by a 90-year-old woman while carrying out research at Coventry's Polish Club.
He said: "I had to stop her and say, 'I'm sorry can you repeat that? A bear was a private in the Polish army?'
"She told me the story and from that moment I was gripped. I don't think I've ever heard a story that I so instantly knew I wanted to tell."
Many of the soldiers ended up settling in the UK, he said.
"They think when the battle is won they can go home, but of course Poland is occupied by the Soviet Union and they can never go back," he said.
"Most of them left home in 1939 or 1940 and many of them never saw their homes or their families ever again."
Mrs Butler said she had only recently heard of the production through her daughter-in-law who works at the theatre.
"I think Julia mentioned it to my son, Tom, and he said, 'I'm absolutely positive my grandad met that bear,' but I don't think she believed him at first."
She added: "It's a small world and sometimes things just all align, don't they?"
Her father lived to the age of 92 and died in 2014.
Mrs Butler said: "He's my hero, my dad is. He was an amazing man, and I'm just so proud to be his daughter."
The Bear Who Went to War by Alan Pollack is published by Old Barn Books and the play runs at the Albany Theatre Coventry until 2 November.
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Artificial intelligence is being used to generate paintings, images and even sculptures, with some selling for thousands of dollars. Do we need to reframe our definition of art?
In the drawing room of a stately home in rural Oxfordshire, I watch on as a dungaree-clad artist slowly and deliberately puts pen to paper. Her arm moves across the canvas, the marks gradually coalescing into an abstract portrait of herself.
It seems like a moment of creative expression. But this is no ordinary artist – she is the world's first humanoid robot artist, Ai-Da. By design, her very existence brings into question how we define art, and who, or in this case, what, can create it.
Will AI algorithms and robots like Ai-Da spell the end of human creativity and artistry, or can they be harnessed to augment our own creative potential?
Art in flux
When Marcel Duchamp proposed that a porcelain urinal be considered art and submitted it for exhibition in early 20th-Century New York, he flipped the art world on its head. He argued that anything could be considered as art, if chosen by the artist and labelled as such. It was a profoundly revolutionary thought which challenged previous notions of art as beautiful, technically skilful and emotive.
In much the same way, AI-created artworks are disrupting the accepted norms of the art world. As philosopher Alice Helliwell from Northeastern University London argues, if we can consider radical and divergent pieces like Duchamp's urinal and Tracey Emin's bed as art proper, how can something created by a generative algorithm be dismissed? After all, both were controversial at the time and contain objects that haven't technically been created by an "artist's" hand.
"Historically, the way we understand the definition of art has shifted," says Heliwell. "It is hard to see why a urinal can be art, but art made by a generative algorithm could not be."
Throughout history, every radical artistic movement has been intimately connected to the cultural zeitgeist of the time, a reflection of society's preoccupations and concerns, like Turner and his industrial landscapes and Da Vinci's obsession with science and mathematics. AI is no different. Ai-Da's creators, gallerist Aidan Meller and researcher Lucy Seal cite this as a pivotal reason for the existence of a humanoid artist like Ai-Da. She is the personification of one of contemporary society's current fears, the rise of job-snatching AI algorithms and potential robot domination.
But technological revolutions like artificial intelligence need not signify the "end of art" as many fear. Instead, they can help to kickstart an artistic metamorphosis and move us towards totally different ways of seeing and creating, something Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at the University of Oxford and author of The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, would contend.
Humans are just as prone to behaving like machines, repeating old behaviours and getting bogged down with rules, like a painter or musician locked into a particular style. "AI might help us to stop behaving like machines…and kick us into being creative again as humans," says du Sautoy. He sees it as a powerful collaborator in the pursuit of human creativity.
There is historical precedence for new technology liberating us from our creative shackles. Take the invention of photography in the 1800s for example. Some artists saw the camera as the antithesis of an artist, and photographs as the mortal enemy of the art establishment.
But instead of replacing painting, photography became a catalyst in the development of the experimental modern art movement of the 20th Century, as artists moved away from realism towards abstraction, a shift that paved the way for the contemporary art of today.
Who's the artist?
Walking around Ai-Da's country pile in Oxfordshire I got to appreciate the sheer breadth of her artworks to-date. Unsettling busts of herself with her eyes stapled shut, scarab beetles fused to her face; partial and ethereal depictions of computer scientist Alan Turing; and colourful pop-art inspired portraits of Glastonbury headliners.
Unlike the numerous text-to-image generators like Dall-E and Midjourney that have the ability to create alarmingly plausible magazine front covers and win coveted art competitions, Ai-Da's artistic process doesn't rely solely upon the data on which she has been trained. (Find out more about AI training in this simple guide to machine learning.)
Ai-Da also makes use of the cameras in her eyes, which feed novel images into her algorithm, thereby creating new and unique works far removed from human-generated datasets. This is how she's able to create self-portraiture. Does this make her creative in her own right? And can we credit her with authorship, or does this reside with the artists upon whose work she's been trained and with the creators of her algorithm, who ultimately wrote her code?
Margaret Boden, a researcher in cognitive science at the University of Sussex in the UK, has developed one of the most widely accepted definitions of creativity to date. She sees it as the ability to generate ideas that are new, valuable and surprising. Using this definition, the works produced by machines like Ai-Da could be considered creative, argue her creators. Whether or not an algorithm or a robot itself can be described as a creative entity, an 'artist' in its own right, like a human, remains up for debate, and this in part comes down to authorship.
Questions of authorship and data ownership plague the artificial intelligence narrative. Artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, who recently held an exhibition exploring collaborative artwork in the age of AI at London's Serpentine Gallery, want to confront the issue of data misuse and authorship in AI. The pair co-founded Spawning AI, a suite of tools aimed at empowering human creators to both prohibit AI from using their works and to find whether works of theirs have already been referenced in AI generated work.
Plagiarism is a legitimate concern for many artists as their work is used to train algorithms but also can then be copied in the works that generative AI tools produce.
But there are also artists who see AI as a new outlet for their own creativity – a fresh medium they can wield much like a brush or palette knife. Some artists, such as Sougwen Chung, are now exclusively training algorithms on their works alone in an attempt to push their own creative boundaries.
There is another argument at the heart of this issue too. The machine-learning processes used to train generative AI algorithms may be a creative process in themselves.
"Code exposed to data – existing artworks, for example – is able to learn, mutate and evolve," says du Sautoy. "It means that the code by the end of this learning process is very different from the original code written by the human. This means that there is a chance for the code to produce something that... deserves to be called the creativity of the code rather than the human who started the process.
"It's a bit like Picasso is made from the DNA of his parents but it is his learning and exposure to the world that resulted in his creativity. You would never credit that to the parents even though everything started with their code or DNA." (Learn more about machine learning and some of the other terms you need to understand AI better.)
Powerful algorithms called Creative Adversarial Networks (Cans) also now exist, designed to deliberately create something that goes against the patterns in the training data, breaking with the style of the art upon which it's been trained. This is leading to AIs that generate very surprising results. "Many machine learning algorithms are 'black boxes'," says Helliwell. "We do not fully know what is happening inside the system, even if we have designed it ourselves."
This is a common and unsettling problem throughout the AI world. How can we trust the decisions or outputs from an AI if we don't understand how it got there in the first place? (Read more about why humans may never understand AI.)
Is art uniquely human?
The prospect of truly artistic machines is also challenging another long-held belief about what makes us human. Art has long been seen as a uniquely human endeavour. Made by humans, for aesthetic appreciation by other humans, artworks themselves are imbued with the emotions of their creators. It is a visual representation of their desires and fears, frustrations and reverence, or at the very least their need to create for practical, economical and emotional reasons.
So, can we consider the creations of non-human entities to be art by the same definition? There are some who believe that animals already produce forms of art. And research has shown that pigeons seem to be able to discriminate between different types of artwork.
It all comes down to intent, this is "what truly distinguishes the creativity of the human and the machine", says du Sautoy. "No machine is driven to express itself creatively. It is prompted by the intention of the human."
Does this mean AI is not yet fully capable of creating true art? After all, computer algorithms lack any real-world experience and robots like Ai-Da, although capable of self-portraiture, don't actually possess self-awareness. This question remains hotly contested. For Helliwell a lack of intent shouldn't necessarily preclude AI works from being considered art.
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And perhaps that is what it comes down to. Art, goes the idiom, is in the eye of the beholder. As humans, for example, we identify patterns and admire the artistry evident in the natural world – the intricate web of a spider, the decorative plumage of a peacock. We often refer to bird calls as music and the mating displays of some animals as dance. There are numerous examples of animals exhibiting creative behaviours that we might label artistic. The Bower bird and pufferfish play with perspective, symmetry and colour in much the same way a human artist might, for example. And while these animals may not necessarily be intentionally creating these to be enjoyed as works of art, their actions are no less intentional in their pursuit of attracting a mate or warding off competitors.
What's the future?
However we look to define art or the artist, it's clear that AI algorithms and machines like Ai-Da are having an impact on the art world. Their works are exhibited alongside more traditional forms of art in established art institutions worldwide. Next year we'll see the world's first AI art gallery open its doors in LA, a permanent exhibition space for "ethical AI".
Eva Jäger, the creative AI lead and arts technologies curator at the Serpentine Gallery in London, is also helping to bring AI art to the masses, with a programme of exhibitions provoking critical discussion about the impact of technology on art.
For her, the future of AI art is not adversarial. Traditional forms of art will continue to exist, just as AI artwork will continue to develop. She sees the collaboration between human and machine as a space for real creative potential. She believes that the artist's intent and the human practice behind a piece or installation which utilises technology like AI are more important than just the final aesthetics.
"For me there are some really interesting generative images that get produced, but without the practice behind it I'm not sold on them, just because they're an amazing image," she says. "And I would say the same about painting. I’m much more interested in the systems, including the humans behind the work. I want to know what they are using the system for, what are they exploring? It's a mistake just to look at the final artefact."
And when it comes to evaluating the authenticity and credibility of AI art, one of the most contentious aspects of the AI art discipline, du Sautoy makes a compelling point. All art is a product of that which came before it, and creativity cannot come from nothing – all artists whether human, robot or algorithm, build upon the works of others.
"Too many people discuss creativity as if it is some uniquely human magical process, that it conjures something from nothing like a magician," says du Sautoy. "But that is just because we don't understand our own creativity."
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As a Florida principal was forced to resign after students were shown Michelangelo's statue of David, Kelly Grovier takes a look at the history of censorship in the art world.
When the principal of a charter school in Florida was recently forced to resign after parents alleged that their children had been exposed to pornography when shown photos of the Renaissance master Michelangelo's sculpture of the biblical figure David, many around the world were surprised. That itself is surprising. Almost since the moment that the 17ft (5m)-high nude marble statue was chiselled into scandalous shape in around 1504, Michelangelo's masterpiece has stood its ground against perennial accusations of indecency. The sculpture hadn't even strutted its way through the 16th Century before being fitted with a ludicrous loincloth of metal fig leaves to mitigate its immodesty. It was only in the middle of the 20th Century that similar leaves were finally plucked from the groin of a cast replica of the famous statue on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which had been given to Queen Victoria in 1857.
The controversial decision taken by the board of Tallahassee Classical School to pressure principal Hope Carrasquilla to quit provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on which works in modern history, while considered by some observers to be unacceptably shocking, have changed the way we think about art. What follows are 10 works created in the years since the fig leaves were removed from the V&A's David that have shocked contemporary sensibilities and helped redefine the very essence of art.
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1. Marc Quinn, Self, 1991
Every five years, over the course of five months, British artist Marc Quinn siphons off 5L of his own blood and spills them into a translucent, refrigerated mould of his face. The result is an ever-emerging series of self-portraits into which the artist can legitimately claim to have poured more of himself than any artist that came before him. For some observers, Quinn’s ongoing series Self is nothing more than a gruesome and vampiric stunt. For others, the work embodies a poignant and daring contribution to the tradition of self-representation to which such great artists as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Cindy Sherman have contributed – one that profoundly highlights the fragility of being.
2. Allen Jones, Chair, 1969
Unveiled to accusations that its creator, British Pop artist Allen Jones, treated objects like women and vice versa, Chair (along with companion pieces Hatstand and Table) contorted scantily-clad female mannequins into an un-ergonomically engineered suite of scurrilously lewd furniture. On International Women’s Day in March 1986, the work was doused with paint stripper by a pair of activists appalled by the sculpture’s chauvinist sensibility. The acid ate away at the face and neck, melting the awkward somersault in which the PVC work was forever frozen into a desperate duck-and-roll.
3. Piero Manzoni, Merda d’Artista, 1961
If Duchamp’s unused receptacle of human waste could be embraced by the art world as an aesthetic object in its own right, it is perhaps unsurprising that, at some stage, an artist would experiment with excrement itself and attempt to pass it off as a work of art. In 1961, Italian avant-garde artist Piero Manzoni (who, a year earlier, left observers aghast when he presented a balloon filled with his own breath as a work of art), did just that – cramming into 90 tin cans, 2700g of his own faeces. The work is thought to be an elaborate response to a derisory comment that his father, who owned a canning factory, once made to him, likening his work to excrement. In 2016, one of his son’s cans sold at auction for €275,000 (£245,000).
4. Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953
In 1953, the same year that the curators at the V&A believed modern eyes could handle David's genitals, the US artist Robert Rauschenberg tried his own hand at the art of stripping things away. Curious to know if a work of art could be created by removing marks from a surface with an eraser, rather than adding them with pencil, brush or chisel as artists conventionally do, Rauschenberg convinced his friend, the Dutch-American abstractionist Willem de Kooning, to sacrifice a recent drawing of his to the experiment. The result is a paper scrubbed free of any discernible picture, challenging observers to decide whether the image-less image is an image at all, or whether the real work on display is the empty frame that surrounds the absence – a sculptural holding place for endless artistic loss.
5. Judy Chicago, Dinner Party, 1979
Consisting of 39 place settings commemorating the contribution of women to cultural history (from Sappho to Virginia Woolf), US artist Judy Chicago’s triangularly constructed banquet table has been both acclaimed for its pioneering perspective and derided for its shocking vulgarity. The work is dominated by almost two score hand-painted china plates, many of which are decorated with a blossoming vulva-like butterfly symbol. Believing that the work has “too many vaginas”, contemporary British artist Cornelia Parker scorned the installation in The Guardian as “all about Judy Chicago's ego rather than the poor women she's supposed to be elevating”. “We're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit depressing.”
6. Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981
More than one iconic wall fell in 1989. In the dead of night on 15 March, eight months before sledgehammers began pounding the Berlin Wall, a team of construction workers descended on Federal Plaza in New York City to slice into pieces a 120ft (36m)-long, 12ft (3.6m)-high, controversial barricade of steel that had been erected eight years earlier. Contending that the work, a ground-breaking sculpture by the US artist Richard Serra, provided shelter for terrorists, vermin and vandals alike, a jury concluded the minimalist sculpture should be removed and hauled off to a warehouse.
7. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, 1983
Not everyone who looked upon the 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, skirted surreally in pink polypropylene fabric for two weeks in May 1983 by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was seduced by its fairytale magic. Environmentalists protested the work’s installation, worried about the long-term effect of the 6.5m sq ft (603,870 sq m) of synthetic plastic stretched across the habitats of manatees and nesting ospreys. The dialogue that constructing the work generated, which forced local officials and residents to discuss the fragility of the environment in which they lived, was among the artists’ aims.
8. Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998
Though the bed, as an archetypal object, has served as an indispensable prop in some of the greatest works of Western art – from Titian’s Venus of Urbino to Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, from Goya’s alternately nude and dressed Majas to Henry Fuseli’s devilish The Nightmare – public outrage at the installation by British artist Tracey Emin of her dishevelled My Bed for the 1998 Turner Prize Exhibition was intense and sustained. The site of a depressive episode in the artist’s life, surrounded by the material debris of a tousled psyche, the rumpled bed quickly became Exhibit A for those contending that contemporary art had lost its way. Defenders of the work were surprised that, more than 80 years after Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, a messy bed could spark such outrage and wondered whether the real objection was that a woman should so brazenly set up residency in a man’s museum.
9. David Černý, Shark, 2005
Riffing off of British artist Damien Hirst’s audacious installation The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), which featured a howling shark suspended in a formaldehyde solution, Czech artist David Černý’s arresting vitrine dared to float before visitors a hogtied sculpture of the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For some, the work came too close to casting Hussein in the role of victim. For others, the piece was gratuitously graphic. The scheduled exhibition of the controversial work at a museum in Middelkerke, Belgium, in early 2006 was ultimately cancelled, by decree of the town’s mayor Michel Landuyt, out of fear “that certain population groups would find the work too provocative".
10. Paul McCarthy, Tree, 2014
Occasionally, the urge to censor a controversial work has been acted upon by offended observers rather than cautious curators. Such was the case in October 2014, when US artist Paul McCarthy’s huge inflatable sculpture Tree, erected as a Christmas display on the Place Vendôme in Paris, was fatally toppled by vandals and subsequently deflated. Once the sculpture’s close resemblance to the shape of a sex prop was pointed out by commentators – a kinship that was, then, impossible to un-see – there was no protecting the colossal work from assault. Nor did the artist himself escape unscathed. An outraged attendee at the sculpture’s installation confronted McCarthy and slapped his face three times before zipping off, like a popped balloon, into the crowd.
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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 theatre company that teaches disabled adults performing arts has been forced to cancel its Christmas production after part of its venue's ceiling collapsed.
The Side by Side Theatre Company, based at The SideSpace in Stourbridge, said a large slab of plaster fell and "exploded" into the venue.
The group of actors said no-one was injured the incident, in the former St John's Church, where they were rehearsing their Christmas concert.
The theatre company is now in its 27th year, and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe as well as Sweden and Prague and with the Royal Shakespeare’s Open Stages.
The group said they were rehearsing for a week of festive shows when the plaster fell "without any warning", on 27 September.
"Fortunately the only people in the building at the time were the secretary and two trustees, who were all in the office," a spokesperson said.
"Had anyone been near the falling plaster the result could have been fatal."
The company's trustees have since been trying to get a professional contractor to assess the ceiling, to find out what caused the plaster to fall, to test its safety and give them a quote for repairs.
But after weeks of phone calls and promises, no-one has stepped in to help them remedy the situation.
'Everywhere's booked up'
Bosses are now hoping other venues in the area might be made available for them to perform in.
Actors have continued sessions in other parts of the church, but there is no room for an audience, the company said.
"[We] have asked around other venues in the area, in the hope of performing elsewhere, but everything is either booked up at this time of the year or they are not suitable," the spokesperson added.
Since acquiring St John’s Church in 2019 they have expanded their provision of Performing Arts classes to many more learning disabled and those with special needs.
The spokesperson said: "To not be able to perform a Christmas concert this year is extremely disappointing for [the actors] and they still don’t know how long it is going to be until they can use the SideSpace for performances again."
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Frank Auerbach, the British-German painter who fled Nazi Germany as a child, has died aged 93, his representatives have announced.
Considered one of the greatest painters of his age, Auerbach died peacefully at his home in London on Monday morning.
Geoffrey Parton, the director of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, said: “We have lost a dear friend and remarkable artist but take comfort knowing his voice will resonate for generations to come."
Auerbach's acclaimed career spanned seven decades and his works were displayed at major galleries around the world.
In its obituary, the Telegraph remembered him as "an artist of remarkable intensity whose use of thick paint gave his work the quality of sculpture".
"All his work was abstracted reality, with the energy of the artist written across the surface in broad, thick swathes of paint, often applied straight from the tubes."
Auerbach was one of several significant post-war artists, alongside Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Lucian Freud.
He once estimated that 95% of his paint ended up in the bin, and told the Guardian: “I’m trying to find a new way to express something... So I rehearse all the other ways until I surprise myself with something I haven’t previously considered.”
The painter is survived by his son Jacob Auerbach.
The largest restoration of Rembrandt's masterpiece, The Night Watch, is under way at the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam.
Following five years of research using techniques such as digital imaging and artificial intelligence, eight restorers will begin "Operation Night Watch" by removing the varnish from the painting - in full view of the public, within the glass-enclosed space in The Night Watch Room.
"The start of the restoration is thrilling," Rijksmuseum general director Taco Dibbits said.
"Removing the varnish will reveal The Night Watch's eventful history. It will be a unique experience for the public to follow this process up close.”
The varnish, applied during a 1975-76 restoration, will be removed using microfibre cloths and cotton swabs.
The process follows years of scientific research, trials on other paintings, and tests on The Night Watch itself.
Made for Amsterdam's Arquebusiers Guild Hall, Rembrandt van Rijn's 1642 oil painting is one of the earliest to portray a group in action.
A captain, dressed in black, is telling his lieutenant to start the company marching. And the guardsmen are moving into formation.
Rembrandt uses the light to focus on particular details, such as the captain’s gesturing hand and the young girl, a mascot, in the background.
The painting’s original name is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq - but it became known as The Night Watch, in the 18th Century.
The artwork was coated with a dark varnish and accumulated dirt over the years, giving the false impression it depicts a night scene.
Sprayed acid
The Night Watch has been attacked with a knife - in 1911 and again in 1975, when the attacker slashed 12 cuts into the canvas.
And in 1990, a man sprayed acid on to the painting - although, this time, thanks to a guard's rapid intervention, only the varnish was damaged.
The Night Watch has been treated at least 25 times - but this latest research and restoration project is the most extensive so far.
More than two million visitors come to see the painting, at the museum, in the Netherlands, every year.
A digital light and sound show has returned to a city cathedral for a fourth year.
Peterborough Cathedral is beginning its festive season with the launch of Starlight by Luxmuralis, billed as an immersive light and sound display.
From Tuesday, the historic building will be transformed with the installation on the interior walls and ceiling and the West Front.
Paul Stainton, head of marketing at the cathedral, said the outdoor event was free of charge this year, making it more accessible for families.
Tickets are required for the interior display.
Last year, the cathedral's interior was illuminated by a series of moving images for a multi-sensory experience.
Mr Stainton said: “We’re thrilled to welcome Luxmuralis back to the Cathedral.
"This year's show promises to be more magical than ever, and by offering the outdoor display for free, we’re making it accessible for every family to experience the wonder that Starlight brings.
"It’s a chance for the community to come together and enjoy this truly unique event in the heart of our city.”
The display will be on at the 900-year-old cathedral until Saturday.
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A group of people with the same "debilitating" disease have created a "joyful" art exhibition.
Our Creative Journey has been put together by eight people with Huntington's disease in Gloucestershire.
The Huntington's Disease Association (HDA) said the event will highlight "the importance of art for improving the wellbeing of people living with debilitating and incurable illnesses".
The five-day exhibition is being held at St John Baptist Church in Cirencester between Tuesday to Saturday.
The condition is caused by a faulty gene and leads to the progressive loss of brain cells, affecting movement, mood and thinking skills. It can also cause aggressive behaviour.
The show is a joint project by artists Bert and Elise Holland, Charlotte, Clair, Evie, Kate, Spencer James and Steven Hart.
Carol Dutton, specialist adviser at HDA, said: “The initial idea for an art exhibition came about during the Covid lockdown on one of our online Huntington's disease group meetings, when we discovered how many accomplished, talented artists we had in the Huntington's disease community in the locality.
"For some, art is a way to focus, distract from symptoms or find purpose and joy.”
The eight artists include father and daughter, Bert and Elise.
Bert has Huntington’s disease, and his daughter has the rarer form of the condition, Juvenile Huntington’s disease where symptoms start before the age of 20.
“Elise is able to spend time every week creating her artwork and she derives such pleasure from it.”, said her mother, Alison.
Another of the artists, Spencer James, left his job when his symptoms worsened, and for a time he upcycled broken furniture.
Parents Phil and Charlie said: “As time moved on and he could no longer use a brush or sander, he found other ways to express his need to create.
"Using an iPad he now creates abstract images using different pallets and brushes and manipulates them with his fingers, which we print onto canvas and velvet.”
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Police in Italy say they have busted a major European criminal network forging and selling artworks by some of the biggest names in modern art.
More than 2,100 forged artworks were recovered, including works attributed to Banksy, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.
Thirty-eight people were arrested over the forgeries, which carried a potential sale value of about €200m (£165m; $213m).
Six forgery workshops were uncovered in the sting, including two in Tuscany, one in Venice and the rest elsewhere in Europe, Italian prosecutors added.
Those arrested face charges of conspiracy to handle stolen goods, forgery and illegal sale of artworks, the Carabinieri cultural squad and the Pisa prosecutors’ office said in a joint statement on Monday.
The statement said authorities were tipped off in 2023 after they seized about 200 fake pieces from the collection of a businessman in Pisa, including a copy of a drawing by Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani.
Fake artworks attributed to more than 30 famed artists were seized in raids carried out in Italy, Spain and Belgium, the statement said.
Other artists impersonated by the network included Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Gustav Klimt, Joan Mirò, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon and Piet Mondrian.
Pisa Chief Prosecutor Teresa Angela Camelio said experts believe the operation is "the biggest act of protection" of Banksy's estate.
Banksy is one of the world's most famous artists, but despite his global following, his identity remains, officially at least, unknown.
This is not the first time his artwork has attracted criminals. In September, two thieves were arrested and charged over the theft of his famed Girl with Balloon piece from a central London art gallery.
Banksy’s art, which tends to be graffitied by the artist on public buildings, has at times not remained intact for long.
A recent urban jungle collection, which popped up over a series of days across London, was defaced.
Warhol’s work, too, has fallen foul of criminals of late. Earlier this month two of his artworks were stolen during an overnight break-in at a gallery in the Netherlands.
Urgent roof repairs are set to begin on the Theatre Royal Plymouth.
Management of the 42-year-old venue said water had been entering the building through the roof above the stage and smoke vents.
The work is being funded by the building's landlord Plymouth City Council and is expected to take 12 weeks, costing £288,975.
Theatre CEO and executive producer James Mackenzie-Blackman said: "The repairs are crucial to continue providing a safe and welcoming space for all audience members, artists and community participants, as well as our staff."
The scaffolding has started to go up to the rear of the theatre in preparation for the work which includes new felting and drainage improvements.
"The theatre was built 42 years ago, and since then we have welcomed over eight million visitors," Mr Mackenzie-Blackman said.
"As such, it is inevitable that the building needs investment.
He added: "We will continue to work with the council, as our landlord, to preserve our world class venue and are very grateful for their support with these important works."
'Vitality of our city'
The building was initially commissioned by Plymouth City Council as a venue that could cater for both large and small productions.
Its main 1,300-seater auditorium has a movable roof that can be lowered to conceal the upper seating.
Councillor Chris Penberthy, Cabinet Member for Housing, Cooperative Development and Communities said: "It’s good to see this important work get underway.
"This building and its staff play such an important role in the vitality of our city, in our economy and inspiring people of all ages and backgrounds that we need to invest in the building to make sure it is fit for purpose."
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With Remembrance Sunday approaching, Wiltshire - which has thousands of military personnel and the huge Salisbury Plain training area - has seen lots of poppies on display.
Every year the Royal British Legion opens a Field of Remembrance at Lydiard Park in Swindon. One of six in the UK, more than three thousand markers are planted, each commemorating someone who lost their life in service.
Meanwhile, the medieval Salisbury Cathedral has been filled with crowds in the evenings for its Sarum Lights event, an immersive light and sound show on the theme of time.
Knitted tribute: Salisbury City Council's Remembrance display was originally made in 2018 to mark 100 years since the end of World War One.
It can be seen on top of the Guildhall and was constructed by local artist Charlotte Moreton, with the poppies knitted by residents.
Poignant poppies: Many retailers in Melksham have been marking the Remembrance period with window displays.
The town council held a competition to find the best one.
Bonfire night: In the village of Colerne there is an annual effort to build a huge bonfire and the fort created this year was no different.
It is all in aid of the local church and the lighting of the bonfire attracts about 1,000 people.
Swim challenge: BBC local radio staff are swimming 1,000 miles for Children in Need and the Wiltshire team hit their target of 24 miles this week.
Reporter Kelly Morgan had lots of layers of clothing thrown onto her as she emerged from an early morning dip in a cold lake.
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Istanbul-born chef Fatih Tutak shares his favourite culinary experiences in his hometown, from Turkish barbecue at Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı to micro-seasonal menus at Nazende.
Straddling two continents, Istanbul has been shaped by millennia of Silk Road traders and the meeting of great religions. From the Byzantines to the Ottomans, each of the city's historical inhabitants have left behind impressive architecture, unique cultural traditions and a rich culinary legacy.
"Turkish cuisine is an undiscovered diamond mine," says chef Fatih Tutak of two-Michelin-star Turk in Istanbul. "In the early '90s, Turkish food became very much [seen as] street food, especially in Europe. [There], you can make a very bad quality döner kebab and no one [knows]. Turkish food is not very easy to cook properly. It's complex. [In Istanbul] we have many different people from around Turkey and they cook their own cuisine. It's a melting pot."
At Turk, Tutak gives age-old Turkish recipes a cutting-edge spin. However, when he's not in the kitchen, he prefers something lower key. "As a chef I am very specific when I go to restaurants in Turkey, especially in Istanbul," he explains. "I try to always go very local and where the food is ultimately high quality, prepared with amazing ingredients."
A year-round destination with warm summers and cool winters, the city topped Euromonitor's list as the most visited city in the world in 2023, so there's never been a better time to dive into Istanbul's excellent culinary scene.
Here are Tutak's favourite dining spots in his hometown.
1. Best for Turkish barbecue: Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı
Visitors to Istanbul will likely notice the word "ocakbaşı" plastered on restaurant signage everywhere. It means "fireside" in Turkish, and is the name given to grill houses where a chef cooks kebabs on glowing hot coals. It is one of the most popular ways to dine in the city, and for Tutak, Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı is the best in the business.
"This is where I go on my days off," he says. "[They have] an artisanal way of making kebabs; hand chopped, with different varieties of meat cuts. They do the best minced kebab and shish kebab, and also chicken wings and salad and grilled veggies and lavash (thin flatbread).
For Tutak, it's not just about the food but also the experience. "Chef Ahmet has been doing this job for almost 20 years. He is very passionate," he says. "You sit down in front of the grill and he is there cooking in front of you; like Japanese robatayaki. Also, you can drink rakı [a Turkish aniseed flavoured spirit] because the best way of enjoying the kebab, for me, is [with] rakı: the Turkish way."
Tutak's advice: "You should not leave without eating the Adana kebab," which he proclaims to be "the best in the city". Possibly Turkey's most popular variety of kebab, it's made from skewered mincemeat and seasoned with red pepper flakes for mild heat and named after the city of Adana in south-eastern Turkey, where it originates from.
Address: Maslak Mah. Dereboyu 2 Cad. No:8/1, Istanbul
Phone: +90 53 0175 6114
Instagram: @ahmetustamocakbasi
2. Best for pide: Karadeni̇z Pi̇de Kebap Salonu
Pide can be found all over Turkey, but according to Tutak, this canoe-shaped dish – often referred to as "Turkish pizza" by tourists, much to the locals' chagrin – originates from the province of Trabzon on the northern reaches of the country's Black Sea coast. There are various versions and regional variations, but in its simplest form, yeasted dough is stuffed with different fillings like cheese and meat, then baked, resulting in a pillowy soft crust with golden edges covered in melted cheese.
Located in the central neighbourhood of Vefa, just a 10-minute walk from the famed 16th-Century Suleymaniye Mosque, is Karadeni̇z Pi̇de Kebap Salonu; Tutak's pick for the city's best pide. "This restaurant is very special because they are the third generation preparing pide. They are famous for [it]," he says.
Tutak appreciates the family-run restaurant's dedication to tradition. "They use a woodfired oven and make their own very nice fermented dough and use different kinds of stuffing. You can order cheese, minced meat, chopped beef, cheese and egg. It's very special," he says, adding: "my favourite is with minced beef."
Address: Hacı Kadın, Muhabir Sk. No:6, 34134 Fatih/İstanbul
Phone: +90 21 2519 0128
3. Best for micro-seasonal menus: Nazende
At the helm of Nazende, a Mediterranean restaurant just off upscale boulevard Bağdat Caddesi, is snowy-haired businessman-turned-chef, Uluç Sakary. "This is my favourite restaurant in Turkey," announces Tutak. "Uluç used to have a textiles business. He used to cook at home for his friends and then when [he turned] 50, he decided to become a chef and open a restaurant."
Nazende – which opened in 2019 – quickly garnered critical acclaim and is full most evenings. "He does his own shopping every morning. He goes to the fish and vegetable markets and makes his daily menu and just [cooks] whatever he wants, but it's out of this world," says Tutak. "The variety of meat dishes [is] amazing. [They have] amazing offal dishes on the grill such as lamb liver, sweetbread and kidney. They have seafood, they also have great starters, mezes and salads."
For diners visiting in April or May (goat season) Tutak recommends the woodfire oven-baked suckling goat, a meat eaten widely in Turkey. The restaurant is also lauded for its baby calamari and rice pilaf enriched with nuts and raisins.
Address: Caddebostan Plajyolu Sok. Sembol apt. No:13/A, Istanbul
Phone: +90 533 6170 268
Instagram: @nazendecadde
4. Best for local fare: Köroğlu Et Lokantası
Lokantas or "tradesmen restaurants" are where time-strapped locals head for well-priced and freshly prepared home-style dishes. They are found all over Turkey but Tutak's favourite in Istanbul is Köroğlu Et Lokantası. "When you enter the restaurant there are a lot of dishes already cooked; you select [what you want] and they send it to you," he says. "They open only for lunchtime, so you need to go around 12:30."
The menu is ample, but there are some dishes the restaurant is especially known for. "They cook amazing beans with rice called fasulye – a very typical local dish, which is braised beans from Ispir (in north-eastern Turkey) with butter and beef," says Tutak. "Also, the eggplant dishes are amazing. I would say confit beef is their signature. It is very traditional from the northern part of Turkey. You leave the beef for six hours [to] cook very slowly. Amazing. Served just with plain rice and fried potatoes; easy."
Address: Akşemsettin Caddesi No:4 Fatih/İSTANBUL, Istanbul
Phone: +90 212 531 23 05
Instagram: @koroglu_lokantasi_
5. Best for döner kebabs: Dönerci Engin
One of Turkey's most famed exports, the döner kebab (seasoned meat cooked on a rotating spit then shaved off in layers) can be found in abundance all over Istanbul, from hole-in-the-wall joints purveyed by solo chefs armed with just a vertical rotating meat spit, to sit-down establishments with bowtie-wearing waiters.
Dönerci Engin, a five-minute walk from the Galata Tower, leans more towards the former, with the addition of a few tables outside. "[The chef] is from [my mother's] hometown Erzurum," says Tutak. "He prepares the doner with a mix of sliced beef and lamb and he has a special marinade using tomato, purple basil and onion and milled black pepper. The quality of the döner kebab is very thin, very juicy and really caramelised. Just the perfect doner."
There are only five items on the menu, which consist of doner meat served in various receptacles. Essentially "on a plate or inside bread," says Tutak. "I like it my way, with white rice and sliced onion and meat and that's it. No garnish, just rice." For bread eaters, he recommends the gobit pita: "It's like a balloon pita, wood-fired. He makes his own."
Address: Bereketzade, Okçu Musa Cd. No:3, 34421 Beyoğlu/İstanbul
Phone: +90 212 293 9787
6. Best Turkish taverna: Asmali Cavit
The lively Asmalı Mescit neighbourhood in Istanbul's central Beyoğlu district is a crisscross of narrow streets filled with bustling bars and restaurants, particularly traditional tavernas. "[A] Turkish taverna is the place where you go for drinking and eating. They have them in Greece as well," explains the chef. "We call it meyhane; taverna is a Greek name. This is where people gather and enjoy meze, small dishes, seafood and alcoholic beverages, especially rakı."
The chef is a long-time fan of Asmali Cavit. "[It] is a beautiful place run by a family: the father, mother, son and daughter. Every day, they're on duty and [have been] running the place for almost 25 years," says Tutak. "It's in a touristy area but mostly local people go. It's mostly shared dishes, cooked with olive oil, and seafood appetisers: fried calamari, squid, grilled fish, mussels – and also cured seafood."
Seafood isn't the only thing on the menu. "The baby kofta grill is amazing," says Tutak. "The fried beef liver is also very nice. Also, Armenian mezes, like topik, a dish cooked with a lot of onions and chickpeas."
Address: Asmalımescit Caddesi No: 16/D Asmalimescit Mahallesi, Beyoglu, İstanbul 34430
Phone: +90 212 292 4950
7. Best for fish: Balikci Kahraman
Tutak compares Balikci Kahraman to the renowned Michelin-starred Elkano fish grill in Spain. "It's the Turkish version," he says.
In fish-loving Istanbul, Black Sea turbot is beloved for its flavoursome and meaty texture, thanks to cold water currents. "Balikci Kahraman is very famous for its turbot," says Tutak. "They cook it on a tandoor grill very slowly and season it with salt. They serve it with their signature tomato salad (with red onion, cucumber, green chilli and lashings of olive oil) and cornbread which is cooked in a pan."
The restaurant is located on the city's outskirts in the small fishing village of Sarıyer on the banks near where the Black Sea flows into the Bosphurus River. "The owner has two boats. He sends his fishermen to the sea every morning, they catch it and bring it to the restaurant. It's super fresh."
Diners will need to factor in the journey time. "It is about one hour from the city centre but worth it to travel there. I just took my Japanese sushi chef friends from Tokyo who loved it," says Tutak.
Website: https://www.balikcikahraman.com/
Address: Rumeli Kavağı, İskele Cad. No:15 Sarıyer, İstanbul
Phone: +90 212 242 98 99
Instagram: @balikcikahraman
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There's no better place to see hoop dancers at the top of their game than at the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest in in Phoenix, Arizona.
Sitting in a circle around a big drum, a group of men struck a deep, reverberating beat. Their voices rose and fell in harmony, while in the arena a dancer picked up speed. Spinning around, he locked six hoops around his shoulders and arms and flapped them like an eagle in flight, then snapped the hoops together to form a globe and held it up to the sky.
Held over two days each February in Phoenix, Arizona, the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest is the most prestigious celebration of a complex Indigenous dance style that requires speedy footwork and skilful mastery of up to as many as 50 hoops. It's the Olympics of hoop dancing – and the 2024 contest drew a record 121 dancers, representing dozens of Indigenous communities across the US and Canada, including children from the nearby Navajo Nation and a senior (as over-40s are classed) from the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. Inscrutable judges were positioned around the arena, pens in hand, ready to grade each dancer on five skills: precision, timing/rhythm, showmanship, creativity and speed. Up for grabs in each of the five divisions, which are sorted by age, not gender, were cash prizes totalling $25,000 (£19,400).
But, "it's more than winning and losing," says Terry Goedel, who has competed in the contest "probably" 28 times. "It's about holding your head with pride to the world and saying: This is who I am, and this is what I share with you."
The exact origin of hoop dance is a little muddled, but it is thought to have originated at the Taos Pueblo. According to ICT, many tribal groups across North America used the hoop to symbolise the circle of life in healing ceremonies. Today's modern form, which sees hoop dancers spin and interlock multiple hoops around their bodies to represent animals and other symbols, emerged in the 1930s when Tony White Cloud of the Jemez Pueblo began performing for entertainment rather than healing alone, creating visual symbols with his willow hoops as a method of storytelling.
White Cloud drew crowds and found fame as he performed at events across the US and appeared in films with Lucille Ball and Gene Autry. Indigenous people who saw him perform at events such as the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in New Mexico were inspired to develop their own styles, and soon modern hoop dance spread across North America.
Goedel, who is Yakama and Tulalip, was living on the Tulalip reservation in Washington when he saw hoop dancing for the first time in 1972. "It was as though a light had been lit inside of me," he says. Until that day, he had been struggling "to identify [his] Native roots". "When I found [them], I wanted to share those feelings with the world, because it made me feel so good… the pride that I have in my heritage."
Hoop dancing was a "a dying art" when he first started, according to Goedel. Even the first world championship, held in 1990, drew only seven dancers. Goedel credits the dance's survival partly to its embrace by Indigenous communities across North America. At the 2024 contest, this breadth was evidenced by the diversity of regalia worn by the dancers, from the orca adorning Goedel's silk shirt, which signifies his US north-western roots, to the buckskin clothing of dancers from the Plains and the three-feathered kastoweh headdress worn by a Mohawk dancer from the north-east.
* There's no better place than the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest, held each February at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (15-16 February 2025)
* At the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship (2-3 August 2025) is hosted by the Lightning Boy Foundation in honour of the late Nakotah LaRance, who was a nine-time world champion.
* Hoop dancing is occasionally performed at North American powwows, but on the New York/Ontario border, Feryn King and the Akwesasne Youth Troupe regularly appear at the Akwesasne Powwow in September and at the Akwesasne Art Market and Juried Show in July.
Hoop dance, Goedel says, "is handed down a lot by family". Often this sharing within families is about "trying to engage [children] in finding out who they are; identifying with their heritage," he says. Unlike other dances that require cost and labour-intensive regalia, starting out in hoop dancing requires only hoops. "When my son and my nephew began dancing with me more than 20 years ago, they had their tennis shoes on," Goedel says. "So it's kind of an avenue for them to slowly walk into the Native dance world."
For those without that family connection, there's the New Mexico-based Lightning Boy Foundation, whose mission is to connect young Indigenous people to their culture through hoop dancing. The foundation carries on the legacy of two beloved dancers who died at young ages: eight-year-old prodigy Valentino Rivera; and his mentor, the foundation's first instructor, nine-time world champion hoop dancer Nakotah LaRance. The foundation offers free hoop dance instruction to Indigenous youth aged 4-18, as well as materials and travel expenses for competitions, including its own Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship held annually at Santa Fe's Museum Of Indian Arts & Culture.
"Everything I know about hoop dancing, I learned from him," says ShanDien Sonwai LaRance of her brother Nakotah. LaRance, who is Hopi, Tewa, Navajo and Assiniboine, dances "with such fierceness and aggression, almost like the male dancers. That's a reflection of learning from my older brother," she says. "He was known for being one of the fastest dancers, and also for his really crazy, wild tricks and throws. So I've inherited those moves, and that's what we share and teach [at the] Lightning Boy Foundation."
LaRance has been dancing since she was eight and is now the foundation's master instructor. "Hoop dancing is a difficult dance to learn," she says, listing hand-to-eye coordination, speed, imagination and drive as some of its necessary attributes. But these challenges instil values in young dancers. "It teaches our young kids how to try and fail and continue to try. And realise that just because we drop a hoop doesn't mean we stop dancing. We pick it up and we act like nothing happened."
Over the past 15 years, LaRance has seen how hoop dancing has brought confidence to Indigenous youth. "It's a tangible piece of their culture that they can hold with them and take all over the world," she says. Indeed, LaRance and her brother both performed internationally with Cirque du Soleil.
In July 2024, a few months after the World Championships, I attended the Art Market and Juried Show in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne in upstate New York. There, Feryn King, an accomplished hoop dancer, aerialist and teacher, who has also performed internationally with Cirque du Soleil, stepped out in front of the crowd to give a short presentation on the hoop dance's origins in healing ceremonies. She explained that, even today, hoop dancing has the power to bring healing energy, for those watching as well as the dancers. Then, as a track blending traditional drumming, hip-hop and electronica started up, she and the Akwesasne Youth Hoop Troupe began dancing, lifting each foot off the ground in time with the rapid beats, spinning hoops around their bodies and fluttering them above their heads like butterfly wings.
King later tells me that she likes to begin performances with a short presentation because sometimes people mistake hoop dancing for hula hooping. "It's important for people to know the history," she says. Her distinctive choice of music, different to the austere drums and voices I'd heard at the World Championship, helps keep younger dancers engaged. "I try to create new choreography for them every year," she says. "I'm trying to inspire them and keep them dancing."
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King is hoping to attend the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest for the first time in February 2025, its 35th year. Her busy schedule of teaching and dancing at all kinds of events, from weddings to corporate dinners, keeps her at the physical condition demanded of the competition. LaRance, a seasoned competitor, says that, in the six months prior to the event, she alternates daily between two to three hours of hoop dancing and running six miles. She also has the additional responsibility of making regalia for all the Lightning Boy dancers. This year she made 15 sets of regalia, including that of the winner, Enriquez.
Is it unusual to make your competitor's regalia? I ask her. Hoop dancing "represents the circle of life, and all of the beings within it and it comes with a certain level of respect," she answers. "Even though we're all competing against each other, we're all very supportive. Because that is the way of hoop dancing."
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Across the continent, flights are priced at a fraction of the cost of train tickets, hampering the growing number of people who want to travel sustainably. The big question is: why?
When Tess Longfield booked her family holiday this year, sustainable travel was one of her major concerns.
"We wanted to go to Brittany," she said, "and we wanted to travel by train because I felt it was more sustainable. I bought Eurostar tickets easily and was willing to pay extra in comparison to flying. I booked an Airbnb and planned to buy the Paris-to-Brittany train ticket closer to the time. I felt good about the trip."
But it didn't go according to plan. While Longfield bought the Eurostar tickets nine months ahead of the trip, the internal French rail tickets weren't available – typically you can't buy European train tickets more than six months in advance. They sold out immediately on the day they became available, leaving her with no option but to cancel the Eurostar tickets and book a flight instead.
"I'm trying to live a more sustainable life," she said, "And I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed that I ended up flying. I don't mind spending more or it taking more time to arrange – I really wanted to do it by train."
She's not alone. Sustainability communications consultant Jo Geneen is based in Amsterdam and regularly travels across Europe by train to meetings in Hamburg, Paris and London. But she's one of a growing number of consumers feeling frustrated about the difficulties of travelling by train compared to the far-less-sustainable option of flying.
"I recently booked a trip to Hamburg from Amsterdam," Geneen said. "I was forced to cancel it at the last minute, and found the ticket was non-refundable. It's so frustrating: it already cost more." She was left with the choice of rebooking the trip, knowing it was non-refundable and more expensive, or booking a faster, flexible and refundable flight. Sadly, it was an easy choice to make.
"As a consumer, how can we make the right decisions? When you're faced with routes that are four or five times cheaper to fly, it's so hard to do the right thing."
It's a question seemingly at odds with what's happening in Europe's railways. Across the continent, rail travel is booming. Throughout 2024, night train routes across Europe have continued to expand and grow, led by Austria's Nightjet network that now runs routes including Vienna-Venice and Paris-Berlin. Eurail, which runs Interrail, one of the continent's best-known train travel brands, says it has seen the demand for European train travel and flight-free itineraries grow by 25% between 2022 and 2023.
There's no question that people want to travel by train, despite the higher prices and occasional inconveniences. Some governments are also prioritising it. In France there is a ban on short-haul flights if there is a rail alternative that takes less than 2.5 hours; and in Spain, a similar ban is being considered as part of its 2050 climate action plan.
Yet, for all the rise in travel options and bookings, there continues to be a disconnect: people in Europe are finding that significantly higher prices and complicated booking situations thwart their desire to be sustainable.
Justin Francis, CEO of Responsible Travel, the world's largest travel company dedicated to environmentally friendly travel, has been a long-term campaigner on the issue. He can see a few key reasons why train travel is struggling against Europe's budget airline market.
"Why do we not tax aviation fuel, which is a fossil fuel, therefore artificially making aviation cheaper? We should have a fair taxation system," he said. (Diesel fuel used for trains is currently taxed at differential rates across Europe, depending on the country.)
Another reason, he says, is that we need to join up train routes to make travelling by rail quicker and more efficient across Europe. And travellers should be able to book further ahead than 180 days – not being able to do so means that travel agents and tour operators can’t guarantee routes and plans far enough ahead of time, and can’t offer packages that would otherwise make sense, logistically and financially.
"The final reason is that under the EU package holiday regulations, if a tour operator books a customer on a holiday involving rail and the train is delayed or failed, the tour operator must refund them," he says. "If they book with an airline and the airline is late or delayed or cancelled, the airline refunds them."
What this all means for travellers is that buying a holiday where you travel by train is not likely to be a seamless one. You could be left sitting on a train platform waiting for a connection for longer than you'd like; it will probably be more expensive, and most likely you'll have to book it yourself. In addition, as it’s harder for tour operators and travel agencies to book train travel for their customers, there’s less likelihood of getting a group rate and better prices, too.
These issues have not gone unnoticed at a government level. An EU Action Plan was launched earlier this year aiming to make rail travel more sustainable, efficient and well-connected across the continent. It's a step forward to harmonising rail networks and working towards better solutions, but without addressing the taxation issue, and thereby levelling prices, it's unclear if the EU's commitment to making train travel the top choice will have the desired impact.
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So, what can you do if you want to travel by train? Byway is a rare UK travel agent that arranges 100% flight-free travel across Europe. Using its custom JourneyAI programme, it plans and arranges trips, finding the best routes and bypassing the logistical issues of working across different currencies, languages and timetables for its customers in the process. Customers also have a WhatsApp number to call if they get rerouted or delayed during their trip.
"If you exclude time and money from the trip-planning process," said James Hill, one of the company's concierges, "Who wouldn't want to travel by train in Europe?"
Byway says their customers enjoy the very things you can't find when you're travelling by plane: slow travel, a more old-fashioned slant on life, and the restaurant cars, where you can eat in comfort while watching the countryside pass by. "Italy is eternally popular as a destination for us," says Hill. "It's got tiny little regional trains that rattle through vineyards and super modern high-speed trains – some of the best in the world. It's got sleeper trains that drive onto ferries in the middle of the night. It's a perfect place to do rail travel."
In the FAQs on their website, the company makes it clear that the price issue is one they would like to tackle too, also pointing out that airlines pay no fuel duty and plane tickets are zero-rated for VAT, meaning it’s much easier to offer cheap fares. Instead, they advocate for levies for frequent fliers, flight taxes and a ban on domestic short-haul flights.
Elswehere, Busbud is also seeking to make it easier to plan a flight-free trip by removing the logistical friction of booking via multiple operators. The firm, likened to an Expedia for ground transportation (bus, coach and train travel), offers a digital way to book point-to-point transport across the US, Canada and Europe without flying.
"Ground transportation is the last area of travel to be digitised and there's so much to do and it is so, so complex," explained Christine Pedersen, Busbud's chief marketing officer. "As travellers, we're looking for better solutions that aren't flying. We talk about the pleasure in the journey and in the experience aspect that isn't just about getting from A to B. You can look out the window, you can get up, you can walk about. You go into the cafe car and have a bite to eat. It's a very different experience."
While the journey might be slower, you don't have to check in two hours before, you avoid long security screening queues, and you arrive in the heart of a city, not an hour away from it. All this means that, for many routes, you're not losing a significant amount of time on the way.
However, from Francis' perspective, significant changes need to take place before train travel comes anywhere near to taking over from air travel. "We need to compete on a level playing field," he said. "I think we've been living on hope by encouraging people that rail travel is the answer. It's time to get real. It isn't the answer, unless we can address the fundamental issues."
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A 79-year-old woman, who was escorted off a plane by armed police in Turkey after she refused to pay for a "frozen tuna roll", denied the airline's claim that her behaviour was "disruptive".
Lily, from Hertfordshire, flew from Stansted Airport, in Essex, to Bodrum on a Jet2 flight on 3 November and ordered a £9 tuna bap.
She said it was frozen in the middle and refused to pay, but claimed the airline said she had to as she had opened the wrapper. On landing, she was greeted by police, but was let go.
Jet2 said Lily "displayed a catalogue of disruptive behaviour on board... including the unauthorised consumption of her own alcohol that she had brought on board".
Lily told The JVS Show on Three Counties Radio when the flight landed, all the passengers were told to stay in their seats, but she and her daughter were told to make their way to the exit.
She said: "They called the police. Not one... but four police at the end, at the door.
"I was in shock, I was saying to people, 'I think I've been arrested over a sandwich'."
She added: "The policemen were there with their guns."
She and her daughter showed the officers their passports as requested, and the officers said "just go".
Lily, who did not want to give her full name, said she had slept for most of the flight but found it "so stressful" when cabin crew kept waking her up to ask about paying for the sandwich.
"And then the end [with the police] was just awful," she said.
Lily's daughter later sent an email to Jet2 "saying how upsetting it had been".
'Disruptive behaviour'
A spokesperson for Jet2 said: "We can confirm that [she] displayed a catalogue of disruptive behaviour on board flight LS1609 from London Stansted to Bodrum including the unauthorised consumption of her own alcohol that she had brought on board.
"As a result, police met the aircraft on arrival at Bodrum to escort [her] and her daughter off the aircraft.
"As a family-friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour, and we make it very clear that customers cannot consume their own alcohol on flights."
It added: "We will always support our crew in instances when they are subjected to rude or unpleasant behaviour while prioritising the safety and comfort of all passengers and crew."
Lily described the Jet2's comments as "disgusting".
When asked if they had brought their own alcohol on board, she said "no" but confirmed she had bought "two wines each".
"I don't know what they're talking about," she said.
"I think they're so embarrassed over this sandwich and the police and the way we were treated.
"They are the ones that behaved disgustingly and disturbed me all the way through the flight."
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Thursday marks 30 years since Eurostar began carrying passengers from London across the Channel.
The tunnel, which opened in 1994, was built by 13,000 workers over eight years and completed in 1993.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attended the inauguration of the Eurostar at Waterloo International station, the original home of the service, in May 1994.
The service has since carried millions of passengers across 28 stations.
In November 2007, London St Pancras International became the new home for Eurostar services.
At the time, the company said the move would benefit Kent commuters, by freeing up domestic train lines into Waterloo station.
But since the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostar has not used any stations in Kent.
Rail services linking the UK to Europe have not stopped at purpose-built stations at Ashford or Ebbsfleet since March 2020.
The rail company has previously cited financial factors and the post-Brexit border situation as reasons for the Kent services not returning immediately.
A petition was started in April 2023 by Keith Hillier-Palmer, calling for Eurostar stops in Kent to be reinstated, and has since gained nearly 60,000 signatures.
Eurostar previously confirmed the stations would "remain closed throughout 2024/2025", and an update would be provided when there was any change.
"We understand this is disappointing for the local communities, and we will continue to work closely and openly with the local councils on the future of the stations," they said.
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Daily flights to Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol are among the routes listed from Guernsey in Aurigny's 2025 summer programme.
The States-owned airline has increased its London City service to 15 flights per week while the London Stansted service has been scrapped.
Last month tourism businesses raised concerns about delays to travel schedules being published.
The airline said it had taken a "phased approach to the schedule release" - its latest announcement includes three flights per week to Dublin on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.
'Operational integrity'
Its Edinburgh route will continue, operating once a week on Wednesdays, and its Paris flights will run on Mondays and Fridays.
A route to Leeds Bradford will operate twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 21 May to 27 September.
A review published earlier this month into the fleet make-up and decision-making in 2024 found a shortfall of pilots was the biggest issue the company faced.
The review was commissioned in August after disruption throughout the year.
Sudeep Ghai, chief commercial officer, said: "We have carefully curated our summer 2025 programme, balancing the delivery of the right connectivity for our community and operational integrity.
"We’re especially pleased to bring back our popular Paris, Edinburgh, and London City services, building on their success."
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The company which runs Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports is being sold in a deal valued at over £1.5bn.
Spanish construction giant Ferrovial and Australian finance company Macquarie - which both own a 50% stake in AGS Airports - agreed to sell the operator to AviAlliance for £900m.
AviAlliance will also take on £653m in debts.
The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.
Each year, more than 10.8 million passengers pass through the three airports, which provide connecting services to across Scotland and to south east England.
AviAlliance - wholly owned by Canadian pension investor the Public Sector Pension (PSP) Investment Board - will add AGS Airports to its existing portfolio of four airports in Athens, Greece, Dusseldorf and Hamburg in Germany and San Juan in Puerto Rico.
PSP Investments is already a long-standing investor in UK infrastructure projects, including a majority stake in Forth Ports, one of the largest port operators in Scotland and England, as well as rolling-stock giant Angel Trains.
Gerhard Schroeder, managing director of AviAlliance, said: "We are committed to supporting the airports over the long-term to expand their route networks, further improve the passenger experience and implement the airports' sustainability strategy."
Ferrovial and Macquarie teamed up to buy Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports from Heathrow Airport group in 2014 in a deal worth £1.05bn, including debts.
They then set up AGS Airports as a 50/50 joint venture following the takeover.
The companies say they have invested £250m across the three airports during their ownership, including £20m to boost Aberdeen International Airport's terminal space by 50%, as well as a £17m runway extension at Southampton Airport.
They had said earlier this year they were evaluating a sale.
Martin Bradley, regional head of infrastructure for Macquarie Asset Management, said: "Following this decade of investment, we are pleased to be passing the baton to AviAlliance to unlock the next phase of growth."
Ferrovial said it estimated it would make a capital gain of 290 million euros (£241.3m) for its 50% share of AGS.
Airline and tour operator Jet2 has chosen London Luton Airport as its latest UK base.
The company said it would fly to 17 destinations across Europe and the Mediterranean, including the Canary Islands, from next summer.
The airport is owned by Luton Borough Council company Luton Rising and run by a private operator. The council's Labour leader Hazel Simmons said the investment would "deliver for our town and neighbouring communities".
Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy said the move would create 125 jobs initially.
Luton Airport said it carried more than 16.2 million passengers in 2023 and airlines already based there include easyJet, Wizz Air, Ryanair, Tui.
The airport's chief executive Alberto Martin said it was "fantastic news" for passengers and "marks a major expansion of Jet2’s operations in the south of England".
Mr Heapy said: "Customers and independent travel agents have been asking us to open at London Luton Airport for many years now."
Jet2 already flies to 12 UK airports and has bases at 10 of them - but it does not currently fly into Luton.
Ms Simmons said the news would bring "jobs and economic growth".
"Employment in and around the airport is already at record levels and today’s announcement will make another major contribution to the next chapter in its ongoing success."
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Smaller than gondolas, "sandoli" are ancient boats that have been used by everyday Venetians for centuries. Today, they whisk travellers to quiet corners Venice where other boats can't go.
It is 09:00 in Venice and a peaceful silence blankets the city's narrow streets and canals. Day-trippers begin to descend on the lagoon, while Luca Padoan leans against a wall near the Rio della Misericordia, one of the canals cutting through the former Jewish Ghetto. As he watches the neighbourhood come alive from behind his sunglasses, a few tourists approach, cautiously asking if they can photograph the handmade sandolo boat moored to his left.
"I have always explained that this is not a gondola, but its progenitor," Padoan said, stroking its oar.
While Venice is synonymous with the many ornate gondolas that ply its canals, very few people know about the boat's lesser-known relative, the sandolo, that once populated Venice's waterways. Characterised by a steel "curl" on the prow and typically painted midnight black, these flat-bottomed rowing boats were historically used to navigate the shallow waters of the lagoon and to transport goods and people from Venice to the Italian mainland.
"If you do not understand the origin of the city and its evolution, you cannot explain the historical importance of the sandolo. The average depth of the lagoon [in the past was incredibly shallow]. With a normal boat, you couldn't get there," explained Valentino Scarpa, who oversees the nine stazi (stations) where sandolo boats continue to carry Venetians and tourists through the canals today.
The earliest written references of sandoli (the plural of sandolo) date back to 1292. Unlike gondolas, which have always been used for transportation, sandoli were historically used for fishing, racing and hunting as well as ferrying people and building materials throughout the lagoon. Sandoli are also slightly shorter, wider and less ornate than their more popular counterparts. Gondolas typically have two pointed ends: an S-shaped bow depicting the sinuous design of the Grand Canal that crosses the city, and an iron stern. In contrast, sandoli have a painted prow; a flat, open stern; and are less lavish.
These physical differences serve a few practical purposes. In a gondola, the rower typically stands on the side, while a sandolo's symmetrical bottom allows the rower to stand in the middle of the boat. This centralised rowing stance allows for more balanced weight distribution, which increases speed, and its symmetrical design enables the sandolo to carry heavier loads than a gondola with less risk of tipping.
Like gondolas, sandoli are usually rowed with one oar, but they can also be rowed using two oars at the same time. This technique, known as voga alla vaesana in Venetian, was historically used in areas of the lagoon like Caorle, Marano and Grado to practice valliculture, a medieval fish-farming method pioneered in the Venetian lagoon.
"Historically, every family owned a sandolo. It was the means used in the city to carry people around, to procure food, to fish, and to transport materials," said sandolo rower Livio Bon.
But Scarpa explained that as Venetians began to realise that rowing a gondola was easier than rowing a sandolo, these ancient boats started to be replaced by gondolas.
"It's clear that being able to go with two oars [in a sandolo] is an evolution because it allows you to go faster. However, the gondola, being asymmetrical, is more manageable and easier to row in small canals," Scarpa explained. "The gondola [became] more and more popular, leading to the authorisation of more gondolas. As a result, the gondolier category has become more dominant, and the number of sandoli in the lagoon has decreased."
Today, only 20 sandolisti (sandolo rowers) are left in Venice, compared to 433 gondolieri (gondola rowers). Yet, according to the few remaining sandolisti, riding through the canal in a sandolo is one of the most unique ways to experience Venice's history. Not only do most sandolisti believe its design inspired the gondola and it holds a nostalgic place among many Venetians, it can also explore areas of the city where gondolas can't go.
While gondolas are allowed to pass by the areas where the nine stazi are located, only sandoli are permitted to venture through them. Riding in a sandolo therefore offers tourists a unique opportunity to explore less-crowded historical landmarks where gondolas aren't permitted, such as the Jewish Ghetto, the Ponte dei Greci and the Ponte dell'Olio, among other areas. What's more, because a sandolo is shorter than a gondola, it can navigate narrower canals to less-explored pockets of the city.
"It is a purely traditional job, handed down from generation to generation, and that tells Venice's story," said Chiara Favaro, the daughter of a sandolo rower. "When you are on a [sandolo], you see the city through other eyes – a hidden Venice, the authentic one. The sandolista can tell you things that a tourist guide doesn't know because the stories are often handed down from grandfather to father to son."
Such was the case with Padoan. "I started when I was seven years old with my grandfather, who had a similar boat with which we used to go fishing. [Now] I have been doing this job for 26 years," the 53-year-old said, lowering himself onto his sandolo's cushioned seat. "From November onwards, I dedicate myself to the boat's maintenance: I repaint it while my mum fixes the cushions. Ours is a family business." Then in March, with the arrival of spring, it's time to row again.
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Like Padoan, Scarpa was also introduced to the trade at a young age, spending his weekends from the age of seven learning how to row with his father. After attending university, he returned to Venice to refine the craft.
Today, not everyone is willing to continue what has traditionally been a family business. While this generational pastime has faded, it has also opened the door for aspiring rowers whose families haven't historically been sandolisti to enter the trade.
The Municipality of Venice holds competitions for aspiring sandolisti to apply for licenses in order to join in this profession. To qualify, applicants must complete a professional navigation course, as well as pass a rowing and a swimming test.
"First I repaired household appliances, then I worked as a taxi driver and then I went back to repairing appliances," another sandolista, Mariano Pozzobon says, wiping his face with a blue handkerchief after returning from a ride with some tourists. "I got here through friendships, and now I have been doing this job for 30 years", he concludes.
Other sandolisti agree that there's no other job they'd rather do, and that operating these quintessentially Venetian vessels is more than just a profession.
"Each boat is a world of its own. It [was] a family job where love is passed on. It is not simply a job with an economic return, but a passion," Scarpa says. "It's a job that you only find here: and doing it makes you feel even more Venetian."
"When [tourists] get off, they have to be ecstatic. They have to feel the sound of the water of the canals in their ears, the breeze in their necks, the boat swaying under the weight of the driver. They must breathe beauty," Bon said, while helping a French couple settle into his sandolo. "The sandolo allows you to fully savour the history of Venice."
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Following a traditional path used by traders and invaders, the Georgian Military Road has been a passageway for people and ideas since antiquity.
As my car snakes its way through the Georgian Military Road, a 210km route that twists and turns through Georgia's Caucasus Mountains, I am greeted by lush valleys crisscrossed by gurgling rivers, mountains overgrown with wildflowers and picturesque villages perched on the edge of cliffs. Occasional Georgian Orthodox churches, complete with beautiful barrel domes, appear on the horizon and rows of coloured Soviet mosaics adorn deserted bus stop walls. At one stop, a smiling vendor breaks into song as he hands me a plate of Georgian dumplings by the shimmering blue Aragvi River.
"It is funny, not many tourists visit this part of Georgia. But it is the most beautiful place on Earth and my favourite," says Mirian Takvarelia, a driver at GoTrip Georgia, a local ride-hailing company that hires taxis for multiday trips within the country. "You need to come here only once to fall in love with the Caucasus."
When I ask Takvarelia how long he has been driving tourists on the Georgian Military Road, he smiles. "Too long, " he replies "Maybe 15-16 years now."
Sixteen years may not signify much in other countries, but in the South Caucasian country of Georgia, it marks the end of the five-day Russo-Georgian War of 2008 that left a trail of devastation on the Georgian Military Road. Georgia was part of the Soviet Union from 1921-1991 and the road, which connects Tbilisi with the Russian town of Vladikavkaz, is the only direct overland route connecting Georgia with the Russian Federation.
However, the nation has a much longer history of conflict. Historically, Georgia was an object of rivalry between the Romans, Persians, Ottomans and Russians owing to its strategic location between Europe and Asia. Georgia was also home to an ancient road in the Caucasus Mountains that connected the two continents. The road was called Porta Caucasia and played a crucial role in ferrying troops between empires and launching attacks.
In the 18th Century, following the Treaty of Georgievsk, the Russians established Porta Caucasia as a modern military thoroughfare, which led it to be known as the Georgian Military Road. This route went on to play a key role in many Russian military offensives in the 18th and 19th Centuries, including the Caucasian War, the Russo-Circassian War and the Murid War.
Military history aside, Porta Caucasia was also an important part of the Great Silk Road connecting China with the Mediterranean. Caravans full of silk, spices and jewellery passed along here, while ancient writers like Strabo and Pliny the Elder waxed about the road's natural beauty. Even today, it is an extremely busy route, ferrying everything from cheap electronics to fragrant Armenian flowers within the Caucasus region.
As a passageway for people and ideas since antiquity, the surrounding region's rich cultural heritage have often been overshadowed by conflict. "[Georgian Military Road] is full of art and architecture and represents the beautiful historical heritage of our country," says Sofia Knoeva, a local tour guide at Friendly.ge. "Every tour company in Georgia is now incorporating the Military Road into their basic packages for foreign tourists so that people can experience the region's cultural richness."
Over the next three days, Takvarelia and I chart out an itinerary along the road, from Tbilisi in the south to Stepantsminda in the north, stopping at remote monasteries, Soviet-era mosaics, restaurants serving plates of khinkali (Georgia's giant dumplings) and lush valleys dotted with ruined medieval fortresses.
We begin in the historic city of Mtskheta, the seat of the Georgian Orthodox Church since the 4th Century. Located on the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi rivers, Mtskheta was a key Silk Road trading hub and a holy capital city. It was here that Saint Nino arrived in AD337 and eventually converted Georgia to Christianity.
Mtskheta is now a Unesco World Heritage Site and home to three churches – the Jvari Monastery, the Samtavro Monastery and the massive complex of the Svetitstkhoveli Cathedral. The Samtavro Monastery complex is home to the graves of King Mirian, the first Christian king of Georgia, and his queen Nana; while the Svetitstkhoveli Cathedral, is believed to house Jesus Christ's robe that was brought to Mtskheta by a Georgian Jew named Elioz.
At the 11th-Century cathedral complex, I admire beautifully carved stone reliefs, vivid religious iconography and intricate frescoes. A set of old quevri wine pots in the garden harkens back to when the cathedral made and stored its own wine in these underground earthen vessels. As I stroll through Mtskheta's historic centre, where vendors sell everything from enamelled jewellery and traditional rugs to fragrant spices and wine ice cream, I am transported back to a time when Silk Road caravans would have halted in this ancient city for food, rest and trade.
The most iconic monument in the Mtskheta Unesco ensemble, however, is the tiny Jvari Monastery from the 6th Century. Perched on a cliff overlooking the rivers, this is one of the few surviving examples of early medieval Georgian church architecture, complete with intricate bas-reliefs and Asomtavruli (ancient Georgian script) inscriptions. The church was built at the site of the first wooden cross erected here in the 4th Century to signify the rise of Christianity in Georgia and is still one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites in the Caucasus.
After a day of exploring Mtskheta's religious past, I head deeper into the mountains to explore Georgia's vanishing Soviet mosaics. At the quaint village of Tsikhisdziri, I ask to pull over at a deserted bus stop to admire a colourful – if crumbling – ceramic panel depicting lions, horses, mythical birds and folk images depicted in bright red, blue and yellow.
"Why do you want to stop here?" asks Takvarelia. "The [Georgian] Military Road is lined with mosaic panels, especially on the walls of bus stops but nobody comes to see them anymore," he adds.
Most mosaics along the Georgian Military Road date to the second half of the 20th Century, when they were used to spread political and cultural messages throughout the territories of the Soviet Union. However, the art quickly declined after the USSR's collapse in 1991. Today, most of Georgia's Soviet-era mosaics have either been destroyed or are lying in ruins.
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Sensing my interest in this chapter of Georgia's past, Takvarelia offers to drive me to an abandoned Young Pioneer Camp called Tsiskari near the village of Tskhvarichamia, 30km east of Mtskheta. As I get closer to Tsiskari, scores of colourful mosaic panels line every inch of the road leading to the camp, depicting Georgian festivities and folk life. The most iconic panel is one showing kids in smart Young Pioneer uniforms, playing drums and collecting flowers, infusing life into the otherwise desolate summer camp.
"Oh, but you haven't seen the best mosaic in Georgia yet," says Takvarelia, referring to the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument. So, we head towards the Gudauri Panorama where the most famous Georgian mosaic is located – but not before tasting some delicious khinkali in Pasanauri, a beautiful riverside village where the famed dumplings are believed to have originated.
"Pasanauri khinkalis are the perfect balance of dough, meat and juice – a combination that literally explodes in your mouth," says Takvarelia, as he tilts his head, sips the juice and demonstrates the right way to eat a khinkali. "If you don't tilt your head, you're going to spill all the juice and you don't want to do that," he says, taking another slurp.
My afternoon is spent marvelling at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, a colossal concrete structure that is at first a bit of an eyesore against the stunning Caucasus Mountains. But a closer look reveals images from Georgian and Russian history that celebrate the bond of "friendship" between the two nations.
On the last day, Takvarelia hires a 4x4 and we head off to the remote Truso Valley in north-eastern Georgia, bordering Russia to the north and the breakaway region of South Ossetia to the west. Truso Valley is a mere 22km from Stepantsminda, but it takes us a couple of hours to get to there while navigating precarious mountain roads.
Dotted with abandoned villages and medieval watchtowers, Truso Valley is breathtakingly beautiful. Red-tinted mountains flank meadows covered with wildflowers and ancient churches stand against the glimmering waters of the Terek River. The picturesque Abano Lake bubbles with mineral water while the ruins of the Zakagori Fortress tempt me to channel my inner Indiana Jones.
"I reserved the best for the last. Now, you will never forget the Georgian Military Road," Takvarelia chuckles. I cannot agree more.
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Copenhagen's once-industrial port has been planned to make everything – from schools and play areas to businesses and recreational spaces – accessible within five minutes.
While cruising the canals of Copenhagen in the summer of 2023, my guide pointed out Nordhavn, the city's once-industrial neighbourhood, excitedly claiming it would become the coolest new city in Europe. From the boat, I couldn't see much beyond a few residential buildings and lots of giant construction machinery, but, as an architect, I was interested to know more.
So, 12 months later, I returned to Copenhagen and headed back to Nordhavn, just a 15-minute metro ride from Copenhagen's central station.
This time, standing at Århusgadekvarteret, the core of the new development, I could see gleaming apartment buildings, high-end office spaces and a cafe-lined boardwalk along the previously industrial harbour. Dozens of people were lying on colourful beach towels spread across the waterfront, all soaking in the Scandinavian summer sun. It was a peaceful, serene scene, with none of the morning commuter chaos I was used to seeing in cities around the world.
And that's because Nordhavn has been specifically designed to make life easier.
"Although it looks like any modern district, it's the world's first five-minute city," explained my guide, Bente Hoffman from immersive cultural tour company Slow Tours. "When the project is complete, everything you need will be within a 400m walk."
Commuting is one of the biggest challenges of modern life as it adds so much time into the daily routine. Nordhavn (officially a district of Copenhagen, but described as a city due to its scale and scope) has been designed to make everything – from schools and play areas to businesses and recreational spaces – accessible within five minutes. It is setting a blueprint for a world where residents can fit in a morning workout before strolling to the office, grab lunch at a cute cafe, have a quick swim at the harbour and still make it home in time to take your kids to the playground – all before enjoying a cosy candlelit dinner at home.
Imagine doing all of this without driving from one point to another, without feeling exhausted, and being able to repeat it every day while staying carbon neutral.
"We are creating a neighbourhood that meets everyday needs and special occasions," explained Peter Bur Andersen, an architect from BRIQ Studios that played a crucial role in zoning Nordhavn. "Everything is within walking or biking distance, minimising the need for commuting. The area also promotes a mostly car-free lifestyle, connected by cycle paths and the metro."
Copenhagen is currently the Unesco World's Architecture Capital (until 2026) and innovative solutions for smart living have been brewing across the Danish capital: from Paper Island, designed to focus on public spaces and housing for all income groups; to Carlsberg City District that's built on four pillars of beer production: science, innovation, art and culture.
However, Nordhavn's five-minute city concept is unique. While there are a few 10-minute cities being developed around the world, including one in Seoul, South Korea, Nordhavn's one-of-a-kind concept is the most ambitious urban development project in Scandinavia. It is also the only new urban district anywhere in the world to receive a gold certification for sustainability from the German Sustainable Building Council, or DGNB (the largest network for sustainable building in Europe), according to Andersen.
In Nordhavn, sustainability is about more than reducing energy consumption. Every building constructed must consider its social, economic and environmental impact. For example, the Big Bio Cinema – the city's newest theatre – is constructed from recyclable materials such as aluminium in case the building ever needs to be demolished.
And, according to Anderson, social and economic inclusion has been at the core of all planning. "It is important to bring back what worked well in history," he said. "We used to have the butcher, craftsman, baker and cheese shop – that diversity in everyday encounters. The future city should mix recreational, cultural and commercial spaces, all easily accessible within the neighbourhood."
But until relatively recently, no one would have considered living in this once-industrial district. Irshia Nasreen, an engineer born and raised in central Copenhagen, says, "While I was trying to find a new neighbourhood to move out of the city centre, I never thought I'd move here."
Bente adds, "I didn't think I would do tourist walks in Norhavn. There was nothing to see."
After all, for centuries Nordhavn was a free port filled with cargo ships, grain silos and metal containers. The buildings that existed were warehouses and industrial shipping structures. Then, in 2008, a competition was held to create a sustainable neighbourhood for Copenhagen's future: 179 proposals were submitted and a group of four architectural firms, COBE Architects, Sleth, Rambøll and Polyform were winners.
They designed an urban area of "soft mobility", where it is easier to walk, bike or use public transport than it is to drive; and put the idea of hybrid spaces – something that "avoids creating lifeless spaces and fosters community among residents, employees and visitors", according to Andersen – at its heart. For example, in Nordhavn, a multi-storey car park might have a gym on its roof; an apartment building could include a public restaurant; and a hotel could house a concept store.
Although the entire Nordhavn project won't be finished until 2060, it is being developed in islets (small islands), with key areas such as Nordø and Århusgadekvarteret, already complete and full of life, brimming with locals and tourists. A metro extension to Nordhavn and Orientkaj opened in 2020, providing easy access from the city centre.
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As Hoffman and I walked through Nordø, I admired the ingenuity of using once-unassuming buildings to create chic destinations. Audo House, a warehouse from 1918, is now a boutique hotel, concept store and cafe. Across the road, MENY food supermarket was once a factory for building guns. Because of the building's protected status, MENY had to use the same walls, windows and ceilings as the former World War Two gun factory to create what is now a futuristic food market. Nearby, the raw steel surface of The Silo still resembled its days as a grain silo. But it has now been transformed into a luxurious 17-storey residential building with a public restaurant.
"The beauty of Nordhavn lies in the blend of old and new architecture standing side by side," said Hoffman. "Sustainability is also about preserving the past by repurposing old buildings for modern use."
Nasreen moved to Nordhavn in 2023 and says the calm, car-free environment has transformed her lifestyle. "I love walking around here," she said. "After living in the city centre for 40 years, not hearing the hums of vehicles is refreshing. The proximity of water to all residential areas gives a sense of peace and fresh air. My nephew is awed by the fact that he can swim in the harbour, walk back home for a shower and then go back to the waterfront to enjoy coffee in a cool café. Isn't that amazing?"
She added: "I work from home, and when I need a change of scenery, I head to The Audo House. It's a multifunctional space, so you see tourists checking in the hotel and people shopping for art and furniture while I have a coffee in its cafe on a winter afternoon."
In the early 20th Century, when legendary Danish designer Arne Jacobsen said, "Architecture is not just about creating buildings; it's about shaping the environment and enhancing people's lives," it was theoretical. A century later, Hoffman is leading curious designers and architects like me on walking tours around Nordhavn. As curious as I am, and perhaps with the same intent, they are looking for answers to the question: can architecture be one of the keys to creating a happier urban environment?
For Nasreen and many others living in Nordhavn, the answer is a resounding yes.
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This year's Global Responsible Tourism Award winners demonstrate that travel can be inclusive, climate-friendly, nature-positive and a positive force for local communities.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Responsible Tourism Awards are a standard bearer for the positive side of the travel industry. Run by the non-profit International Centre for Responsible Tourism Global, the awards aim to showcase the benefits of tourism and inspire other firms to do the same.
Awards like these are particularly important at a time when tourism is under pressure. With global travel and tourism numbers back to pre-pandemic levels and one in 10 people employed in the industry, the need to improve the sector's environmental, economic and cultural impact is clear. Lifting up businesses that give back to their local communities creates a win-win for tourists and locals alike. And for travellers interested in supporting local culture, having extraordinary nature experiences and a ensuring a responsible travel industry, the winning firms have demonstrated their ability to do that and more.
Tess Longfield, head of sustainability communications at Sabre, who sponsors the awards, commented that extraordinary work is being done by all the winners to create a more sustainable and equitable world through tourism. "It's a testament to the power of responsible travel to make a real difference," she said.
From a private ecolodge in South Africa to a volunteering organisation in a Peruvian biosphere reserve, these are the firms to book with in 2024 and beyond:
Winner – Employing and upskilling local communities: Grootbos Private Nature Reserve, South Africa
This five-star ecolodge set in 3,500 hectares of South African wilderness is constantly researching pioneering ways of doing things to improve the lives of the local community and protect the fragile landscapes and wildlife that surround it.
As well as offering unique tourism experiences to guests, such as guided walks to the flora-rich fynbos and coastal safaris in in waters teeming with great white sharks and dolphins, Grootbos' lodge provides ecotourism jobs to the local community. Profits from the lodge fund the Grootbos Foundation, which gives free skills and business training for hundreds of local people in the areas of hospitality, horticulture, entrepreneurship and biodiversity. It creates a ripple effect that's much needed during a period of serious unemployment in South Africa.
The judging team called Grootbos "an exemplary business that others can learn from", praising the way that it constantly pushes the boundaries and explores new ways of developing responsible tourism.
"Grootbos cares about community and conservation," said Phil Murray, fundraising, donor relations and communications manager at Grootbos Foundation. "Neither can be ignored, and both can mutually benefit from programmes and a responsible tourism business that prizes people and planet."
Winner – Championing cultural diversity: Rajasthan Studio, India
Rajasthan Studio curates art experiences with master artisans in Rajasthan, allowing travellers to experience, understand and value the local culture of the place they are visiting. Travellers can visit master artists at their homes and studios, meet their families, see the process behind making local handicrafts and co-create a personalised souvenir with the crafter.
The experiences include an insight into rare and unique art forms like puppetry and the blue pottery of Jaipur, pichwai art and sea foam carving of Udaipur, leather juttis and tie dye of Jodhpur and much more. The idea is to build a community of artists and scale the business to different parts of Rajasthan, and eventually across India.
"Rajasthan as a state is blessed with a wonderful art heritage and travellers are eager to explore every bit of it," said company founder Kartik Gaggar. "But why should we limit it to exploring? We asked the same question and the answer was: let's turn it into an experience."
The judges were impressed with how Gaggar has created an immersive cultural experience that both economically benefits artists and enriches travellers. They called it a "highly replicable approach".
Today, the company offers more than 20 hand-on art experiences in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur, with plans to include artists from Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Bundi and Kota in the near future.
Winner – Increasing local sourcing and creating shared value: Sivatel Bangkok Hotel, Thailand
As this year's protests have been demonstrating, tourism has an impact on local people as much as visitors. Sivatel Bangkok was this year's winner for its innovative approach that brings together local providers to directly help the community.
The hotel sources 70% of its ingredients organically and partners with more than 50 local farmers through the Sivatel's Farmer Friends Network. It also supports local producers and fosters a sustainable ecosystem through the "Sivatel Sustainable Market", a pop-up market within the hotel where local artisans and food producers can sell their wares to travellers. Uniforms are designed by Folkcharm, a local sustainable fashion brand that supports local artisans.
Perhaps most uniquely, it runs a "From Kitchen to Chicken" programme, diverting hotel food scraps to feed black soldier fly larvae, which are then used as protein for organic chickens at a local chicken farm, where the hotel then sources its meat.
The judging panel found Sivatel Bangkok's structured programme based around regenerative agriculture and funding impressive, along with the way it sources and trains local providers.
"We believe that to live on this Earth, we cannot live alone but must support each other," said Sivatel CEO Alisara Sivayathorn.
Winner – Making tourism inclusive: TUI UK&I
With a business that serves more than six million holidaymakers a year, TUI is one of the best-known tourism brands in Europe. Its deep and comprehensive commitment to inclusivity impressed the judges: the tour operator has devised a unique way to help those with access needs book their accommodations.
Among TUI's many initiatives, they have 90 dedicated agents in their contact centre who have had specialist accessibility training; the team has partnered with AccessAble to survey hotels and develop detailed access guides; and also works with Sign Live to provide interpreting services for British Sign Language Users.
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"Around one in four of the UK population lives with a disability or condition that impacts their daily life," said Marina Snellenberg, TUI's accessibility manager, "and the prevalence of disability rises sharply with age. It's important that TUI consider the needs and expectations of the disabled community, allowing for a sustained and deliverable customer experience for years to come."
Judges were pleased to see a major tour operator address the needs of those with access needs so comprehensively, and hope that others will follow their example.
Winner – What are you doing about climate change?: Jetwing Hotels, Sri Lanka
This award celebrates a small hotel group in Sri Lanka that is actively decarbonising its operations, showing that even smaller players can take meaningful steps towards sustainability and inspire others while doing so.
In a tropical climate like Sri Lanka, air conditioning can consume up to 60% of a hotel's energy needs. Across its 19 hotels, Jetwing Hotels uses renewable energy from biomass, solar PV, solar thermal and biogas for power. In 2023, the hotel group generated the equivalent of the power needed for about 13,490 households through renewable energy alone. The company has also shortened its supply chain, reducing transport emissions, and is now sourcing 40% of their inputs locally to their hotels.
"By reducing energy costs and promoting a culture of environmental responsibility among our staff and guests, we ensure that our business practices are not only beneficial for the environment but also economically viable," said managing director Dmitri Cooray, "Our success shows that even the smallest efforts can create a ripple effect, encouraging others to make impactful changes."
Winner - Nature Positive: CREES, Peru
The award founders believe that the travel industry has a responsibility to contribute to the reversal of biodiversity loss and protect nature for future generations by promoting a regenerative approach to tourism. CREES, a Peruvian company offering tours and volunteering opportunities in the Manu Biosphere Reserve, is this year's winner of the Nature Positive award.
This educational tourism operation is working to benefit local people and conserve biodiversity at its three research stations in the Manu National Park that are home to one of the longest running and largest biodiversity studies in the Amazon. Guests get to witness conservation efforts first hand, exploring the rainforest in the company of the centre's naturalist guides, and participating in ongoing projects like checking pitfall traps, monitoring birdlife and taking visual surveys of reptiles and amphibians at night. Many of the projects monitor the life of the forest in newly regenerated forest areas, replanted by the team's conservationists, as a way to understand species recovery.
Judges were particularly impressed by how CREES approaches its work, citing its broad and holistic agenda aimed at promoting sustainable alternatives that respect human rights, intergenerational rights, biodiversity rights and the rights of species to ensure long-term sustainable economic development, as key factors in its win.
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The fuel-guzzling town of Queenstown, New Zealand, has an audacious goal to become the first tourist destination on Earth to have a completely carbon-zero visitor economy – and all by 2030.
By 2030 – if things really go to plan – you'll land in Queenstown on New Zealand's South Island (possibly even aboard an electric-powered Air New Zealand airplane) and make your way to town via an electric gondola or on a hydro-powered ferry across the town's famous glacier-fed lake, Lake Wakatipu. Skiers and snowboarders – who in winter descend on this region in ever-increasing numbers from around the world – will ride electric-powered chairlifts to the peaks of the surrounding ski resorts.
Year-round, travellers might take high-speed rides on Lake Wakatipu and along the shallow whitewater rapids of the Shotover River town aboard the world's first fully electric jet boats. Even the TSS Earnslaw – this hemisphere's oldest coal-fired, passenger-carrying steamship that has transported young families on day excursions since the 1970s – will run on hydrogen.
It's all part of the region's very ambitious plan to become the first tourist town on Earth to have a carbon-zero visitor economy by 2030. The "adventure capital of the world" – a title earned through decades of innovation creating death-defying activities that had been done nowhere else, but ones that run primarily on fossil fuels – now wants to become the ecotourism capital of the world. And they're aiming for a carbon-zero visitor economy in six years, not an easier-to-achieve carbon-neutral visitor economy (where Queenstown could use carbon credits, like planting trees, to achieve its environmental goals). Becoming carbon-zero is much harder to achieve – because it means you can't emit any carbon at all.
"Well, 2030 creates urgency, doesn't it?" Destination Queenstown CEO Mat Woods asks rhetorically. "2030 seemed so hard to achieve that it got the community excited. It means that everyone in the community has to be part of this [push to carbon-zero]."
Queenstown's huge environmental challenge stemmed from a concern that the region's infrastructure was struggling to cope with the sheer number of tourists coming to town. Queenstown is set around a massive lake, fringed by the rugged mountains of the country's Southern Alps. It's been a skiing hotspot since resorts first opened in the 1940s, but the development of an adventure tourism economy built around its dramatic landscape since the 1960s established the region as one of New Zealand's most popular destinations.
Last year, almost 400,000 international visitors came here, an almost-20% rise since 2019, just before the pandemic. This number is particularly significant when you consider Queenstown has a permanent population of around 50,000.
"Locals were asking, what's in this for us," Woods says. "And can we really sustain this region the way it's going?"
The three local regional tourism organisations – Destination Queenstown, Queenstown Lakes District Council and Lake Wanaka Tourism – proposed the audacious goal in 2021 and were surprised at the support they got from tourism operators. "We took the plan out to the community and weren't sure what to expect," Woods says. "And everyone supported it. And that's the most important part in all of this. Every person has to play a part."
That could be someone like… say, Mr Chippy. While New Zealand eagerly awaits the really big shifts towards environmental sustainability in tourism – like the trial of the region's first e-plane flight, set for 2026 on an Air New Zealand cargo route between Wellington and the Marlborough Sounds – Mr Chippy, aka Michael Sly, has been quietly composting 20 tonnes of hotel food waste each month around Queenstown. His company, Waste To Wilderness, turns the scraps left by tourists into nutrient-dense soil used for food growing – a perfect example of regenerative tourism. "You don't have to take giant leaps," he says. "Take little steps in the right direction and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve."
Though given the number of tourists coming to the Queenstown region each year, local accommodation providers must become the most consequential players in Queenstown's plan to run on alternative energy. The promising news is that already no accommodation can match what Headwaters Eco Lodge has achieved – and long before the 2030 goalpost. It's the first accommodation on the planet to be recognised by the Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous of all environmental assessment programmes.
Surrounded on all sides by the Southern Alps and braided river valleys in the picture-perfect hamlet of Glenorchy, 45 minutes' drive west of Queenstown, the lodge is built entirely from recycled building material. It uses the world's most advanced compost toilets, while every single litre of wastewater irrigates extensive wetlands built through the middle of the property. All of its power comes from one of the South Island's largest solar gardens – there's nearly 600 solar panels on site – which produce so much energy that the excess is used to power another business up the road.
"My husband Paul and I came up this idea of creating these slow tourism experiences that could support this idea of regenerative design," says Headwaters Eco Lodge co-owner, Debbi Brainerd. "We're in the most beautiful place here in Glenorchy. We liked the idea of creating accommodation that had a positive carbon affect, so we created these things in design to help us get there."
Within Queenstown itself, a refurbished 40-year-old motor inn, Sherwood Queenstown, made Expedia's Top 10 eco-friendly stays list in 2019. It runs almost entirely off 248 solar panels and a full-time horticulturist grows nearly half of all produce required by the hotel's restaurant on a hillside within the property that overlooks Lake Wakatipu. "We say that it's all about small things done consistently that really make a difference," explains general manager Hayley Scott. "But it's also important to have big goals to work towards. Everyone in this community is committed to getting as close to achieving carbon-zero by 2030 as we can. It's got us all thinking."
Dig a little deeper and you'll find that world-first environmental innovation is happening across the Queenstown region. Shotover Jet, which whisks travellers through the narrow canyons of Queenstown’s Shotover River at 85 km/h, are trialling the world's first electric-powered jet boat. It's taken three years, but the prototype boat is capable of the same spins and turns – where pilots drive guests just centimetres from the cliffs beside the Shotover River – as their fuel-powered counterparts. But the electric version will actually be far more powerful than the original fuel model. And once it's built, Shotover Jet plan to share the prototype with the rest of the industry to ensure carbon output is eliminated across all jet boat companies in Queenstown.
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And the world's first electric hydro-foiling ferry will soon start operating on a lake just south-west of Queenstown. Expected to save more than 240 tonnes of carbon emissions each year (equivalent to taking 52 petrol cars off the road), the Swedish-designed ferry will operate on Lake Manapouri from early 2025 using battery power only. The same type of ferry is expected to operate on Lake Wakatipu next, with local marinas recently updated to enable electric boat charging for all lake users.
And the innovations towards a carbon zero visitor economy keep on coming. A local wine tour company – Appellation Wine Tours – has introduced two new electric vehicles to their fleet; while tour company Nomad Safaris started Tesla Tours, taking zero-emission electric vehicles on private tours to the most scenic parts of the region, like an area just beyond Glenorchy dubbed "Paradise", where rivers running down from glaciers high in the national park above feed the deep waters of Lake Wakatipu.
The region has also developed 130km of bike trails that follow the edge of Lake Wakatipu and lead deep into the backcountry beyond town, sometimes along swaying suspension bridges crossing the emerald-coloured Kawarau River, making it globally recognised as a cycling destination. By 2026, it's estimated biking will reach as much as 50% the size of the more carbon-unfriendly ski visitor economy that currently dominates tourism in the area.
And every one of these developments spur other businesses to push for their own environmental victories and make the next big carbon-zero conquest. As global temperatures surge and storms wreak destruction of unprecedented proportions, it's inspiring to see an entire community of tourism operators embark on a challenge that, if successful, will cut 20 years off the carbon-zero target set by the United Nations Climate Change Council. Their efforts may go largely unnoticed in mainstream media, but this community of former fuel-guzzlers plan to show the world there's still hope for us all yet.
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Every year around Halloween, countless hotels around the world tout their allegedly haunted status to guests – so why are both sceptics and believers booking them?
Comedienne and writer Joanna Hausmann did not believe in ghosts. She was an extreme sceptic who thought that there was a logical explanation for any supposedly supernatural phenomenon – that is, until she spent the night in the Biltmore Hotel, purportedly one of the most haunted places in Miami.
After a terrifying night, which she said included voices in the adjoining room of her suite and multiple televisions and a hair dryer that randomly turned on, her outlook on the supernatural shifted. Ever since, she pores through online forums to make sure guests have never experienced an otherworldly encounter before staying at any hotel.
"Ghosts and hauntings and that kind of thing – I did not believe in any of that," Hausmann insisted. "I'm not even joking [that this experience] literally altered my life. I felt like there was someone in there. I don't know what it was, but it did change me forever."
Every year around Halloween, countless hotels and attractions around the world, like the Hotel del Coranado in California or The Clermont in London, tout their allegedly haunted status to visitors looking for a spine-tingling way to spend the holiday. However, for people like Hausmann who have had a spooky encounter, the question of why anyone would want to experience a similarly frightening episode by staying at a haunted hotel is baffling.
The Historic Hotels of America lists dozens of haunted hotels within its ranks. According to Katherine Orr, the group's director of marketing strategy and communications, these properties attract a wide range of visitors. "I would say there's a couple different kinds of guests at the haunted hotel. One would be a thrill-seeker, someone who gets excited about the idea of ghosts, maybe wants to have that kind of experience," she said. "Then I think there's another kind of guest that's more interested in the storytelling aspect of it. Because the lore, the ghost story, they're really part of what make these hotels unique."
According to Orr, exactly how a hotel manages its reputation for being haunted is very much a marketing decision. "Hotels have to find a good balance in telling those stories and finding the niche where they can reach the right audience," she said. "Then also toning down those stories when they think that their target audience wouldn't be interested."
Some establishments, like the Lord Baltimore Hotel in Maryland, embrace their haunted notoriety year round – they even employ Vince Wilson as an on-staff ghost hunter and entertainer. According to Wilson, guests have reported seeing the child ghost known as "Molly" playing with a ball in the hallways of the hotel, a lift that randomly takes itself to the 19th floor and a ghostly couple dancing silently in the ballroom. Wilson also hosts regular ghost tours that explore the hotel's spooky history, noting that the popularity (and the cost) of these tours goes up as Halloween approaches each year.
On the other hand, hotels like the Hassayampa Inn in Prescott, Arizona, keep their hauntings mostly under wraps. Though Penny Alpin, director of sales and marketing at the inn, describes the hotel's resident ghost as "very friendly" (she apparently likes to cuddle up with male guests and borrow the compact mirrors of female guests), these experiences are not something that she generally advertises outside of spooky season.
"[Halloween is] the only time I promote it," said Alpin. "A haunting is not one of the things I want to promote… why would you want to scare people?"
Lee Johnson-Lowe, director of sales and marketing at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, thinks most guests of the property are either sceptics or thrill-seekers. "[There are] two kinds of people that generally go to a haunted hotel or [haunted] venue of any type," he said "[Those who say], 'I don't believe in ghosts, I need a place to stay, and this place is a luxury hotel', and people that are like 'This place is haunted? I am definitely staying there now!'"
Interestingly, even the hotel's resident ghost hunter is unsure whether ghosts are real. "I've been to some of the most haunted places in the world," said Wilson. "And I've certainly had weird, spooky, even scary experiences, but I can also look back and say, 'you know what, that could have been my imagination'."
Whether apparitions appear or not, travellers continue to seek out haunted hotels each autumn, with Johnson-Lowe noting that bookings for the Lord Baltimore spike every year as Halloween nears.
"What I always tell people who are nervous about certain locations, who do not want to have anything to do with hauntings, my opinion on that is that there's no way to avoid it so you might as well embrace it."
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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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Manuela Barrios has performed flamenco around the world. Here are her favourite spots in Seville to see the spectacle, from casual nights at La Carbonería to the cabaret shows of Tablao Las Setas.
Seville, the capital of Spain's Andalusia region, is known for its tiled Moorish architecture, colourful 19th-Century facades and the thousands of fragrant orange trees lining its streets. This romantic city is also often called the "birthplace of flamenco".
Flamenco is characterised by rhythmic dancing accompanied by guitar, singing or poetry, hand clapping and finger snapping. It has a mournful folk quality and is ruled by duende, an expressive emotion which most closely translates to "spirit" or "soul".
Many scholars trace flamenco's origin to Triana, a neighbourhood on the banks of the Guadalquivir River. The area was historically home to Seville's Roma (Gypsy) minority who migrated to Spain from India in the Middle Ages, bringing along instruments like tambourines and castanets. Because the dance was connected with the marginalised Roma and working-class and minority communities like the Moors, it was looked down upon by Spanish elites. But today, tourism and modernisation have changed this perception drastically, and flamenco has become popularised as a quintessential symbol of Andalusia and Spain.
We spoke to Manuela Barrios, a Seville-based professional flamenco dancer, to find the city's best flamenco experiences. "We have the best flamenco artists in the world here in Seville," says Barrios. "It's a small city, but they haven't lost their traditions." Seville’s many tablaos (flamenco venues) offer theatre-style shows on a daily basis. Outside of formal performances, flamenco is also an important part of public life in the city. Street performers often dance in squares such as the city's central Plaza de España, and in traditional neighbourhoods like Triana. Flamenco singing and guitar can also be heard from the windows of local bars and features prominently in Seville’s Feria de Abril (April Fair), where locals show off their dancing skills with informal styles such as Sevillanas.
Seville's vibrant professional flamenco scene has a tight community spirit. "People are very empathetic and willing to help, and there's a family-oriented culture. Especially with the [Roma] artists," says Barrios. "They're amazing. They bring their whole family to dance and perform."
Here are five of Barrios' favourite spots to experience this Andalusian art form.
1. Best fun, casual night out: La Carbonería
For an affordable introduction to flamenco, this casual bar nestled between the trendy nightlife hub of Alfalfa and the historic district of Barrio Santa Cruz is a solid choice.
"La Carbonería is a place that has a lot of solera (tradition)," says Barrios. "It's a very fun place and has kept the same vibe for so many years. You just have to pay for your drink and you can see flamenco, with singing and everything."
In a bustling wide room with simple wooden tables and long benches, guests can watch the performance in a relaxed atmosphere. "All the really good guitarists and singers started in La Carbonería," says Barrios. "It's a place where talented artists get their first performing experience."
Entrance to La Carbonería is free, but you can buy drinks and tapas onsite – note that payment is cash only. Food and drink options include pitchers of sangria, plus simple tapas like cheese, olives, chorizo, picos (crunchy breadsticks) and Spanish omelette.
Website: https://lacarbonerialevies.blogspot.com/
Address: Calle Céspedes 21A, 41004, Seville
Phone: +34 954 229 945
Instagram: @carboneriadesevilla
2. Best off-the-beaten-path experience: Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena
Just outside the old city's medieval walls, near the modern steel bowstring Barqueta Bridge, you'll find the Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena.
A "peña flamenca" is a club or cultural association where aficionados can enjoy flamenco-related events. "If you want to see something not very touristy, this is the place to go," says Barrios. "The entrance is much cheaper than a tablao, but you don't know what you're going to see – it may be stars or amateurs."
The Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena opens 60-90 minutes before each show, and shows are typically held three times per week. The venue has a traditional Andalusian tiled patio where visitors can enjoy drinks and tapas beforehand. Although performances are open to the public, the first two rows are usually reserved for club members, and payment is generally cash only.
Website: https://www.xn--peaflamencatorresmacarena-9nc.com/
Address: Calle Torrijiano 29, 41009, Seville
Phone: +34 605 931 254
Instagram: @pflamencatorresmacarena
3. Best cabaret-style theatre show with top stars: Tablao Flamenco Las Setas
Beneath the iconic modern building of the same name, visitors will find the Tablao Flamenco Las Setas. "This tablao is one of the top places in Spain. They bring all the best flamenco stars," says Barrios. "For example, [famed flamenco star] Belén López was there yesterday, and she's never come to Andalusia to dance before. They have high-quality shows, and the owners have a lot of taste."
Las Setas (The Mushrooms), also known as Metropol Parasol, is widely considered the largest wooden structure in the world and is a famous symbol of Seville. Besides the flamenco tablao, the building is also home to a Roman site known as the Antiquarium, as well as the Mercado de la Encarnación (Incarnation Market), which sells fresh meat, vegetables and seafood.
Tablao Flamenco Las Setas accommodates 110 people but still offers an intimate atmosphere, according to Barrios. "People leave in tears every night. You can see the show really close up, and flamenco needs to be seen close up because you have to observe the facial expressions, the pain and emotion."
Visitors to this tablao will be treated to a cabaret-style spectacle that captures the most dramatic side of flamenco. "It's a different atmosphere than any other tablao in Seville. They don't just have lunares y flores (polka dots and flowers). They want to add a bit of a cabaret taste, something different, with lace and other unique styles."
Website: https://tablaoflamencolassetas.com/
Address: Plaza de la Encarnación, Pasaje de Las Setas, 41003, Seville
Phone: +34 684 776 981
Instagram: @tablaoflamencolassetas
4. Best traditional flamenco with dinner: Tablao Flamenco El Arenal
Located in a building dating to the 17th Century, Tablao Flamenco El Arenal features a grand white dining hall flanked with wooden beams, where you can savour a meal before enjoying a flamenco show. "This is one of the oldest tablaos in Seville," says Barrios. "If you want to see cuadros de flamenco (flamenco groups) and have dinner, you can come here to see very good stars perform in a very traditional way."
Located right in the centre of Seville's old city, near the Seville Cathedral and the University of Seville campus, this tablao has been operating for more than 40 years. Visitors can choose from ticket options that include a drink, tapas or a multi-course meal.
"To see a full flamenco cuadro where you have four dancers, three singers and two guitarists… that's really amazing," says Barrios. "For a first taste of flamenco, it's very impressive. They have shows every day, and you should buy tickets online, because they're sold out almost every day in the high season [April - May, September - October]."
Website: https://tablaoelarenal.com/
Address: Calle Rodo 7, 41001, Seville
Phone: +34 954 216 492
Instagram: @tablaoelarenalsevilla
5. Best tertulias flamencas: Ánima Galería Taberna
The word tertulia means "conversation" in Spanish, but in the context of flamenco it's more like a jam session. At these informal meetings, musicians and dancers gather for a spontaneous performance.
Ánima Galería Taberna, situated near Seville's bohemian Alameda de Hércules square, hosts flamenco tertulias every Wednesday and Saturday night. "You can see locals and foreigners singing and playing guitar," says Barrios. "You never know exactly what's going to happen. The bar is very authentic and has a beautiful terrace. My students say this is the best place for tertulias, because you can go there and feel the atmosphere."
Website: https://animataberna.wordpress.com/
Address: Calle Miguel del Cid 80, 41002, Seville
Phone: +34 954 386 708
Instagram: @galeriataberna_anima
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Chef Alejandro Ruiz thinks Oaxaca's street foods are a key to understanding its gastronomy. Here are his top street foods in the city, from memelas at Doña Vale to Tacos del Carmen.
Mexico is renowned for its deeply regional cuisine, and the state of Oaxaca is home to what is widely considered some of its best. High in the Sierra Madre mountains upon a dusty plateau, Oaxaca City's Spanish Baroque cathedrals loom over low blocks of brightly coloured buildings lining cobblestoned streets; splashed by vivid murals and renderings of mythological and historical figures. Everywhere, a bouquet of savoury aromas and smoke waft from open kitchen windows and street carts.
"I think what makes Oaxacan food different compared to other food regions is the enormous variety of microclimates," says Oaxaca-born chef Alejandro Ruiz, who has been championing his home state's native cuisine for nearly 30 years. "We work with what's available. If I have lemon trees, I make fresh agua fresca de limón (fresh lemonade). If I have corn and beans and chillies, that's what I eat."
Ruiz further explains that Oaxacan cuisine is a heady blend of Spanish, African Moorish and Indigenous techniques: "Also there's Asian influence, like cumin, cinnamon and other spices. But to me the Indigenous [influence] is the most important."
Though his restaurant Casa Oaxaca El Restaurante is upscale, Chef Ruiz adores Oaxaca's iconic street foods, like tlayudas (thin, crispy tortillas smothered in beans, meats, salsa and cheese) and memelas (grilled corn cakes). "[It's] special because it has the main ingredients of our local diet: corn, beans, salsas and stuffings like meat, sausage, herbs called quelites," he says. "There is always a comal" – the Mexican griddle that crisps dough to perfection – "and there is always freshly made tortilla. If you have a good tortilla, beans and salsa, that's all you need to have an amazing taco, tostada, tlayuda, or memela."
Earlier this year, the new 104km Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway opened between Oaxaca City and Puerto Escondido, slashing the drive from eight nausea-inducing hours to a quick 2.5, so there's no time like the present to try Oaxaca's amazing cuisine. Here are Ruiz's top five street foods in Oaxaca City.
1. Best for bustle: Oaxaca's mercados
"One of the main reasons people come to Oaxaca is to eat," says Ruiz, "and I think they should visit the market (mercado) if they’re interested in food."
In the centre of the city, the neighbouring mercados 20 de Noviembre and Benito Juarez as well as the nearby Central de Abasto are popular among both locals and visitors, offering scores of food stall options amidst a bevy of handicraft shopping. A kaleidoscope of tropical fruit abounds punctuated by barrels of fried grasshoppers called chapulines; stands offer street foods ranging from tacos and Oaxacan-style barbeque to tlayudas and tamales Oaxaqueños (corn husk-wrapped corn tamales laced with sweet and savoury Oaxacan-style mole sauce, made with bitter chocolate). Everything gets washed down with a mug of the state's renowned hot chocolate and coffee, both packaged and prepared fresh. Even with so many delicious options, Ruiz is particularly emphatic that visitors try the barbecue, where they'll choose from a selection of thin-cut beef or chorizo sausages that are grilled to order, as a billow of mouth-watering smoke perfumes the dining area.
In addition to the local markets, Ruiz advises taking a short jaunt out of town to the markets in the neighbouring city of Tlacolula, where you "grill your own tasajo and chorizo right there on the charcoal grills – it's an amazing experience".
Website: https://mercado-20-de-noviembre.webnode.mx/
Address: 20 De Noviembre 512, Centro, 68000, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico
2. Best for tacos: Tacos del Carmen
Located a block down from Oaxaca's botanical garden, Tacos del Carmen is beloved by locals. This unassuming stand's offerings are cooked under a comal, yielding a crispy tortilla with melted cheese on the inside along with ingredients like mushrooms, chorizo, beans, fried pork belly (called chicharron) and the day's selection of meats.
Centrally located alongside the garden near several of the city's most historical cathedrals like Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzman and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and tucked amidst many of its excellent art galleries, Tacos del Carmen has become an increasingly popular stop among visitors. The stand is closed by 15:00, so plan it as an afternoon fuel-up as you wander the city, and keep in mind that it's not open Wednesday or Sunday. The menu is in both Spanish and English, so no worries about language difficulties. It is cash-only, so come prepared.
"I recommend ordering the tacos de chile relleno (stuffed pepper) with chorizo and quesillo (egg custard)," says Ruiz. "It’s so rich and so delicious – the best in town."
Address: Jesús Carranza 110, Ruta Independencia, Centro, 68000, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico
Instagram: @carmentacosdel
3. Best for tlayudas: Tlayudas Doña Tere
One of Oaxaca's most iconic dishes is the tlayuda – a crunchy, thin tortilla topped with a base of refried beans, then covered with cheese and toppings like avocado and vegetable.
According to Ruiz, "Everyone in Oaxaca has their own favourite place for tlayudas. Mine is Tlayudas Doña Tere right around the corner from my home. The way she makes it is on charcoal, in between the comal and the charcoal, so it's crispy and the cheese gets melted immediately. I love it."
Tlayudas Doña Tere is a 10-minute drive south-east of Oaxaca's downtown in the quiet, residential University district. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it spot – the perfect opportunity to get away from the bustle of the city centre and enjoy a tasty bite away from the tourist crowds.
Address: Escuela naval militar Esquina Dallas Col. Reforma
4. Best for memelas: Memelas Doña Vale
A cousin to both the taco and the tlayuda, memelas are thick, grilled cornmeal cakes topped with cheese, salsa and toppings like tomato, onion or peppers; a Oaxaca City staple. Ruiz is definitive on the city's best: Memelas Doña Vale, a stand run by memela maker Doña Vale in the market at Central de Abasto. "Doña Vale only makes memelas," he says. "And "[customers have the] option of topping them with a couple of eggs, confit porridge or tasajo (thinly cut, dried and spiced beef) grilled on the charcoal, chocolate de agua (hot chocolate mixed with water) or café de olla ("pot coffee" typically simmered in clay pot) to drink – only five options, no more. I love these kinds of places."
Plan on stopping by during shopping break and bring cash. This popular spot gets busy around lunchtime, which is no surprise as Doña Vale has been grilling memelas for 40 years.
Address: Cosijoeza, Central de Abasto, 68090, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico
Instagram: @memelasdonavale
5. Best for a snack: Empanadas del Carmen
Yet another "must" while visiting Oaxaca are "empanadas de amarillo" (yellow empanadas). These savoury bites are made with corn dough and stuffed with chicken and Oaxaca's yellow mole, a silky golden sauce stewed with tomatillos, hoja santa (Mexican pepperleaf) and vegetables like green beans and potatoes. Flaky on the outside with an explosion of rich mole flavour within, empanadas de Amarillo are ideal for fortifying your stomach after a long day of mezcals and cervezas.
At Empanadas del Carmen, says Ruiz, "They’re made right in front of you, and they are the best in town – cheap and delicious." The stand is open every day but Wednesday from 17:00-23:00, and as they're located right in the heart of the central district, they're a convenient place to stop off for a snack while exploring the city.
"Have a meal in a fine dining restaurant, a meal on the street, and a meal in the market," Ruiz recommends. "This way you learn about the full culinary traditions in Oaxaca."
Address: Jesús Carranza 102, Ruta Independencia, Centro, 68000, Oax., Mexico
Instagram: @empanadasdelcarmenalto
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Author Charlie MacLean has made a life out of rating Scotch whisky. Here are his favourite ways to enjoy a dram, from cosy city pubs in Edinburgh to Victorian hotels in the Highlands.
Edinburgh, Scotland's cosmopolitan capital, is brimming with Unesco cache. Both its architecturally splendid medieval Old Town and Neoclassical New Town are World Heritage sites, while Edinburgh itself was named the world's first City of Literature in 2004.
Overseas, Edinburgh is equally as revered for its whisky culture. There are more than 385 pubs in the city where you can savour the peat-flavoured drink right in its country of origin.
"It's growing," says esteemed scotch writer Charles "Charlie" MacLean. "A lot of bars have expanded the range of whiskies and the knowledge on part of the bar staff in order to be able to advise customers. So Edinburgh has become a hub."
For MacLean, the enduring global appeal of Scotch whisky owes much to "fashion – after the Second World War, it was the drink of the free world", particularly in dolce vita-era Italy, where it was "introduced by the GIs and promoted by Hollywood. But secondly, Scotch scores on its deep history and its craft. If you want to go beyond simply enjoyment, whisky rewards analysis, and I think that's become part of the appeal. It is an acquired taste. It's not a child's drink. If you get the taste of it, it's hugely rewarding."
But for all the historic and up-and-coming pubs in Edinburgh, there are glorious Scotch whisky experiences further afield in Scotland's five famed whisky regions, like Speyside in the Scottish Highlands and the dramatically beautiful island of Islay. "The Scottish whisky industry is developing really sophisticated, really well-equipped touristic facilities, visitor centres and restaurants," says MacLean.
Historic though it may be, Edinburgh's whisky culture is anything but stale. Here are MacLean's top Scotch whisky experiences – in Edinburgh and beyond.
1. Best for whisky newbies: Johnnie Walker Princes Street
"We have an awful lot of international tourists," says MacLean. "They love whisky, and the city has responded to that with whisky bars and places like the Johnnie Walker Centre."
The mammoth eight-storey Johnnie Walker Princes Street, housed in the former Houses of Fraser department store, offers an immersive, multi-faceted whisky experience. "[It's] an introduction to Scotch whisky that has done very, very well," says MacLean. "The eight floors are huge!"
Johnnie Walker Princes Street offers a variety of tutored tasting tours where visitors can blend bespoke cocktails and pair artisanal chocolate truffles with luxury whiskies, all while learning about the humble Scottish grocer whose homegrown single malt spawned the best-selling whisky brand in the world. Head to the 1820 Rooftop Bar for beautiful views of the imposing medieval masterpiece Edinburgh Castle or to the Explorers Bothy's Bar where whiskies are paired with small plates crafted by Michelin-starred chefs. "Very slick and professional, for novices and connoisseurs," says MacLean.
Website: https://www.johnniewalker.com/en-us
Address: 145 Princes St, Edinburgh EH2 4BL
Phone: +44 (0)1313 769 494
Instagram: @johnniewalker
2. Most knowledgeable bartenders: Canny Man's
MacLean has made a life of rating whisky, but humbly demurs at the epithet expert. "It was purely by luck that I got into [it]," says the former ghost writer, now working on his 20th book on whisky. "It's like Alice in Wonderland; you go through one door and then there are more doors. On the production [and] historical side, I find it absolutely fascinating."
For an Alice in Wonderland Scotch experience, MacLean suggests: "Go to a bar with a knowledgeable bartender. Go with a couple of friends, so there's three of you. Say to the bartender, 'Give us three whiskies in nosing glasses.' And say, 'Right, we liked that number three; give us three more like that." You note and taste. What you're doing is developing the knowledge that they're not all the same."
While MacLean says there are many knowledgeable bartenders in Edinburgh, his first stop is Canny Man's, a historic public house helmed by Iain Kerr.
"His family have owned this idiosyncratic traditional bar since 1871," says MacLean. "It is highly atmospheric, crowded with memorabilia – every one of which has a story, many of them donated to settle bar bills!"
The antique- and trinket-filled pub is found in Edinburgh's upscale, tree-lined Morningside neighbourhood. Though most famous for its Bloody Mary, Canny Man's holds regular Scotch tastings and names a "New Malt of the Month".
"It offers a wide range of malts (around 300) and its own house blend," adds MacLean.
Website: https://www.cannymans.co.uk/
Address: 237 Morningside Rd, Morningside, Edinburgh EH10 4QU, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)1314 471 484
Instagram: @thecannymans
3. Best cosy small bar: Kay's Bar
For MacLean, there are outdoor whiskies and indoor whiskies: "If you're outdoors, I would go for an Islay whisky like Lagavulin; elemental, smoky whiskies. Then for the evening, go for more sherry-style whiskies, like Glendalough or Glenfarclas."
For a cosy evening tipple, MacLean recommends Kay’s Bar, a snug pub in Edinburgh's New Town. "[It's got] a real fire, a companionable atmosphere and a large selection of whiskies and beers," he says of the Victorian-era pub with red-painted walls and red velvet seating. "Kay’s was actually established [as a wine and spirit merchant] in the 18th Century. It's a lovely, cosy small bar."
Tiny Kay's accommodates one long bench with a smattering of tables around it, making it easy to get acquainted with your neighbour.
Website: https://www.kaysbar.uk/
Address: 39 Jamaica St, Edinburgh EH3 6HF
Phone:+44 (0)1312 251 858
Instagram: @kaysbaredinburgh
4. Best cocktails: Bramble
"I must mention Bramble," says MacLean emphatically. "Tiny, tiny cocktail bar in a tiny basement. But they've won global prizes for their cocktails and knowledge of spirits."
Bramble is found in a row of stately townhouses on Queen Street; distinguishable only by a tiny sign on an iron fence. The humble, dimly lit space began serving its uniquely inventive cocktails in 2006 – cracking the 50 Best Bars in the World in 2009 and remaining on the list for five years – and has consistently racked up prizes ever since.
"They do some ready-made cocktails with whiskies," notes MacLean. These change regularly but current standouts include the "Triple Corn" (pisco, corn whisky, corn liqueur, sweetcorn, coriander and lime) and the "Shadowman" (made from whisky, Latvian kummel liqueur, chamomile, rosemary and lemon). "The guys behind that are among the leading cocktail makers in the world," says MacLean.
Bramble welcomes nationally acclaimed DJs on Friday and Saturday nights.
Website: https://www.bramblebar.co.uk/
Address: 16A Queen St, Edinburgh EH2 1JE, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)1312 266 343
Instagram: @bramble_bar
5. Best outside Edinburgh: Craigellachie Hotel, Highlander Inn, The Fiddlers and Dornoch Castle Hotel
Though Edinburgh has an excellent whisky scene, MacLean recommends visitors also explore Scotland's five whisky regions – Speyside, Islay, Campbelltown, Highland and Lowland. Some of MacLean's favourite whisky experiences are found in Speyside in the ruggedly beautiful Scottish Highlands, home to excellent salmon fishing and the country's densest concentration of Scotch distilleries.
Scotch-loving visitors can follow Speyside's Malt Whisky Trail, tracing a string of prestige and historic distilleries. Or they can find themselves in the village of Aberlour at MacLean's top pick, the Craigellachie Hotel. "Craigellachie Hotel is a pilgrimage destination for whisky lovers, with a vast collection of malts and very knowledgeable bar staff," says MacLean. "It also has a cheerful informal bar [and restaurant], The Copper Dog, and the Quaich Bar [which] has an amazing stock of whisky." Craigellachie Hotel is also home to the early 18th-Century Spey Inn pub; the oldest drover's inn in Scotland.
Just a few paces away from the hotel is MacLean's next pick; the Highlander Inn. "It boasts a huge selection of Scotch malts and also has the largest collection of Japanese whisky in the UK."
Venturing further 115km further west to the scenic Loch Ness, MacLean also recommends the award-winning The Fiddlers Highland Restaurant in the lakeside village of Drumnadrochit. "[It] has been owned by the Beach family since 1996. As well as having a restaurant featuring Highland dishes, it has more than 500 whiskies in stock."
Continuing north to the seaside resort town of Dornoch, MacLean likes to stop at the family-owned Dornoch Castle Hotel, facing the imposing 12th-Century Dornoch Castle. "[The pub] offers a number of very rare old whiskies at generous prices. It also has a micro distillery on site. A must for anyone travelling in the north of Scotland."
Website: https://craigellachiehotel.com/
Address: Victoria St, Speyside Way, Craigellachie, Aberlour AB38 9SR
Phone:+44 (0)1340 881 204
Instagram: @thecraigellachie
6. Best splurge: The Fife Arms in Braemar
"How much do you want to spend?" quips MacLean. "If you're in Edinburgh [and want to splurge], the Balmoral Hotel has very well-informed staff and a nice whisky bar. But the Fife Arms is unbelievable. Costly, but glorious!"
The Fife Arms hotel is located in Braemar, a bustling village in Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands; a little more than a two-hour drive north from Edinburgh and 15 minutes from Balmoral Castle, the Scottish home of the Royal Family.
"It’s a small hotel, a very, very luxurious hotel," says MacLean. " It's absolutely top notch. The Victorian building has been tastefully and appropriately restored – no expense spared! The Swiss owners are among the world’s leading art collectors and every room, public and private, is embellished with artworks, more than 14,000 at the last count; some by very famous artists and including private commissions."
MacLean also praises the hotel's amenities: "The staff are impeccable; the food superb – [the restaurant has] two Michelin stars." And when it's time to finally settle in for a dram, visitors can lounge at Bertie's Whisky Bar, with its moody wood-panelled walls and rich red velvet armchairs: "Named for King Edward VII, bon viveur and gourmand. But [it's] not a traditional bar; more like a whisky library where the well-informed bar staff/'librarians' encourage guests to explore flavours."
"A truly exceptional place," says MacLean. "The best that Scotland offers – at the moment!"
Website: https://thefifearms.com/
Address: Mar Rd, Braemar, Ballater AB35 5YN
Phone: +44 (0)1339 720 200
Instagram: @thefifearms
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One of Mexico's most famous athletes, Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez talks us through the must-see places in the capital ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix.
In 2015, the Mexican Grand Prix made a triumphant return to Formula 1 after a 23-year absence.
For Sergio "Checo" Pérez, victory was particularly sweet. While born and raised in Guadalajara, Pérez's status as the most successful Grand Prix driver in Mexican history has made him a beloved figure across the country.
Growing up, though, Pérez tells BBC Travel that Formula 1 was not very popular in Mexico: "Normal people had no idea what Formula 1 was. Even finding it on television was really difficult." Since his father, Antonio Pérez Garibay, was a stock car racing driver who competed in the Nascar Mexico series, Pérez was exposed to motor racing from a young age. "I grew up with motorsport in my blood," he says. "My target was actually IndyCar when I was growing up. Formula 1 seemed too far away. It was never clear if I'd get the opportunity."
Pérez's karting performances in Mexico and then the United States took his burgeoning career to Europe, and after excelling in Formula 3 and GP2 he became sought after by Formula 1 teams. Since making his debut, he's helped to grow Formula 1 exponentially around Mexico. "The atmosphere in Mexico now is incredible," he says. "People follow it a lot. The interest is just massive around Mexico."
But while his Formula 1 travels mean that he doesn't get to spend as much time as he'd like in Mexico City, when he returns every year for the Grand Prix (27 October 2024), he knows exactly where to visit. "It's such a unique and cosmopolitan city," he says, who is based in Puerto Vallarta between races. "There are so many nationalities, the quality of food is incredible, there are good clubs, nice people, nice museums, there's a lot of sport to watch. It is a city that has everything."
Here are Pérez's recommendations for enjoying Mexico City – during F1 weekend and beyond.
1. Best tacos: El Fogoncito
The most iconic Mexican dish is undoubtedly the taco; a hand-sized tortilla filled with beef, pork, chicken, seafood or vegetables that's eaten in just a few bites. Linked to the country from centuries back, tacos exploded in popularity among Mexican miners in the 18th Century because they were so easy to make and sell. Whenever Pérez is in Mexico City, his favourite taco spot to visit is El Fogoncito, a casual and stylish taqueria with two locations close to Chapultepec Park, the biggest and oldest urban space in Latin America.
"El Fogoncito is a really nice taco place that I used to go to a lot," says Pérez. "I will order the gringa (pork shoulder and cheese) and el pastor (marinated pork) tacos. Their quesadillas are really nice, too. All of it is really good."
If you're looking for other dishes to devour in the city, Pérez recommends enchiladas (large rolled tortillas filled with saucy meat and topped with melted cheese) and pollo con mole, chicken simmered in cacao-rich mole sauce.
Website: https://www.fogoncito.com/
Instagram: @elfogoncitooficial
2. Must-see for first-time visitors: Chapultepec Castle
Built in 1785, Chapultepec Castle served as a military academy, observatory, imperial residence and the home of each president until February 1939, when it became the National Museum of History. Pérez always feels transported whenever he visits the structure, located in the heart of Chapultepec Park, overlooking majestic greenery. "It's like jumping back in time," he says. "It's really nice to be surrounded by so much history. First time visitors to Mexico City definitely have to go to Chapultepec Castle."
Visitors who want to take a deep dive into the history of the castle can pay for a guided tour of the park and the castle. Pass through the grand 18th-Century carriage hall to the Art Nouveau Introductory room and further on to the royal Games Room and luxurious red velvet-lined Smoking Room for a window into Mexico's noble past.
Website: https://mnh.inah.gob.mx/
Address: Chapultepec Forest I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11580 Mexico City
Phone number: +52 55 7601 9811
Instagram: @museodehistoria
3. Best Mexican football (fútbol) experience: Estadio Azteca
Whenever Pérez is in Mexico, one of his go-to activities is watching his beloved Club America. Pérez believes that every football fan should pay a visit to Estadio Azteca, where Club America play their home games.
One of the most famous football stadiums in the world, Estadio Azteca has hosted two World Cup finals, which were won by Brazil and Argentina, respectively. It’s also where Italy's 1970 semi-final defeat of Germany, known as the "Game of the Century", took place, and where Diego Maradona scored both the Hand of God and Goal of the Century against England in 1986.
"Estadio Azteca is one of the biggest stadiums in the world," says Pérez. "Its atmosphere is unbelievable. I also take my son with me when I'm back for a Club America game. It's just a great experience. You can have tacos while you're watching the game. A nice tequila. Plus people are so friendly in Mexico. It's such a great stadium to go to."
While Pérez admits it's harder to get to games because of his Formula 1 career, he usually gets back each November or December, especially when the team "reach a final". Football is also a great icebreaker between Formula 1 teams, too: "A lot of people in the paddock are involved in football. It's very rare that people don't like it. We are always chatting about what's going on with it."
Website: www.estadioazteca.com.mx/
Address: Calz. de Tlalpan 3465, Sta. Úrsula Coapa, Coyoacán, 04650 Ciudad de México, CDMX
Phone number: +52 55 5487 3215
Instagram: @estadioaztecaoficial
4. Best way to soak up the atmosphere: Polanco
Pérez's favourite area to explore in Mexico City is Polanco, where he often gets an ice cream with his family or heads for shopping. The neighbourhood, found directly north of Chapultepec Park, is one of the most upscale sections of the city; Pérez points out there are numerous luxury shopping malls packed with many high-end shops. "There are so many places around there that are within walking distance of each other."
Polanco is also home to the Museo Soumaya, Pérez's go-to Mexico City museum: "It's one of the biggest and most important museums in Mexico and has all the art of the Slim family." This includes sculptures from pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, Mexican art from the last 250 years, and the works of Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dalí and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
After taking in the culture and soaking up Polanco's unique blend of Californian, wooden, and contemporary architectural styles, there are also a number of fine-dining restaurants, bars and clubs to enjoy. Pérez's go-to drink is Patron Silver tequila, but he's also a fan of paloma margaritas.
"There are so many clubs in Polanco to recommend," he says. "Red Bull always do really nice afterparties", with last year's soiree held at the Auditorio Blackberry in the heart of Roma, a neighbourhood just west of the city’s historic centre. When it comes to deciding where to celebrate after the Mexican Grand Prix, Pérez annually faces the same dilemma: "The problem is there are too many parties on Sunday night in Mexico City."
Website: http://www.museosoumaya.org/
Address: Blvd. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Granada, Miguel Hidalgo, 11529 Ciudad de México, CDMX
Phone number: +52 55 1103 9800
Instagram: @elmuseoumaya
5. Best day trip out of Mexico City: Valle de Bravo
Mexico City may be one of the most vibrant and captivating cities in the world, but Pérez says there are also a number of "really nice places to go and visit that are just outside of the city". His favourite is Valle de Bravo, located two hours south-west of Mexico City on the shore of Lake Avandaro. "That's a really, really nice place. It's full of trees, on the water, but also in the middle of nowhere." Valle de Bravo is a 16th-Century Spanish Colonial town with cobblestone streets full of modern boutiques, galleries and restaurants – also dubbed the "Switzerland of Mexico" for its idyllic pine tree and lake backdrop.
An avid golfer, Pérez usually combines his downtime by visiting one of Mexico's many acclaimed golf courses. "I love golf. I haven't played in Mexico City. But I know they have some great courses. I would recommend golfing by the beach. There are some really cool places, like Nuevo Nayarit , Punta Mita and even in Cabo. There are endless great golf courses around Mexico."
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Galway native Enda Scahill shares his favorite haunts for trad music, from packed sessions at Tig Cóilí in the Latin Quarter to intimate clambake sets at Tigh Ned on Inisheer.
Galway, with its narrow medieval streets, vibrant pub culture and unique brand of craic (lively fun), also boasts one of Ireland's best music scenes. Set in a Gaeltacht, (Irish-speaking district) the city is especially enjoying a resurgence of traditional Irish music – known locally as "trad", a name that gives the genre a hipster cool, far from its humble origins as tunes played in kitchens and street corners.
We asked Galway native Enda Scahill, one of Ireland's foremost banjo players, to help us find his hometown's best trad music sessions. At just 11 years old, Scahill was performing at pubs packed with tourists eager to experience Ireland's traditional music. "At the time, there was definitely the perception of Irish music as shamrocks, leprechauns and 'Danny Boy'. But, just like jazz and bluegrass, there are layers upon layers of depth," says Scahill. "Galway is a very small town, but you can catch two sessions a day, every day of the week… Young people proudly play old-time music, and so the quality of musicians at the moment is exceptional. We say, 'If you drop a coin out of a plane over Ireland, you'll no doubt hit a world-class fiddle player'. And banjo players too."
When Scahill was a teen, there was one banjo player in the west of Ireland, "and we'd drive an hour and a half, which was a big deal in rural Ireland in the '80s, what with the bad cars and bad roads". Now, Irish banjo players are everywhere in the trad music scene, and he's taught a fair share of them.
"Everybody wants to come to Galway!" he says. "We have a fantastic reputation for fun, food and the amazing scenery of Connemara at our doorstep." And all are invited, listener or player. "The sessions are very welcoming. There's no gatekeeper."
Here are Scahill's favourite places to catch trad music in Galway.
1. Best pocket-sized pub session: Tig Cóilí
"Tig Cóilí is probably the most famous pub in Galway," says Scahill. Despite its prime spot at the car-free crossroads of Mainguard and Shop Streets, this cosy pub has a country tavern feel.
US dollar bills, police badges and framed photos of famous faces – Paul Brady, Sharon Shannon, Dessie O'Halloran, Frankie Gavin and Máirtín O'Connor – cover the walls, giving the pub a well-worn, lived-in charm. "It looks 100 years old, but I remember, before it became Tig Cóilí, it was a modern-style pub, mostly quiet except for, as people would say, 'swingers at two o'clock in the afternoon,' says Scahill.
Musicians squeeze into a corner booth by the fire-engine-red windows for two daily sessions. Each session features three core players, with seven or eight others joining in. "I played their very first session 25 years ago, with the owner's son," says Scahill. "The only real change they've made since then is putting up barriers to stop tourists from falling onto the musicians."
Website: www.tigchoiligalway.com
Address: Mainguard St, Galway
Phone: +353 91 561 294
Instagram: @tigchoili
2. Best session in a historic pub: Taaffes
Head out of Tig Cóilí and across the street to Taaffes, the historic stone-fronted pub that's anchored Galway's pub scene for more than 150 years. Owned by the Lally family, Taaffes was a second home to Scahill as a boy.
"I was playing there so much in my late teens that my mother would call the bar looking for me," he recalls. "Their Guinness is fantastic, and it's always packed, morning, noon and night." Inside, low ceilings and cosy nooks invite lingering.
Sessions happen in a snug at the front; a stage in the back is pulled out for bigger performances. Music fills the pub twice daily; Sharon Shannon and Seán Keane have lit up the room, along with local musicians and wandering minstrels.
On St Patrick's Day, most pubs in Ireland lock their doors by 13:00, shifting to a one-in, one-out policy. "Taaffes is always the first to do that because of the crowds," says Scahill. "One year I played there, and it was like a war zone – people falling on stage, instruments getting kicked. You walk out feeling like you've survived Vietnam."
Website: https://taaffesbar.ie/
Address: 19 Shop Street, Galway
Phone: +353 91 564066
Instagram: @taaffesbar
3. Best session to hear a tin whistle icon: The Crane Bar
For more than 40 years, tin whistle maestro Sean Ryan, with his sharp staccato style, has led The Crane Bar's Sunday 13:00 session. "He really looks the part, too," says Scahill. "The gigantic beard, the bonnet hat. He lives in the famously haunted Leap Castle, and his biggest tune is The Coast of Austria – a nice example of Irish sardonic humour."
Housed inside a Victorian cottage on Sea Road, The Crane is all character – rough floors, bright green and yellow walls and dusty framed photos of its storied history. The Guinness, with its creamy head, even backs up the pub's claim as Galway's best.
The pub's musical heritage runs deep. Owner Mike Crehan, a tin whistle player, is related to the legendary fiddler Junior Crehan. More sessions happen nightly at 18:00, when seasoned players and newcomers mix in a laid-back, homey atmosphere. The upstairs "Listeners Club" feels more like a concert venue, with bands and singer-songwriters starting at 21:00.
Website: www.thecranebar.com
Address: 2 Sea Road, Galway
Phone: +353 91 587419
Instagram: @thecranebar
4. Best session with rotating musicians: Monroe's Tavern
From The Crane, walk towards the River Corrib for a few minutes to find Monroe's Tavern, where Scahill has been playing since he was 15. A Galway institution since 1964, "it's been in the Monroe family for decades and is now run by Gary Monroe, who's hugely passionate about Irish music, especially trad," he says.
Trad sessions happen nightly, but the standout is Fridays at 16:30. What began a couple of years ago as a casual meet-up has since become one of the best sessions in the city, where a rotating guest joins two core musicians. "I'll be the third every six weeks or so," says Scahill. "Plus the drop-in musicians; some days, there might be 20. It's always loads of fun." At 19:00, Monroe's brother, who runs the tavern's pizza parlour, hands out slices to the players at the session's end.
"Gary's built a strong, welcoming community vibe," says Scahill. "There's a guy who owns the biggest garden centre in Galway who comes every week with his double bass. His sister Mary, in her 70s, has an incredible voice. She always sits at the bar, and at some point, someone will say, 'Oh Mary, sing us a song'.' And the whole place goes quiet. It's magic."
Website: www.monroes.ie
Address: 14 Dominick Street Upper, Galway
Phone: +353 91 583397
Instagram: @monroestaverngalway
5. Best country pub session: Campbell's Tavern
One of Galway's best features is how quickly the stunning countryside unfolds just outside its perimeter. Follow the Lough Corrib north for about 32km to the village of Cloughanover. "On a very dark road in the middle of nowhere is Campbell's Tavern," Scahill says, "a proper country pub, a true hidden gem."
Campbell's hosts a trad session every Wednesday and a Thursday old-time bluegrass session at 22:00 that can run until 02:00. "It's quite a big pub, and the sessions happen in the front bar, where if 50 people were in it, you couldn't turn around," says Scahill. "Willie Campbell, the owner, is a very community-led guy, a big music head as well."
Scahill once brought Jake Workman, guitarist for Ricky Skaggs' band Kentucky Thunder, to the old-time session, where a cohort of musicians gathers in the middle and at any moment, someone from the group – or from a far corner – starts a new tune. Everyone joins in, creating a spontaneous, collaborative experience. "Jake is one of the best guitar players in the world and he said he'd never experienced anything like it. It's an incredible, quintessential Irish experience."
Website: www.campbellstavern.net
Address: Cloughanover, Headford, Co. Galway, H91 T4A8
Phone: +353 93 35454
6. Best trad after touring the wild Burren: Connolly's
Drive south from Galway along the Wild Atlantic Way for about 27km and you'll reach Kinvara, a seaside village where colourful houses line the waterfront. On the corner of Main Street and The Quay is Connolly's, a pub known for its rousing Thursday and Sunday sessions.
"Many world-class musicians and singers have moved out of Galway City to Kinvara, escaping traffic and high rents," Scahill explains, "though of course, both followed. It's also become a real hub where Galway people meet [County] Clare people… I've only played there a handful of times, but it's a really lovely spot. They've recently added glass doors that open to an ocean view, and you hear some amazing musicians."
Upstairs, the restaurant serves locally sourced dishes from Kinvara's organic farmers and foragers, adding a touch of refinement to the laid-back vibe of the sessions taking place below. Just beyond the county line is the otherworldly karst landscape of the Burren and the legendary Cliffs of Moher.
Website: www.upstairsatconnollys.ie
Address: The Quay, Kinvara, Co. Galway H91 D623
Phone: +353 91 637530
Instagram: @connollyskinvara
7. Best oceanfront trad served with a crab bake: Tigh Ned
"If you're here in the summer, you have to visit Inisheer, one of the three Aran Islands [in Galway Bay]," says Scahill. "First, there's the biggest, Inishmore – 'inish' means island, and 'more' means big. Then you've got Inishmaan, the middle one – 'maan' means average. Finally, there's Inisheer, since 'sheer' means small."
"They really put a lot of thought into those names," he deadpans.
On Inisheer, find Tigh Ned tucked inside a thatched cottage that's been in the Ó Conghaile family since 1897. From April to October, musicians fill the salty air with the sounds of sweet trad. "It's as 'country pub' as you want on an island."
The kitchen serves classic pub fare and fresh seafood. Scahill recommends calling ahead to order the crab special. "Every morning their boats come back filled with these big brown Atlantic crabs. They boil them in the back and serve them with brown bread and butter. It's the most spectacular meal you'll ever have. My son and his friend had it when they were about nine, and years later, they're still talking about it."
Website: www.tighned.com
Address: Inisheer, Aran Islands, Co. Galway
Phone: +353 99 75020
Instagram:@tighned
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Since attending the 2016 US Grand Prix, Austin's own Gabriel Luna is a huge F1 fan. Ahead of the 2024 race, the actor shares his Bat City picks, from live music to breakfast tacos.
Austin, Texas, is known for its barbecue, cowboy culture, breakfast tacos, rollicking music scene and its defiant slogan: "Keep Austin Weird."
But since 2012, when the Circuit of The Americas in Travis County, located 15 miles south-east of the city, hosted its inaugural United States Grand Prix, Austin has also been considered the American home for Formula One.
Actor Gabriel Luna fell in love with the sport when he was invited to the 2016 United States Grand Prix. "Just the speed, the sounds, meeting all of the drivers. It was really exciting," says Luna.
After striking up a friendship with the Haas F1 team, Luna has since attended races in Budapest, Monza and Montreal. He's also returned to his home city of Austin, where he was born, raised and attended university, to watch the United States Grand Prix live on three more occasions.
"I just fell in love with the sport. I've seen it grow exponentially year after year," says Luna, who credits the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive for bringing more US attention to the sport. While Miami and Las Vegas now host their own races, Luna believes that Austin's distinctive free-wheeling spirit and party atmosphere make it the best place to watch Formula One in the US.
"Having the race in Austin is a great way to show off the city," he says. "It's a truly beautiful part of the country. But also the city is built on music, food and enjoying life. We attract a lot of bon vivants who just want to live a good life and they can get that in Austin."
Here are Luna's favourite ways to experience his hometown.
1. Best way to experience everyday life: Barton Springs Pool
Located within Austin's bustling Zilker Metropolitan Park is the scenic Barton Springs Pool, where for just a small fee, visitors can relax on the grass and jump into its water all year-round. For Luna, this three-acre pool fed by underground springs is the "centre of culture and life" in Austin. "You get to see Austin's youth, its old-timers, its hippies doing their yoga, people playing guitar. Everyone is just jumping into the water, which is perpetually 68 degrees."
When Luna is home in the summer months, he loves relaxing by the water, jumping in, drying off and jumping back in – on repeat. "You can just lay out on the hill on the far side of Barton Springs and see the whole city. It's the heart of the town."
Website: https://www.austintexas.gov/department/barton-springs-pool
Address: 2131 William Barton Dr., Austin, TX 78746
Phone number: (512) 974-6300
Instagram: @austincityparks
2. Best cultural experience: Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center
While Austin is renowned for its food, booze and music scenes, it also has a bevy of fantastic museums. Luna's favourite is the Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, located in Rainey Street Historic District right by Lady Bird Lake. "It's in this beautiful building, which itself is a work of art," says Luna, whose parents were both of Mexican descent. "But it also has a theatre, a gallery and their rotating exhibits celebrate Mexican American arts and heritage."
Luna also points visitors to The Blanton Museum of Art at the Austin chapter of the University of Texas, which has more than 21,000 works of modern and contemporary art from Europe, the United States and Latin America. It's also home to renowned American artist Ellsworth Kelly's immersive art building Austin; famed for its natural depiction of light and colour.
Website: https://www.austintexas.gov/department/emma-s-barrientos-mexican-american-cultural-center
Address: 600 River St, Austin, TX 78701
Phone number: (512) 974-3772
Instagram: @esbmacc
3. Best for live music: Broken Spoke
Austin, which bills itself as the "live music capital of the world", has a wildly diverse music scene rivalling those of Nashville, Memphis and even New Orleans. "Culturally in Austin, it's all about the music. You just have to get out there, catch a band and listen to the music," says Luna.
The actor and sometimes musician loves Broken Spoke, an old-school spot that's been serving beer and chicken-fried steak and hosting bands since 1964. "It's protected by the National Registry and is an incredible little honky-tonk bar that can't be touched," says Luna. "The community gathered together to acquire enough signatures to stop it from being purchased."
Another venue Luna calls his "personal headquarters" is Antone's; one of Austin’s most iconic blues venues. Antone's, now found on Fifth Street, might have moved locations a few times since the original location opened in 1975, but that hasn't stopped the likes of Ray Charles, James Brown, Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan from playing its stages. "It's really home for me when I'm back in Austin."
For even more live music, Luna also suggests The Continental Club and the juke joint C-Boy's Heart & Soul, both found on Congress Street; one of downtown Austin's premier shopping and entertainment districts.
Website: https://www.brokenspokeaustintx.net/
Address: 3201 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704
Phone number: (512) 442-6189
Instagram: @brokenspokeaustintx
4. Best place for breakfast tacos: Juan in a Million
Luna can't help but get nostalgic when asked about breakfast tacos; a Tex-Mex dish of scrambled eggs, cheeses, veg and meat wrapped in a tortilla that's become known as an Austin specialty. He laments a number of places which have closed, in particular Maria's Taco Express on South Lamar Boulevard, which shut its doors in September 2020. Luna also insists that the best breakfast tacos in Austin are at his grandmother's house, which he ate every morning for 12 years before school.
Rather than badgering her for them, Luna heads to Juan in A Million in East Austin. "It's a great Mexican restaurant that has fantastic breakfast tacos," he says. Juan in a Million's menu features a full array of breakfast taco choices, from chorizo (sausage) to migas-style (with soft scrambled eggs and crispy fried tortilla strips). If you're in the north of the city, Luna suggests Tierra Linda Taqueria, a wonderful no-frills eatery located in a gas station serving huge orders.
Website: https://juaninamillion.com/
Address: 2300 E Cesar Chavez St, Austin, TX 78702
Phone number: (512) 472-3872
Instagram: @juaninamillionrestaurant
5. Best for BBQ: Franklin Barbecue
The great state of Texas is barbecue country, and Austin takes the craft very seriously. For great central Texas-style barbecue, Luna says visitors can never go wrong at Austin cult favourite Franklin Barbecue; a turquoise-and-white roadside stop on 11th Street instantly recognisable by its massive queue. Founded in 2009 by Aaron Franklin, the spot was named the best barbecue in the country by Bon Appétit in 2011. "Aaron is a legend who has created an incredible legacy for himself," says Luna. "I've lived in Los Angeles since 2011 and I always get his [barbecued beef] brisket shipped out for my Super Bowl parties."
Luna also recommends Black's Barbecue, founded in 1932 and located in Lockhart; a 30-minute drive from Austin. But he quickly adds that Terry Black's BBQ is also worth a visit; explaining that the two restaurants have been engulfed in a family rivalry since the latter was opened by twin brothers Mike and Mark when they didn't approve of their Uncle Kent's cooking techniques at Black's. "They're both great," says Luna. "The brisket in particular at Black's is fantastic."
Ultimately, Luna says, "There's lots of great barbecue across Austin. At a certain point it's a little but like splitting hairs because so much of it tastes so good."
Website: https://franklinbbq.com/
Address: 900 E 11th St, Austin, TX 78702
Phone number: (512) 653-1187
Instagram: @franklinbbq
6. Best casual and fancy bites: Magnolia Café, Uchi and more
As Austin continues to become one of the most desirable cities in America, Luna notes that its food-scene has improved dramatically.
His favourite burgers in Austin are found at the Casino El Camino and Sandy's Hamburgers, while he hits the Taqueria Arandas chain for Mexican food, the posh Uchi for elevated sushi, Justine's for a hip French brasserie experience, the generational Hoover's Cooking on Manor Road for farm-to-table soul food and East Side Pies for thin crust pizza.
One Austin dish that Luna thinks is underrated is a good bowl of queso; a creamy dip made of melted cheese. "People do it in a really artful way," he says. "Then you just get some tortilla chips and dip them in there. It's like a fondue." Luna calls Magnolia Café – a vintage Tex Mex-influenced diner on Congress Street – the best place to eat queso in Austin, as they mix in avocado, beef, salsa, pico de gallo, black beans and jalapeño to create their own signature take on the dish. "It's the perfect thing to eat after a long night of drinking and when you're really drunk," he says.
Website: https://www.magnoliacafeaustin.com/
Address: 1920 South Congress Ave, Austin TX 78704
Phone number: (512) 445-0000
Instagram: @magnoliacafeaustin
7. Best bar: Whisler's
Austin's Sixth Street is renowned for its long stretch of bars, which Luna says you can stumble between with ease: "They all have different personalities. You can pop into The Jackalope [a dive] or Maggie Mae's [massive event space]".
Nowadays Luna prefers a more laid-back vibe, which is what you get when you head farther east on Sixth Street to his favourite watering hole: Whisler's. "It's got a really cool little secret Mezcal bar," he says. "You go up this little spiral staircase and there's a very small room and a tiny bar. They have a fine collection of mezcals up there." The nearby White Horse honky-tonk plays great country music, and Luna also suggests the Uptown Sports Club for a classy yet still casual ambience.
Website: https://whislersatx.com/
Address: 1816 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702
Phone number: (512) 480-0781
Instagram: @whislersatx
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Long closed to the outside world, this ancient city is now revealing its secrets. From hot air ballooning to stargazing, here are Swizz Beatz's picks in one of his favourite places.
Throughout his 25-year career, the celebrity – whose real name is Kasseem Daoud Dean – has worn many hats: entertainer, DJ, producer, art buyer, fashion designer and husband to fellow musician Alicia Keys.
And in 2020, the Bronx-born Dean made history as the first American owner of a Saudi Arabian camel racing team.
The move may have surprised fans, but anyone close to Dean knows about his decades-long love for Saudi Arabia – a passion inherited from his grandfather, who completed the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in 1978. The Grammy winner himself is a practicing Muslim and visits the kingdom regularly.
"It was nowhere near as developed as it is today," he says, recalling his first visit in 2006. "But you can feel the energy. You can feel the culture, you can feel the craft."
Dean has travelled all over the nation; lately, most often to the ancient city of AlUla – a dramatic desert valley oasis in north-western Saudi Arabia's Hijaz region that has, until recently, been closed to visitors. Despite being the site of the Unesco-listed Hegra, the secondary hub of the region's ancient Nabataean civilisation, it wasn't until 2019 that the Saudi government began issuing tourist visas for non-religious travel, finally allowing travellers to experience the splendour of AlUla's 900-year-old Old Town and its otherworldly sandstone and granite mountain landscapes, as part of a $1tn Saudi government initiative to revamp tourism throughout the nation.
Dean has been there every step of the way.
"My relationship with AlUla is like seeing a seed planted in the ground and watching a beautiful flower grow," says Dean, who was among the first invited to watch the construction of the city's massive Maraya performance venue – a mirror-clad behemoth rising out of the desert sands – and eco-friendly luxury accommodation resorts like Our Habitas. "Seeing the vision coming to life in front of my eyes has been magical to watch."
Dean has "lost count" of his visits, but "every month is something new. It's amazing to see a place thriving off of innovation, arts, creativity and music".
Along with Keys, Dean has worked tirelessly to improve AlUla's cultural scene; helming and DJing at AlUla on Wheels, an immersive open-air skating rink in the AlJadidah Arts District and cheering on his camel racing team, Saudi Bronx, at the yearly AlUla Cup. "[My] camel racing team is a homage to the desert," he explains. "People [here] know me for camel racing more than my music."
Here are Dean's favourite ways to experience AlUla.
1. Best place to get a feel of AlUla: The Old Town
In reintroducing itself to the world, AlUla's art galleries now attract international talent and its yearly Wellness Festival features a five-day immersive "sanctuary" retreat and celebrity-led wellness experiences like yoga and sound baths. But to get a real feel for the city, "I would go to the Old Town out the gate," declares Dean. "It gives you the history of AlUla. It's quite a unique area because they're actually rebuilding the entire Old Town.
AlUla's Old Town – a dazzling honeycomb of low-roofed mudbrick buildings – dates to the 12th Century CE, when it was a key settlement on the pilgrimage between Damascus and Mecca. The site, crowned by a 45m-high fortress and hemmed in by 14 gates, was largely abandoned in the 20th Century. Today boutiques, art galleries and cafes have taken over its ancient dwellings.
"When you go there you can see how they build the mud houses, from back in the days until how it's gonna be in the future. You get to see the future of it and still go have a Michelin-star dinner right next door," says Dean. "They're keeping the structures old but with new materials and then, you know, in one of those structures you'll see, like, a Bergdorf." He adds, "It's pretty modern in that sense… It's not like 'damn, I got to take a camel to the store.'"
2. Best cultural experience: glamping in the desert
AlUla, nestled in the vast AlUla Valley, is surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of swirling red sand dotted by russet-coloured mountains, sand dunes and wadis. At night, its skies are famously pitch black.
"When you go outside at night it's like you can touch the stars from your porch," says Dean. "It almost feels like you're on Mars because the rocks are so big, and you're surrounded by so much gentle strength."
For Dean, "the entire desert experience" – arranged by his go-to luxury resort Our Habitas – makes a great cultural introduction to AlUla. "You're in the tent and you have the Saudi coffee and you have the bread and the food and the herbs and the fire's burning," he says. "Usually, they'll have an oud player. It's amazing. You can sleep out there or just make a dinner reservation. They put on a whole show, fire dancing and dancing to the Arabic music and showing you how to cook local dishes."
Along with desert glamping and dining experiences offered by Our Habitas and Banyan Tree AlUla, wild camping is also possible in AlUla; there are two free authorised camping sites, as well as 10 large-scale campsites including Pangaea Adventure Club. Dressing in layers is recommended, as is safe, responsible camping behaviour, like maintaining a clean campsite and leaving the desert vegetation and wildlife untouched.
"I've never seen the constellations so clear as in AlUla," says Dean. "When I'm in AlUla I can hear myself think. It's an amazing place to go rejuvenate, an amazing place to try new things."
Website: https://www.ourhabitas.com/caravan-alula/
3. Best culinary experience: kabsa
With so many new visitors arriving each month, AlUla's food scene now brims with international eateries ranging from sushi bars to hamburger joints. But "of the local foods, [I highly recommend] a kabsa", says Dean – citing a traditional Arabian dish of spiced rice and meat, often chicken, camel, fish or lamb. "It takes a little while to cook but when you get it, it's worth every bite. They cook the lamb very well to where the meat is very [tender]. And they mix it with this rice and it all comes in this pot. You can share with multiple people. The rice has all these herbs and different things in it. Some have different mixes, some are more spicy than others. So tasting multiple kabsas… you're never going to lose with that."
When asked to pick a favourite restaurant in town, Dean is hard-pressed. "You could pick any restaurant. You could pick any hotel. The food is outrageous," he says. "You can tell the people have the passion. I love when a place is so unique that everybody has pride in with it. It's not so rushed. The love is there. The craft is there. What I love about Alula is that the craft is there."
4. Best outdoor experience: The AlUla Skies Festival
With its stunning mountains and unique rock formations like Elephant Rock, AlUla has a lot to offer outdoor adventurers. But Dean has special love for the AlUla Skies Festival, a spectacular 10-day autumn event celebrating the city's magnificent skies, from stargazing to Dean's favourite, hot air balloon rides.
"That is unbelievable," he says. "I'm not a big fan of hot air balloons. But when I went in AlUla it was just something different. They didn't go too high; I'm a little scared of heights. Ours was at a pretty amazing level where you can go over the Old Town and go over the beautiful landscapes. Seeing where the oasis meets the desert is pretty unique."
During the festival, up to 60 hot air balloons lazily circle the sky in both tethered and untethered flights, taking in the sweeping views of Hegra, the Old Town and the endless expanses of desert sand. Participants can also charter helicopter rides, and for those who'd rather stay closer to the ground, there are meditation sessions and cooking classes under the stars.
5. Best place to learn about the past: Hegra
"Hegra is a must, must, must," says Dean.
There are more than 27,000 archaeological sites in AlUla dating to the late prehistoric period (5200-1200 BCE), but Hegra, also known as Mada'in Saleh, is the most well-known. Inhabited since the 1st Century BCE – and a thriving incense and trading hub until the 12th Century – Hegra is the site of a 1.6-hectare necropolis complex containing 111 boulder-cut monumental decorated and inscribed tombs, beautifully preserved by the arid desert conditions. It was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008; Saudi Arabia's first World Heritage property.
"You see the structure and the condition and the masterpiece, the masterful architects that built these things way, way, way, way back," says Dean. "It's magical to see."
While in Hegra, visitors can opt for an organised bus tour to the ancient city of Dadan and Jabal Ikmah, a 9th-Century BCE "open-air library" containing the world's largest concentration of Lihyanite and Dadanitic rock inscriptions, or set off on the Oasis Heritage Trail; a 3km palm-tree shaded walking tour through the AlUla Oasis.
"You just have to go to AlUla, period!" says Dean.
Website: https://www.experiencealula.com/en/plan-your-trip/alula-visitor-centres
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Local Anishinaabe writer Professor Niigaan Sinclair guides you through Winnipeg's Indigenous history and community from healing ceremonies at The Forks to Bannock pizza at Feast Café.
Winnipeg, the capital city of Canada's Manitoba province, marks its 150th birthday in 2024, but its history goes back much further than that. Both archaeological findings and oral histories passed down through generations indicate that Indigenous peoples have been inhabiting the area for nearly 6,000 years.
Today, visitors flock to Winnipeg for its world-renowned museums, festivals, parks and the welcoming spirit reflected in the province's license plate motto: "Friendly Manitoba". But for millennia, the area now known as Winnipeg — the city was incorporated and named in 1873 — was a hub where Indigenous nations like the Cree, Ojibwe, Dakota, Ojibwe-Cree and Dene would gather to hold ceremonies, trade goods and share knowledge.
We asked Niigaan Sinclair, professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, to tell us the best places where visitors can explore Winnipeg's Indigenous history. For Sinclair, a member of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Nation, Winnipeg remains an epicentre of Indigenous values. And because the city is home to the largest Indigenous population in Canada, where one in five people are Indigenous, he believes it is ground zero for reconciliation between cultures.
"Name me a place where reconciliation has been in activity the longest, and it's Manitoba," says Sinclair, noting the first of the numbered treaties (Treaty 1) between the Canadian government and Canada's Indigenous people was signed in 1871 at Lower Fort Garry, 20 miles north of Winnipeg. "I do all the things that I do because I think Winnipeg is a remarkable place."
Here is Sinclair's guide to Indigenous Winnipeg.
1. Best place to experience an Indigenous celebration: The Forks
Since being designated a national historic site in 1974, The Forks, a public event space in downtown Winnipeg, has become the city's number-one tourist attraction, welcoming four million visitors a year and hosting a wealth of community celebrations and recreational activities. It's also where extensive archaeological investigations have proved that several Aboriginal groups lived here thousands of years ago.
Called the Forks because it's situated at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, the area remains a place of importance to Winnipeg's Indigenous community; in particular the Oodena Celebration Circle where events such as Canada's National Indigenous Peoples Day (21 June), winter and summer solstices, healing ceremonies and the recent National Day of Truth and Reconciliation – more commonly known as Orange Shirt Day (30 September) – are held.
"It’s become the Indigenous centre of Winnipeg," says Sinclair. "Anything that happens in the community of significance is often held there … that's why I love it so much."
Website: www.theforks.com
Address: Forks Market Rd, Winnipeg, MB R3C 4S8
Phone: (204) 927-7874
Instagram: @theforkswinnipeg
2. Best place to learn about the Métis Nation: Saint Boniface
The Métis – one of Canada's three recognised Indigenous peoples – are a distinct Indigenous people with both First Nations and Euro settler (mostly French) ancestry that arose in the late 1700s in Western Canada. Today, it is estimated there are 450,000 Métis Nation citizens in Canada, with approximately 48,000 living in Winnipeg.
Perhaps the most famous Métis historical figure is Louis Riel, born in Winnipeg's Saint Boniface neighbourhood in 1844. The heart of Manitoba's Francophone community and the Francophone capital of Western Canada, Saint Boniface is located directly across the Red River from the Forks and downtown Winnipeg; accessible by walking across the beautiful Esplanade Riel Footbridge.
Riel was a central figure in the 1869-70 Red River Resistance that saw Metis people challenge the nascent Canadian government in an ill-fated bid for self-determination. Riel advocated for the culture of the Métis people and challenged Canadian government policies regarding language, religion and land rights, ultimately resulting in his execution for treason in 1885. In 2016, the government of Manitoba recognised Riel as the first leader of Manitoba.
Riel's gravesite is on the grounds of Saint Boniface Cathedral, built in 1832. "I spend a lot of time visiting Riel’s grave," says Sinclair. "At least yearly, I go there to pay my respects and lay some tobacco. To understand how Manitoba and Winnipeg came to be, you have to know the story of the Métis and Louis Riel."
Website: www.tourismeriel.com/en/
Address: 100-219 Provencher Boulevard Winnipeg, Manitoba R2H 0G4
Phone: (866) 808-8338
Instagram: @tourismeriel
3. Best green space: The Leaf
Located in the 1,100-acre Assiniboine Park – the largest park in Winnipeg – The Leaf is a horticultural attraction that houses four indoor plant biomes and more than 12,000 trees, shrubs and flowers from around the world. It is home to Canada's tallest indoor waterfall and a beautiful butterfly garden.
The Leaf is also where Wab Kinew was sworn in as the first First Nations premier of a province in Canadian history in 2023 during a ceremony that honoured the seven Indigenous nations in Manitoba, along with his 15-member cabinet; eight of whom are people of colour, seven are female or non-binary, five are Indigenous and two are LGBTQ.
"It was such a beautiful thing to see," Sinclair says. "The first First Nations premier, the first openly queer deputy premier and the most-ever Indigenous women (two) in cabinet … just amazing."
The Leaf features five outdoor themed gardens, including the Indigenous Peoples' Garden that was created through a collaborative process involving Indigenous elders, designers and community leaders. Two areas within the garden acknowledge the importance of water and fire, with signage showing translation of "where the water is" and "where the fire is" in seven Indigenous languages.
Website: www.assiniboinepark.ca/leaf/lifegrows
Address: 145 The Leaf Wy., Winnipeg, MB R3P 2N6
Phone: (204) 927-6000
Instagram: @assiniboine_park
4. Best place to enjoy Indigenous cuisine: Feast Café Bistro
"Whenever I do speeches, people always seem to give me gift cards and they're almost always to Feast, which is great. I love the place," Sinclair says.
Feast – helmed by Winnipeg local Christa Bruneau-Guenther, a French Métis and a proud member of Peguis First Nation – is one of a growing number of contemporary restaurants in Winnipeg where chefs offer modern dishes celebrating traditional ingredients like wild game, beans, squash and corn. Some of Feast's signature recipes feature bannock, a quick bread that has become a staple in Canada's Indigenous communities since being introduced by Scottish and Irish settlers. Like a pizza made with a bannock-bread crust and assorted variations of eggs "banny"; Bruneau's take on eggs Benedict served on bannock instead of an English muffin.
"Christa is wonderful. So talented. It's the best place for Indigenous food," Sinclair says. "She's a very big supporter of the community … just a wonderful person, who is so worth supporting." He recommends Feast's wild rice soup or "whatever they are doing with Bison that week."
Website: www.feastcafebistro.com
Address: 587 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3B 1Z7
Phone: 204-691-5979
Instagram: @feastcafebistro
5. Best festival: Manito Ahbee
There's perhaps no better gathering in Winnipeg to experience Indigenous culture and heritage than the Manito Ahbee Festival.
Named after a sacred site in Manitoba's Whiteshell Provincial Park, where ancient petroforms (human-made shapes and patterns made by arranging large rocks) illustrate teachings of elders, around 25,000 people annually attend the four-day event typically held in May that celebrates music, dance, food and crafts with a mission to unify, educate and inspire.
A festival highlight is the Manito Ahbee International Pow Wow, where hundreds of drummers, dancers and singers compete for prize money in the one of the continent's largest competitive pow wows; a celebration of Indigenous culture through dance, music and regalia.
There's also a marketplace where local Indigenous vendors sell beads and regalia supplies, clothing, jewelry, blankets, books and art.
"The trade show is the real hidden gem of the festival," says Sinclair. "It’s a gathering of the greatest Indigenous crafters, jewellers and artists in the province.
"All my medallions, all my pins that I wear with my suits, I buy them all at Manito Ahbee," he adds.
Website: www.manitoahbee.com
Address: Red River Exhibition Park, 3977 Portage Ave, Winnipeg MB R3K 2E8
Phone: (204) 956-1849
Instagram: @manitoahbee
6. Best Indigenous arts exhibit: REDress Project
"There are multiple Indigenous exhibits at the [Canadian Museum for Human Rights]," says Sinclair. "But one of the highlights is to go and see the murdered and missing women and girls exhibit which features Jaime Black's REDress Project."
In 2011, Métis artist Jaime Black created a display of red dresses at the University of Winnipeg to draw attention to the MMIWG2S+ movement, which highlights violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit individuals in Canada and the United States.
Since then, the project has drawn international attention and was shown at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian before becoming a permanent exhibit at Winnipeg's Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It also inspired Red Dress Day (5 May) – also known as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People.
There are many reminders of the MMIWG2S+ issue throughout Winnipeg: signs, license plates, homemade posters, graffiti, people hanging red dresses in their yards and a number of monuments.
"The issue is elsewhere of course, but the most innovative ways of addressing it come from Winnipeg," Sinclair says. "The community is fully engaged with wanting to deal with this issue."
Website: www.jaimeblackartist.com/exhibitions/
Address: 85 Israel Asper Way, Winnipeg, MB R3C 0L5, Canada
Phone: (877) 877-6037
Instagram: @humanrights.ca
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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With a record 35 million foreign visitors expected in Japan this year, Kamikochi is an idyllic, relaxing break from some of the country's more heavily touristed destinations.
Nestled in the Japanese Alps at 1,500m elevation, the seasonal resort town of Kamikochi is an idyllic, car-free getaway with cool, crisp mountain air, riverside hiking trails and an abundance of Japanese snow monkeys. There are no private homes, year-round residents or chain stores of any kind – no McDonald's, Starbucks or Burger King; instead, it's known as an escape from the enervating heat that grips most of Japan in the summertime and for its abundant, sublime autumn colours that peak in October. I loved it immediately, though my teenage sons, Leo and James baulked at the communal shower arrangement in our hotel.
Their mood brightened, though, as I explained that our agenda for our three-day, two-night stay included nothing but hiking, eating and relaxing. "No museums, no temples?" James gleefully asked. We'd arrived in Kamikochi roughly mid-way through a month-long trip around Honshu, Japan's largest island, and by this point the boys had seen far too many temples, shrines and museums for their tastes. Kamikochi, we reassured them, would be a holiday from our holiday in a simple place with a few clusters of hotels, restaurants and shops all clustered along the Azusa River.
The quest to find pristine natural environs unspoiled by mass tourism long predates the social media era. In his 1896 book, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, the English missionary, climber and conservationist Reverend Walter Weston echoed the sentiments of an unnamed Japanese writer who complained of "foreign tourists who come to his country, and after rushing through it at the rate of 40 miles an hour then hurry home to record their impressions and pose as authorities on what they have only glanced at".
In his writings and lectures, Weston popularised the term "Japanese Alps" and put the area that became the resort town of Kamikochi on the radar of international tourists. The town's popularity as a holiday destination for Japanese tourists spiked in 1927 with the release of Kappa, a novel set in Kamikochi written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan's most famous writers. In 1934, Chūbu-Sangaku National Park, home to Kamikochi and 10 of Japan's 21 peaks over 3,000m, was established and the area became known as the "most beautiful valley in Japan", inspiring comparisons with California's Yosemite National Park.
With all the media hype about overtourism and rising visitor numbers in Japan, I hoped Kamikochi would be a relaxing break from some of the more heavily touristed destinations like Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, which we'd visited, and enjoyed, earlier in the trip.
In the nearby gateway city of Kanazawa, I asked our volunteer guide, Michiko Kitaguchi, whom we found through the excellent Kanazawa Goodwill Guide association, about Kamikochi, and she said that in Chinese, Kamikochi fittingly means "a place where the god descends". Her favourite time of year in Kamikochi is autumn when the colours in the valley are spectacular.
"I am a Kamikochi lover who goes there every year to feel the energy of nature," she said. "The sounds of the river flowing, the autumn-coloured mountains of the Hodaka, the golden Japanese larch forest by the river is really stunning in the fall."
Kamikochi has been a green getaway since 1975 when private cars and motorcycles were banned in response to rising traffic and visitor numbers and a desire to preserve the place’s tranquillity. In fact, conservation efforts began a century earlier, in 1875, when the former logging town banned felling trees in the area to preserve its natural beauty. Laws were passed to prevent the removal of alpine plants in 1909, and it was the first area in the country to be formally designated as a "protection forest" in 1916. In 1963, officials established the Kamikochi Beautification Association to address the issue of littering and poor tourist etiquette more broadly. In the '70s, the number of hotels and inns was capped at 17, the same number that exist today (along with a pair of campsites; there are no Airbnbs).
The place has an egalitarian appeal in that almost everyone arrives by bus – if you try to drive, you have to park about half an hour away and take a bus anyway; and the only other option is to hike in or take a taxi, though few visitors opt to do this. A hybrid bus route to Kamikochi was established in 1994, leaving from Takayama, our prior stop, and also Matsumoto, famous for its striking 16th-Century castle, and tour buses were banned in 2005.
As we exited the bus terminal with our baggage, I was glad that we'd chosen a nearby hotel: the Nishi-itoya Mountain Lodge, which has private rooms and hostel-style bunk rooms. Other options, like the historic Tokusawa Inn, founded in 1885, require a one- to two-hour hike from the bus terminal with your luggage.
We walked across the Kappa bridge, named after Akutagawa's novel, and immediately slalomed through a mob of selfie stick-toting tourists. I reckoned that Kamikochi wasn't as off-the-beaten path as we'd hoped, though it was noon on a Saturday, which is rarely an ideal time to have a place all to yourself.
We drew up a plan to take three easy hikes, one for each day of our visit, and avoid all the steep knee-shattering treks up Mt Jonen, Mt Chogatake, Mt Oku-Hotakadake and others. (The national park has 40 mountain peaks with altitudes of more than 2,400m.) On our first hike to Myojin Pond, I felt the wish-I-could-bottle-it travel high I live for as a compulsive traveller as we met one troop of mischievous Japanese snow monkeys after another while hiking along and near the river. It was a balmy 18C and the crisp mountain air was a welcome relief from the steamy streets of Takayama. Kamikochi is a major birding destination, and we could hear what a birder told me were Japanese bush warblers singing what sounded like, "hoo-ke-kyo".
Kamikochi drew 1.3 million visitors, mostly Japanese, in 2023. Most years, 100 million or more visit Mt Fuji, which, along with Kamikochi, is the only other destination designated by Japan's Cultural Affairs Agency as both a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Natural Monument. We were also pleased to discover that many of Kamikochi's visitors are day-trippers who disappear by late afternoon. After the initial crush of tourists we'd seen at the Kappa bridge on our first afternoon, Kamikochi didn't seem overly touristy or spoiled.
"Where do you live?" I asked one of the friendly restaurant servers at our hotel. "In a dormitory for workers right back there," she replied, pointing behind the hotel's annex. She explained that Kamikochi is only open to visitors from 27 April to 15 November because it's too cold in winter to attract guests. On those dates, elaborate opening and closing ceremonies take place, presided over by Shinto priests who give thanks to nature as revellers indulge in cups of hot sake. There's also a popular boat festival in October, but in the offseason, it's a ghost town and workers like our server migrate elsewhere.
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I asked if she enjoys living in such a transient place, and the young woman pulled out her phone to answer my question. "Last week, I went on a long hike and took these," she said, swiping through some striking photos of Taisho Pond, a large body of water flanked by volcanic, snow-capped Mt Yakedake, which erupted in 1915, effectively damming the Azusa River and creating this picturesque pond. "This is why I'm happy here."
Taisho Pond, the end point of our final hike, was indeed stunning. The craggy mountains with their serpentine dustings of snow looked like something out of a fantasy world created by Akutagawa, the writer who took his own life at age 35 shortly after the publication of Kappa. In the novel, the protagonist visits Kamikochi in search of tranquillity, but finds the place inhabited by a strange race of 1m-tall, sumo-loving water spirits he called kappas.
We encountered nothing so strange, though my sons strongly objected to the nudity in the onsen (natural hot springs). But we found that Japan's conservation efforts to preserve the wild beauty of Kamikochi that seduced Weston, Akutagawa and others have largely succeeded. Indeed, there aren't many places left where you can enjoy a car-free holiday in a place where you're guaranteed to hear birdsong rather than car horns and see snow monkeys but no McDonalds.
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Earthships are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, such as that around Taos, where extreme weather runs from sub-zero in winter to sweltering in summer.
Venture into New Mexico's beautifully stark high desert and you may well stumble across some fantastical and unconventional homes – some palatial and sculpturally rounded; others with an ancient temple-like form – that look like they're from a Star Wars movie.
Set in and around the town of Taos where they were invented almost 40 years ago, these are Earthships: net-zero, sustainably designed homes built mostly from both natural and waste materials, such as old tyres, empty wine bottles and wood and mud.
Since Earthship construction requires less in the way of toxic or carbon-emitting construction materials like concrete and plastics, and doesn't require precious woodland and other natural resources, these exquisite homes are increasingly sought after worldwide. Earthships sell for anything from around $500,000 to $900,000 (£376,000 to £677,000) and are also available for overnight stays in and near Taos for around $240 (£180) per night.
The Earthship movement began in Taos in the 1970s after Kentucky native Michael Reynolds, founder of eco-construction company Earthship Biotecture, moved here in 1969 with an architecture degree. His goal: to "ride dirt bikes, for fun," he says.
The now-71-year-old soon had an a-ha moment.
"I saw [CBS News anchor] Walter Cronkite on the news talking about clear-cutting forests for timber and creating not only erosion, but an oxygen problem because the trees put out oxygen," Reynolds tells the BBC. "He was talking about what we call climate change and global warming now. I was seeing all these beer cans tossed away and I'm saying, 'why don't we build out of beer cans and not trees?'"
Reynolds built his beer-can house in 1971, gaining small notice in the news for its quirkiness. Yet, it went on to be exhibited in various parts of the world, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Reynolds notes, with some incredulity, "MoMA just bought a beer can brick for $4,500 (£3,386)." Indeed, after using one of the building blocks made of beer cans in an exhibit, the museum decided to add one to its permanent collection.
Still, for years he was largely looked at as a kook at best, and not a serious architect.
"It was a kind of a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea, but I went ahead and started going in that direction," Reynolds says. "I started using bottles and I started using tyres, and I kept going. I've been in this direction for easily 55 years, and then around 36 years ago I first labelled a home as an Earthship."
But it's taken a long time to get to the point of wider acceptance. "You know, they looked too weird and they still look strange, but now people are getting it, and they're also open to it because [many people] are two paycheques away from being homeless and getting crippled by electric and utility bills," Reynolds says of the financially empowering aspect of living off-grid. "And now people want to reverse climate change."
Taos is a place that has long attracted artists and individualists. Its ancient pueblo (village) and newer town have striking architecture, mostly traditional viga-beamed adobe homes, whose roofs are made of wood and beaten earth. Taos was the perfect incubator for Earthships, which have a thick wall of tyres, each packed with earth.
An earth berm (a purposefully built bank of soil) surrounds the Earthship on three sides, providing insulating mass that controls temperature. Cooling is via traditional transom windows set up high on supporting beams to cross ventilate, and the building's pipe vents. Each has a greenhouse (as Reynolds believes people should have to ability to grow their own food), either on the north or south side depending on location. Most Earthships are purely solar powered; some also have wind turbines to supplement or a wood-burning stove as back up.
Taos has cold snowy winters and often dry, hot summers, but in an Earthship, the internal temperature remains close to 72F (21C) year-round, regardless of outside weather conditions.
Reynolds moved into his first Earthship 35 years ago, he says, and raised his family there – he still lives there: "It's so comfy we don't want to leave it," he shrugs.
What does it feel like to stay inside an Earthship? "It feels like you're inside the womb," says Earthship construction manager Deborah Binder. "You feel constantly hugged and snuggled. The temperature is always comfortable. Sometimes, when it's really cold outside I'll walk out without a coat not realising, because it's so warm inside."
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Binder came on board 11 years ago to manage a non-profit project in Malawi, Africa, without any background in construction, she says. Not only did she stay with the company, she moved to Taos and currently rents an Earthship while she builds her own. Binder also teaches at the Earthship Academy, which attracts attendees of all types to learn Earthship design principles, construction methods and philosophy.
"Most people want to learn for themselves," Binder says. "Some learn to build for community projects."
Despite their environmental appeal, Earthships are still not accepted as an option to ease the housing and climate change crisis. "They're still on the fringe in a way," says Binder. "It's really important for people to stay in one. The feeling you have living in them is unique, but on a practical level you don't pay any utility bills. That's quite amazing."
"Once people experience them, they usually want one," Reynolds adds, something that is borne out by the many glowing testimonials in the guestbooks placed in each Earthship rental.
Reynolds believes it could not be more timely – urgent even – to make Earthships the norm. His goal is to build rentable community housing as an answer to homelessness and planet-devastating energy consumption. "I'm not that interested in commissions; having a client just slows me down," he says. "I need to turn them out fast and lease them to people for a fair rent."
Reynolds is full steam ahead with his latest streamlined Refuge Earthship model, which he thinks could help with homelessness and poverty due to the simple economics of not paying huge utility bills each month. "Refuge is the most economical model to build; the one we are going to replicate all over the globe," he says passionately.
Then there is the whimsical Atlantis, a striking curvy turquoise Earthship, created as an example of the buildings' sculptural, artful side.
"There is an art side to them — I've played with the bottles as stained glass, and there's the sculptural aspect. They are beautiful," says Reynolds, who put himself through college by working as an artist. "What's really beautiful is they take care of people while taking care of the planet. There is not as much meaning in art as there is in a home."
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One family hopes to show people how a return to basic mid 19th-Century life can teach us much about how to care for our environment today.
The approach to my accommodation for the night was similar to the ascent into any valley in the Norwegian fjords. Precipitous rocky mountainsides thick with conifer forest increasingly pressed the narrow road to the shores of Haukalivatnet lake. Yet somehow, enfolded in the valley's upper reaches before the increasingly steep gradient precluded the possibility of settlement altogether, I arrived at some gentler, fertile land.
Reidunn Botnehagen's family have farmed this land for more than a century and, like many living amidst south-west Norway's entrancing scenery, also have a countryside cabin here that they rent out to holidaymakers. But Haukali 333, as they've named it, is not just another country escape. This cabin openly celebrates its jettisoning of conventional holiday mod cons in order to emulate the lifestyle of those that first settled in Norway's wilderness nearly two centuries ago.
And her guests, Botnehagen told me, will be all the better for it.
Haukali 333 is based on the design of a husmannshus or smallholder's cabin. Scattered all over rural Norway, these would have been homes for tenant farmers in the mid-19th Century, who worked on land owned by wealthy landowners and laboured long, gruelling hours to make ends meet. First glamourised by Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen in the late 1800s, in recent decades the husmannshus has became linked with nostalgia for a rural life lost as modern Norwegians increasingly moved to urban areas and a fixation with refurbishing and reinstating them began.
Cabin culture is on a high in Norway with almost 450,000 cabins and holiday homes existing in the country in 2023, according to Statistics Norway – an increase of more than 8% since 2013. These are used year-round by those who crave an escape in nature, with many kitted out to luxurious standards despite a rustic exterior. But Haukali 333 is unique in faithfully recreating the 19th-Century way of life in order to draw attention to a more sustainable way of living.
It did not necessarily sound like a premise for a relaxing holiday.
"No one is saying that life then was all good," Botnehagen smiled. "But nor was it all bad. We want to show it how it really was, as much as possible. We think the people who come will discover something as a result."
When I arrived, the wood-built cabin appeared delightfully rustic, with a turf roof, sky-blue door and window trimmings, sheep grazing its lawn and expansive views out over a mountain-backed lake with just one or two other houses within sight.
The mostly candlelit interior had a huge open stone oven, known in 19th-Century Norway as a grue, used as both a cooking and heating source. The wooden seating was pretty to look at, but hard, high-backed and challenging to relax upon. The outdoor shower sprayed water as cool as the spring that supplied it (or I had the option to fill an antique outdoortub with a bucket and wait for the Scandinavian sun to warm it, if I preferred).
The beds, accessed by a ladder, were built into the walls head-to-foot as they would have been in the mid-1800s for warmth and covered in fleeces from the Botnehagen family sheep. There was no TV, but 19th-Century evening entertainment in the form of a rokk or spinning wheel for spinning wool into clothes.
Botnehagen told me I could pick fruit and vegetables (strawberries in July, potatoes in August) from the garden or nearby field, or row a boat out onto the lake with a rod to catch my own dinner. There was also the option to don 19th-Century labourers' garments: only one set, because back then, that would likely have been all a farmer owned.
There were a couple of modern-day concessions to comply with health and safety requirements – a toilet and electricity for powering the old kerosene lamp – but visitors looking around from almost any point inside or outside the cabin would see a view akin to that of a mid-19th-Century farm worker.
Many of Botnehagen's guests appreciate the quirks of living a "slow life like 1850", as Haukali 333 describes itself.
"I see it all the time: a fascination with this simple life," she said. "A couple from London last winter just sat outside open-mouthed looking at the brilliance of the stars: light pollution where they live meant they seldom saw them. The children of one family this summer were crying when they left because they knew the chickens by name. A Danish family comes because they spend time together in a way they find impossible back home: picking berries, chopping firewood, hiking without anyone else in sight.
Occasionally we have someone who needs to leave early because they cannot deal with the sound of silence or the basic facilities, but not often. There is five-star luxury and there is this different sort of luxury, where you are appreciating simpler things like the closeness of nature without all these ways we have invented of synthesising it."
Botnehagen hit upon the idea for Haukali 333 in 2014 after inheriting the farm from her grandparents. She and her husband were preparing land for pasture when they uncovered old stones from the former smallholding.
"I remember feeling sad," she confided. "The house and those who lived in it had become forgotten. It got me thinking about my great-grandparents who lived in cabins like this in this area in the 1800s and I wanted to bring the story back to life by authentically reconstructing such a homestead and having people to stay here."
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Innovation Norway, the government organisation for business development, approved Botnehagen's project and told her to research the era to implement the concept as authentically as she wished. She devoted the next year to doing so: paying multiple visits to sites such as Hjelemeland's Vigatunet Historic Farm, open-air Setesdal Farm Museum, historic farm stay Bolkesjø Gaard near Oslo and studying multiple books on 19th-Century rural customs. Haukali 333 opened to guests in 2018.
What Botnehagen discovered was that reconstructing a snapshot of 1850s living was about more than realising her own idea or creating novelty accommodation. The era had many lessons to impart on how we can live life in a better and more environmentally friendly way. When she began building Haukali 333, it was important to her to communicate this to prospective guests.
"Now, as then, the lake provides us with fish, the soil gives us fruit and vegetables, our sheep wool," she explained. "We have our own water supply. There is everything you need to survive. The difference is that today having these things is considered privileged. Back then it was a basic right."
Botnehagen took me to meet her mother, Målfrid Lea, who remembers life on Haukalivatnet in the 1940s. Speaking about that time from her apartment in the modern town of Jorpeland, her recollections highlighted how much rural Norwegian society has changed since then.
"There was never much money around but people didn't normally gauge wealth by money. If you had another commodity – like chickens or cows – that showed you were doing OK, as was the case for my parents and theirs before them. I remember regularly travelling by horse as a girl, loaded up with eggs to take to town and exchange for whatever our family required. In our case it was usually flour."
Today, food wastage is a huge issue, with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimating that 14% of global food is wasted between harvest and retail. For Botnehagen, the advantages of commodity-based trade, widely practiced in the 1850s, were clear.
"There was greater efficiency in many ways," she said. "There were less intermediaries: if you wanted something done you did it yourself. Most of it could be done within sight of your house. A husmannshus would be sized similarly to this one – 38sq m – but might accommodate six, seven, eight residents. That is one lot of timber to fell for the cabin, one fire keeping everyone warm. Today the same number of people might have four houses and run eight vehicles, but just because we can do things differently now doesn't mean we should – not for the health of the planet anyway."
Kari Sand, the former regional business developer who helped Botnehagen develop the Haukali 333 project, agrees. "Living in a farmhouse like Haukali 333 will give guests thoughts about the past and make the comparison: the differences in consumption, how much we use and throw away now, whether we need it all. By living like this, it makes us think about how much electricity we use, and how many clothes – many of us have a cupboard full! Is this how we want to live?"
It is not surprising to Botnehagen that her guests are invariably able to find harmony during their visit. If they embrace the concept of living as in the past, she told me, then in small ways they are working together to attain something tangible.
"If you fish for your dinner or chop wood for your fire," she said, "appreciation for nature increases. Appreciating your environment and feeling invested in it are vital factors in tackling climate change."
"If we don't take the wisdom from the past with us," she added, "in the future we will be poorer."
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In the Ribeira Sacra's dizzyingly high landscapes, near-vertical vineyards are perched above rivers. The stunning scenery – and the resulting wines – are an oenophile's dream.
A mosaic of stone and trees, the mountains stretched out toward the horizon while below me the river sliced through this unyielding mass of granite as if it were made of sponge. Peering down the pitched slopes of the Sil Canyon from the Cabezoás overlook – more than 700m high – I gained new respect for the incredible power of water (while thanking the sturdy beams that were holding me up).
Vertiginous views are a hallmark of the Ribeira Sacra, a collection of small towns that mostly hug the Sil and Miño rivers in Galicia, Spain's north-westernmost region. Galicia is often referred to as "green Spain" for its verdant landscapes, the product of frequent rainfall compared to elsewhere in Spain, but it's these two rivers that have shaped the Ribeira Sacra, the region’s most inland corner. The name means "sacred riverbank" in the Galician language, a nod to both the topography and the area's long monasterial history, dating to Roman times.
It's not the easiest terrain to cross, filled with narrow winding roads that wrap around hills and cut through stands of chestnuts and oaks. As I left Cabezoás, I headed west to the region's main monastery, Santo Estevo de Ribas de Sil, about 7km away as the crow flies, but nearly double the distance by car. Nested high above the Sil River, Santo Estevo has been beautifully restored and is now part of Spain's national network of paradores (state-run hotels often housed in historic structures). Although it is first mentioned in documents from the 10th Century, the monastery is believed to be several centuries older than that. It includes three cloisters, a church and the monks' quarters, and I couldn't help but wonder how they built such a massive compound back then on the rim of a mountain
Those monks definitely had an eye for prime real estate, but the miradoiros (scenic overlooks) I passed along the way provided a different kind of religious experience. Like Cabezoás, they jut out over the edges of cliffs, mocking gravity and offering vistas that will fill your heart or stop it cold, depending on how you feel about heights. Water has forged its own green cathedrals here, more monumental than even the most spectacular structures built by humans.
In fact, the Ribeira Sacra was declared a biosphere reserve in 2022, and it is Spain's only nomination for Unesco World Heritage status in 2024. The application revolves around the central place of water in this landscape. Beyond the production of hydroelectric power, the rivers have propelled a long history of milling – corn and other grains – but it's the nearly vertical vineyards along their banks that play a starring role.
Winemaking took off after the arrival of the Romans and the monastic orders that followed them. The region's predominant grape is Mencía, traditionally used to make fresh, young reds, though winemakers are increasingly adding a little Brancellao, Sousón, and Caíño, and even aging some of these earthy, aromatic blends, as well as producing beautifully floral whites starring the Godello grape. For a long time, wine quality suffered here, hindered by rural poverty and tangled land-inheritance laws, but the Ribeira Sacra's star has risen sharply over the past decade, with connoisseurs now seeking out its boutique bottlings.
It is also a naturally sustainable wine region, as no other approach would work over the long term. Because of the terrain, grape growers must harvest by hand, carrying heavy crates on their shoulders, as they advance carefully down row after acrophobia-inducing row of vines. To help with this gruelling work, a few vineyards use rails, along which grapes can be moved in small motorised containers – either up toward narrow clearings where they can be loaded onto a truck, or down to the river for boat transport – but this is not an option for most.
Established as an official wine region in 1996, the Ribeira Sacra holds "heroic viticulture" designation, awarded by an Italian nonprofit that promotes and protects mountainous wine regions around the world. To qualify for the title, your terraced vineyards must have a minimum altitude of 500m and a gradient above 30%. When I met winemaker Puri Díaz Ferreiro, she casually referred to local vineyards as paredes (walls), which makes sense when you consider that a 70% slope is not unusual. She rightly marvelled at what must have gone into creating these terraces. "It was an immense job to build these walls and ensure they don't collapse. They've lasted for centuries."
Most wineries here are small operations, like Díaz Ferreiro’s Val do Frade, based in the town of A Pobra do Brollón. Working alone, she grows grapes on two half-hectare plots, one of them perched on a luxuriantly green ridge high above the Sil River. During harvest, she hires extra hands to move her grapes to the Adegas de Vilachá complex 2km away, where she produces just 3,000 bottles per year of a young red made with Mencía. Now an ethnographic centre, these rustic cellars date to medieval times and were traditionally used by families to make and store wine for their own consumption. Every midday, folks would head there on foot, via a narrow path, and bring home enough wine for the day's meals. While the complex has 42 separate cellars, just 12 are currently in use, and Díaz Ferreiro's is the sole commercial operation.
Her vineyards can only be accessed on foot, from above. While I found the lush highland scenery to be breathtaking, I wanted to get closer to the water, so I headed west to the village of Belesar to meet Martín Martínez. Established in 2020, his Ecosacra winery is what's known locally as an adega de garda (storage winery), where wine that's been made elsewhere is kept in cool, north-facing cellars. More than three centuries old, his adega had been abandoned for 14 years when he bought and restored it, even reusing old wine barrels to make shelving and tables. It's a beautifully rustic space overlooking the Miño River, with an outdoor patio where you can try his wines – a white made with the Godello grape and a red Mencía-dominated blend – while dining on local cheese, charcuterie and empanadas (Galician large-format baked meat or fish pies), accompanied by tomatoes, figs and cherries from his own garden.
To reach Ecosacra, I booked a tour that included a magical journey on Martínez's small boat. As we glided past forested riverbanks so densely green they could pass for Tolkien's Shire, I was humbled by the view of those mindboggling vineyards; it was beyond me how those first grape-growers ever conceived of farming this terrain. But even more remarkable was the canyon itself, a testament to the sheer force of water across geological time.
Ecosacra's name reflects Martínez's commitment to protecting his natural resources. Like Díaz Ferreiro, he takes a low-intervention approach in his vineyards, conserving the soil's health and using no herbicides or insecticides, and his small catamaran is the first hybrid passenger boat in the area. As we chatted, he proudly told me about the otters that were spotted near his private pier. "I spend most days on the river, but I never get bored of this place. It’s paradise to me."
The team behind local event company I-Radia Crea felt the same way when they created 17 Grados, a music festival that highlights the landscape. Named for the vineyards' minimum slope in degrees, the lineup features concerts at a hilltop winery, but the most coveted events take place on a catamaran with a maximum capacity of 100. Listening to music while cruising between the steep walls of the Sil Canyon is a transcendent experience, transporting you physically and metaphorically.
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To protect the very qualities that make the area so unique, government officials are beginning to take a more mindful approach, learning hard lessons from other parts of Spain where overtourism has sparked the rage of local residents. In its promotional materials, the tourism board encourages visitors to arrive by RENFE, the national train system, which stops in the region’s largest municipality, Monforte de Lemos (population: 18,000). There are also free hop-on hop-off minibus shuttles to reduce car traffic during the summer and Holy Week peak seasons; and the most popular attractions – such as the ancient Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil monastery and the wineries themselves – require advance reservations to manage visitor volume.
It's not easy to balance environmental protection with the real economic needs of the Ribeira Sacra's small towns, which might otherwise be abandoned, like so many in rural Spain. But in a region where survival has long depended on nature, there is still a deep connection to the environment, and many locals are focused on conserving what they've inherited. When Díaz Ferreiro first started growing grapes, some of her neighbours would describe the ways they pruned each plant in their vineyards.
At the time, she couldn't imagine anyone having such an intimate understanding of individual vines, but now she has become one of those people. "I don’t know how to explain it, but it is something that you just have to feel," she said. "We are in contact with the earth, the plants and everything else around us. I’m part of this landscape."
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Earlier this year, cheese fans panicked following the publication of new research on essential cheesemaking moulds, certain the end was nigh for beloved Brie and Camembert.
It was an outsized reaction, according to Jeanne Ropars, the co-author of the very study that made such noise in the first place. "I must emphasise that there is no production problem, in the short term, for cheeses," she said. "Even for Camembert."
That said, the news did provide an opportunity to examine the cheesescape at large, where certain beloved creations are indeed endangered.
The worries about Camembert's future arose following the publication of a brief penned by Ropars and Tatiana Giraud, research director at the CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research), regarding a newly discovered population of Penicillium roqueforti, the mould that gives blue cheese its azure veins. The researchers took advantage of the discovery to highlight a "drastic loss of diversity" in cheesemaking ferments, notably citing their own 2020 research on genetic degradation of moulds populating Camembert's rind, which, to be fair, have been doomed for more than a century.
Camembert and its bloomy cousins like French Brie, English Baron Bigod and American Mt Tam get their white, mushroom-scented exteriors from just one strain of mould, Penicillium camemberti var camemberti, an albino mutant isolated in 1897 in the Brie region from a panoply of such fungi that had long proliferated in ageing cellars. In sprinkling this mutant mould onto the sterilised surfaces of their cheese, cheesemakers supplanted the colourful rinds' variety of moulds and bacteria ranging from red to blue to green to grey with pure, downy white.
"The market demanded it," said Arnaud Sperat-Czar, president of the Fondation pour la Biodiversité Fromagère. "[People] preferred a beautiful white cheese with pretty down, as opposed to a cheese that looked a bit mouldy."
This desire for homogeneity, however, has come at a cost. Today, all Penicillium camemberti var camemberti is cloned from that same mutant spore, making it incapable of sexual reproduction. "Naturally," said Ropars. "You can't cross an individual with its clone."
This lack of genetic diversity means the spore is unable to evolve and adapt, the crux of the issue that led to the brouhaha seeming to signal Camembert's demise. But the problem isn't without solutions, especially if the cheese world is willing to sacrifice some of that long sought-after uniformity. After all, Penicillium camemberti var camemberti is far from the only mould that gives rise to a bloomy rind. P camemberti v caseifulvum, according to Ropars, is a genetically similar strain, albeit with a slightly less fluffy texture; and its once-common relative, P biforme, which boasts a diversity in colour ranging from white to blue-grey, could be used as is for a more diverse colour palette, or re-isolated to encourage the pale colour we've become used to. And there's no rush to decide.
"There are so many producers, and so many parent strains, that no one, at the end of the day, is worried about the end of Camembert," said Sperat-Czar.
Cheesemaker Pierre Coulon, founder of La Laiterie de Camembert, agrees. "It's really just the buzz effect, as usual," he said. "That's not what's going to make cheese disappear."
But other issues might.
In Normandy, Coulon said, "it's been raining since July," and even in this famously damp region, humidity is posing unprecedented problems, from a proliferation of new, unsought-after moulds on his Camemberts to ground so waterlogged that cows can't be put out to pasture.
In other regions, climate change has given rise to such dry summers that not only are milk yields dropping, according to Profession Fromager, but the texture and flavour of the finished product is changing. Hot weather can lead to a degradation in the very quality of an animal's milk, with lower casein and mineral contents that make it more difficult to make good cheese.
In Switzerland, warming temperatures have led to local purple mountain saxifrage being supplanted with plant species more common in the Mediterranean, according to Université de Lausanne's l'Uniscope, diminishing the intense, savoury aroma that high-altitude Étivaz cheese was once known for.
And central France's Salers and Grand Aubrac are at risk of disappearing entirely. Much like Champagne, 46 French cheeses sport an Appellation d'Origine Protégée label. Each AOP is governed by a charter established by local producers dictating its means of production. "An AOP is, at its heart, about its connection, a product's connection to place, its history," explained cheese educator Sue Sturman.
To wit, both Auvergnat Salers and Aveyronnais Grand Aubrac are traditionally made in summer, when cows can graze on high-mountain pastures. But unseasonable dryness last summer forced farmers to supplement their cattle's feed with hay and thus to temporarily cease making these cheeses in favour of the Laguiole and Cantal typically made in the winter, both of which fetch a lower price.
The producers behind some AOPs are currently at work to modify their charters to account for these changing conditions. "It's about adapting," said Yves Soulhol, managing director of Laguiole's Jeune Montagne cooperative. "It's not complicated, but it demands adaptation."
But other regulations are harder to get around, especially those that come from further afield. Producers of raw milk cheeses are facing ever stricter regulations from the EU, especially as the scientific ability to detect STECs (Shigatoxigenic E coli) becomes more reliable, according to Soulhol. In France, he said, "we're lucky – people like raw milk. But on European and worldwide levels, excuse my rudeness, but it's a pain in the arse."
Some regulations also pose a threat to traditional cheesemaking methods. Last year, proposed European legislation that would have supplanted traditional wooden cheese packaging in favour of more recyclable materials risked sounding a death knell for the very flavours of Jurassian Mont d'Or or Savoyard Manigodine, which glean their distinct aromas from being aged in direct contact with bands of spruce.
While this legislation was ultimately voted down by the European parliament, other measures threaten Saint-Nectaire, an Auvergnat cheese traditionally aged in caves forged in volcanic magma that, according to producer Caroline Borrel, have naturally become naturally rich in the exact mould spores they need to age the cheeses to perfection. But hygiene norms that Borrel characterises as "ever-more constraining" point to potential loss of these methods. Traditional wooden Saint-Nectaire moulds are already forbidden to cheesemakers, and according to Borrel, "They're doing whatever they can to incite us to reduce the use of natural cellars."
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Producers, Borrel said, "are collapsing under the weight of the norms and obligations". Some are shedding their AOPs – despite the higher price point the label fetches. Others are leaving the industry entirely. And due to "constant and continual" checks and mountains of paperwork that turn an already full-time job into an impossibility, "the biggest factor threatening the future of Saint-Nectaire and other cheeses is the constant decline of people to take over", she said.
And this, according to Sturman, "is true right across every sector in farming in France."
"Farmers have the highest suicide rate of any population," she said. "It is incredibly difficult to live as a farmer. It is incredibly difficult to make ends meet as a farmer. It is a seven-day-a-week job."
As a result, said Sperat-Czar, "many farms have closed, and others will, because there's no one to take over."
But in recent years, a slew of young people have abandoned urban centres and careers in insurance or banking to work in food-related sectors. Sperat-Czar has seen this in cheese distribution and has high hopes it will trickle into the production side too. With Fondation du Lait Cru, he is launching a project to help support those looking to transition into the sector, matching them up with farms and offering courses via distance learning to complement the on-the-ground training.
"To all these people who are asking questions about their future and their role in society," he said, "we're going to tell them there are farms to take over. There are production facilities where they can work to make traditional products, terroir-driven products, raw milk products."
With help from this young generation, there may still be hope for the future of French fromage.
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Swept aside by colonialism, this ancient tradition is being reclaimed by a new generation of Filipino chefs who are introducing it to the world.
On an early Friday evening, customers slowly filtered out of a small Filipino restaurant in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood. Rattan-wrapped fixtures hung from the ceiling, bouncing light off the dining room's white-brick interior and mirrored wall, and the wafting scents of garlic and vinegar filled the modest 400-sq-ft space.
During its normal restaurant hours, Tradisyon is a quick-service spot serving familiar Filipino comfort fare, like adobo-rice bowls and noodle dishes. But as night settles, something special brews in the back kitchen.
After all the regular dinner guests left, chef Anton Dayrit and his team combined all the restaurant's tables and chairs so they ran the entire length of the dining room. Moving swiftly past each other in a rehearsed choreography, they wrapped the conjoined table in foil and laid several four-foot-long banana leaves across it for an incoming 20-person meal, a dinner package that anyone can book by phone or email.
This wasn't just any dinner but a version of kamayan: a communal Filipino feast where all the food is laid out on the leafy greens and instead of using plates or utensils, everything is eaten with your hands ("kamayan" in Tagalog). Much like a Japanese omakase meal, the dishes served during a kamayan feast vary depending on the vision of the chef who cooks it. The idea is to present a cornucopia of classic Filipino foods that complement each other when eaten together.
Eating with one's hands is something that's practiced in many West African, Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. But unlike in other regions where the custom has persisted for centuries, kamayan-style dining harkens back to the Philippines' Indigenous roots but was largely swept aside during Spanish rule, starting in the 16th Century. The practice therefore not only serves as a reminder of how Filipinos ate before colonialism and a physical connection to Filipino heritage, but also as a way of preserving that cultural history in Filipino communities around the world.
In the Philippines today, kamayan meals are typically prepared on important family occasions, like birthdays, holidays and reunions, and are also offered on some restaurant menus. But these feasts have been regarded with a renewed sense of dignity among Filipino and Filipino American chefs, who are keeping the tradition alive in their restaurants and introducing it to a new set of diners abroad. Tradisyon is one of a handful of restaurants in Manhattan offering these hand-eaten kamayan feasts as special packages for big groups.
Compared to other Asian cuisines like Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese that have become ubiquitous in major cities, Filipino food has had a much quieter international presence. This may be partly due to the nation's incredible diversity: more than 100 ethnic groups, each with different languages, cultures and culinary practices, call the archipelago home, making it more difficult to pin down what, exactly, Filipino food is.
But thanks to praise from US celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain (who proclaimed his love for the sizzling pork dish sisig) and Andrew Zimmern (who recently told the BBC, "It combines all the best Asian techniques, textures and flavours… Filipino food is just as good as it gets"), Filipino cuisine has flourished over the past decade – especially as chefs in the States have spun Filipino dishes in ways that have gradually introduced its flavours to foreign palates.
Filipino food and its communal meals recently trended on social media, and the growing popularity of dishes like kare-kare (oxtail in a peanut stew), pancit (a Filipino noodle dish) and the nation's now-famous technicolour yam ube led food research company Tastewise to recently name Filipino food as one of the "most disruptive food and beverage trends of 2025".
Nicole Ponseca, a Filipino chef and James Beard Award finalist who was integral in popularising restaurant-set kamayan feasts in New York City, recalled growing up somewhat ashamed of seeing family members eating with their hands. "When I opened my first restaurant, it was always in the back of my head to turn everything I was embarrassed about into something I could lean into for a source of integrity and self-esteem," she said. That first restaurant was Jeepney, a former East Village gem whose kamayan menu included a selection of seasoned pork, whole fish and marinated beef, alongside lumpia (egg rolls), deep-fried shrimp and sweet longanisa pork sausage. Recently, Ponseca has started a similar kamayan concept in Miami.
Dayrit considers kamayan feasts the "ultimate get-together meal". As a child on the beaches of Boracay and Puerto Galera, he remembers watching his yayas (nannies or caretakers) cooking up what he considered "Michelin-grade" food by the sea. "You're on the beach, you don't have any utensils, but you've got everything [you need]," he said. "You've got a grill to cook, you've got a fire going, a table and banana leaves."
Back at Tradisyon, Dayrit and his team continued setting up their kamayan dinner. With blowtorches, chefs charred the glossy banana leaves as an almost sacrosanct precursor to the procession of food. Flitting back-and-forth from the kitchen, the crew carried out pounds of meat, seafood and vegetable concoctions, distributing them across the table.
First, a bed of steamed white and fragrant garlic rice was spooned in a line down the centre of the leaves. Next, they placed pieces of smoky grilled pork and barbecued chicken, and large pata (deep-fried pork knuckle) with crispy golden-brown skin and succulent meat. Garlic chili butter prawns, sauteed bok choy and whole fried dorado fish cradled the spaces around the meats, and an aromatic jus was poured onto the rice mounds. The spread was finished with a colourful medley of dragonfruit, pomegranate and pineapple slices.
As the preparation wrapped up, I spoke with diners congregating outside who were watching the chefs construct the kamayan table through the window.
"Even though I've visited the Philippines occasionally over the years and have heard of kamayan, I had never actually tried it myself," said Kimberly Remijan, who booked the feast to celebrate her birthday with friends. "Being half-Filipina, I wanted to show my friends a part of Pinoy [a colloquial term for Filipino] culture. A huge part of Pinoy culture is food."
As the group finally filtered into the tight space, they emitted a mix of "oohs" and "aahs" before settling around the table. Dayrit showed the group the "proper" way to kamayan. With one hand, they pressed meats into a padding of rice and wrapped it into a sort of rice pouch with the tip of their fingers. After dipping the mound in a spicy vinegar sauce, they brought the food up using their thumb to deliver the food from the fingers to the mouth without the fingers entering the mouth. It's a skill that requires some practice.
"There's actual chemistry when you touch food with your hands and put it in your mouth," said Dayrit. "It somehow tastes better; I can't explain it."
As I marvelled at the elaborate spread before me, laughing and chatting with the diners, it felt as though I had been welcomed into this tight-knit group of friends. It was an inviting warmth that transported me back to my Filipino family and the many kamayan feasts they recalled enjoying over the years. My father once told me about bayanihan, a Tagalog word that means "being a community". Bayanihan represents a spirit of hospitality and kindness akin to treating others like family, and that spirit permeates the kamayan dinner.
"Before we might be eating in the shadows of our kitchen with our hands out of embarrassment. Now it's on full display," said Ponseca. "Our food is love, and kamayan is about abundance, it's about joy, it's about sharing. In its modern version, it's about pride."
BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.
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For centuries, residents of Emilia-Romagna have disagreed about which of its two main cities invented tortellini, but the truth may be neither did.
I'm seated at the three-Michelin starred Osteria Francescana, and can't believe my luck. It's been eight years since I first attempted to snag a reservation at the coveted restaurant in Modena, Italy, helmed by Massimo Bottura, one of the world's most influential chefs. I've been to Italy nearly 50 times since 2016, and each visit, I prowl the restaurant's website, even setting alarms at odd hours, to no avail.
But one week ago, from my hotel in Tuscany, I saw a 12:30 lunch cancellation and pounced. And now I'm finally here, in a world of chic Gucci wallpaper and dim lighting, about to try the famous 15-course tasting menu for myself.
I'm savouring "Tortellini or Dumplings?" – a Korean spin on tortellini in brodo (tortellini soup) where Osteria Francescana serves twisted dumplings in seaweed stock instead of traditional capon broth – when Bottura himself walks in. The desire to eat at one of the world's best restaurants is what initially piqued my interest in this place, but what brought me here tonight is the delicious bite on my spoon: tortellini.
Tortellini – a circular-shaped pasta, twisted around a filling of mortadella, prosciutto, pork loin and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese – are the quintessential pasta varietal here in Italy's hilly Emilia-Romagna region. But while there is no question that tortellini hails from Emilia-Romagna, scholars, chefs and locals have bickered for centuries about which of the region's two rival medieval powerhouses can lay claim to the honour: Modena or Bologna?
I am sure Bottura knows; he's not only from Modena, but is also famed for his innovative tortellini dishes, inspired by childhood memories of sitting under his grandmother's table as she prepared the meaty morsels. As he stops to greet me, I asked him where tortellini were invented: Modena or Bologna?
"Neither," he says, his arms sprawling as wide as his smile. "It's Castelfranco Emilia."
His answer stops me mid-bite. Castelfranco Emilia is a small town located between Modena and Bologna. It is indeed famous for its sfogline (pasta makers), but this was the first I'd heard of its connection to tortellini. I left Osteria Francescana with more questions than answers.
The "Modena-versus-Bologna" tortellini debate had intrigued me ever since visiting the Palazzo Comunale di Modena; home to the Stolen Bucket. This was where I first learned that Modena and Bologna's feud goes back to the Middle Ages when the cities were entwined in a bitter religious rivalry that lasted more than 300 years (Modena supported the Holy Roman Empire; Bologna supported the Popes). In 1325, during one of the war's skirmishes, Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a city well in Bologna; a war trophy.
What follows next is delicious myth: in 1622, Modenese poet Alessandro Tassoni wrote La Secchia Rapita (The Stolen Bucket), a parody of the events where the Olympic gods descend to aid in the fight; Apollo and Minerva sided with Bologna, while Mars, Venus and Bacchus sided with Modena.
Then, in the late 19th Century, Italian poet Giuseppe Ceri nodded to Tassoni and the medieval-era Modena-Bologna-bucket conflict in his own poem, The Bellybutton of Venus, writing that after the gods came down to intervene, they took a detour to Castelfranco Emilia. The fateful side trip results in tortellini.
There are a few variations of the myth, but the most popular version goes like this: Venus, Bacchus and Mars walk into an inn in Castelfranco Emilia. The following morning, Venus is sleeping naked and alone, and the innkeeper, infatuated with her beauty, peeps through the keyhole and sees her exposed belly button. Inspired by its shape, he creates tortellini.
What's unclear is whether there is any historical truth that led Ceri to set this scene in Castelfranco Emilia. Centuries earlier, sometime between 1688 and 1690, the priest and historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori wrote that he ate minestra di tortellini (tortellini soup) in Castelfranco Emilia. It may be impossible to prove that tortellini were in fact native to that city (or that Ceri had ever read the account), but today in Castelfranco Emilia, there is a statue of the innkeeper peeping through the keyhole to see Venus' belly button.
Hungrier than ever for the truth after my encounter with Bottura, I reached out to a series of local chefs to get to the bottom of the matter and found that many people today – even the region of Emilia-Romagna's website – embrace Castelfranco Emilia's role as the mythical birthplace of tortellini.
"The idea of [tortellini] was born in a small village, Castelfranco Emilia, in between Bologna and Modena," said chef Aurora Mazzucchelli of Casa Mazzucchelli, a Michelin-star restaurant in Sasso Marconi, a province of Bologna, when I asked her where tortellini were invented.
"The debate has been settled," said chef Ottavio Gnazzo, the chef de cuisine at Rezdôra, a New York restaurant serving Emilia-Romagnan cuisine helmed by Bottura mentee chef Stefano Secchi. "We know tortellini comes from Castelfranco Emilia."
However, despite the general consensus that Castelfranco Emilia is the beloved pasta's birthplace, there is still some speculation.
"We are sure that tortellini come from Bologna," said Monica Venturi of Bologna's Le Sfogline. Venturi grew up in Bologna, where her family has been running the small handmade pasta shop since 1996. "When tortellini were made for the first time, Castelfranco Emilia was under Bologna."
Secchi himself doesn't necessarily disagree but adds context. "The issue is that tortellini were first made in Castelfranco Emilia. [We know of] the legend of Venus's bellybutton, but Castelfranco Emilia has been a province of both Modena and Bologna, so [it] will be tough to ultimately decide."
Its exact geographical origins aren't the only dispute surrounding this stuffed pasta. In Bologna, tortellini are often much smaller than tortellini from Modena and Castelfranco Emilia; called tortellini al mignolo (pinky finger tortellini). And, "In Bologna, we normally use raw filling, while in Modena, they normally use cooked [browned in butter] filling," added Mazzucchelli. "I personally like raw stuffing because it allows me to work with a more solid texture."
Back in Modena, Francesco Vincenzi is head chef of Franceschetta58, a casual bistro opened by Bottura that serves bold, modern Modenese cuisine, so Vincenzi has a different take on the recipe.
"Our tortellini filling is not quite blanched, not quite cooked, but in between," he said.
Traditionally, tortellini are served in brodo (broth) or panna (heavy cream) but restaurants like Francescetta58 are serving them in a decadent Parmigiano cream instead; a shock to tortellini purists.
"I don't like when they try to change the recipe of this type of tradition," Venturi said. "Tortellini must be cooked in the broth, boiled and then eaten with the broth."
Fillings, cities and regional variations aside, there is one factor that Emilia-Romagnans generally agree on: making tortellini is a family affair. The task is largely attributed to the rezdôra, or the "head of the household", in Modenese dialect, which refers to the women who roll out pasta by hand.
Gnazzo, who was born in the US but raised in Italy, grew up in the kitchen watching his father; also a chef. He reflected on watching rezdôre in Bologna for the first time.
"They're masters at making pasta, so when I went to Bologna and saw them making tortellini, I bought some, and we made it there; the right way in capon stock," he said.
Mazzucchelli has fond early memories of tortellini, too. "I used to make tortellini with my mom and dad. It was a significant moment around the table to help pinch shut the tortellini."
Tortellini are Emilia-Romagnan culture at its core, commonly enjoyed in celebration around Christmas time and the Feast of Saint Stephen (Boxing Day). The circular-shaped pasta is so tied to the region that La San Nicola Association hosts an annual Tortellini Festival (Sagra del Tortellino) in Castelfranco Emilia during the second week of September. The festival lasts one week, with each night featuring a tortellini dish from a restaurant in the region. On the final night, there's a live performance that reenacts the innkeeper peeping through the keyhole.
As evidenced by his "Tortellini or Dumplings?" and "Tortellini Walking on Broth" dishes, Bottura has no qualms about reinventing the beloved pasta. But to ensure that tortellini tradition isn't lost, Bottura and his wife and business partner Lara Gilmore opened Tortellante, a cooking school in Modena where elderly women teach young adults with autism how to make tortellini.
So, which city invented tortellini – Bologna, Modena or Castelfranco Emilia? The world may never know for sure, but one thing is certain: tortellini is one of the most defining foods of the Emilia-Romagna region.
As Bottura enthusiastically told me, "Even if you don't believe in God, you can believe in tortellini."
Recipe for tortellini
by Chef Ottavio Gnazzo on behalf of Rezdôra
Method
Step 1
In a tabletop mixer, add the flour and make a well. In a small bowl, mix the eggs with the olive oil, then add the mixture to the mixer. Mix the dough on low speed for 10 minutes, pat into a flat disc or ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Leave at room temperature until ready to roll out.
Step 2
Add all the meats to a grinder on fine die setting and grind together. Transfer the meat mixture to a small bowl, then mix in the nutmeg, sea salt, Parmigiano and eggs to create a paste.
Step 3
Roll out the dough into a sheet to the last setting on the machine; it must be thin enough to slightly see the wooden board or hand underneath. Cut 1.5-2in squares in the dough with a wheel cutter with straight edges. Place a dot of filling in the centre of each square. Fold each square into a triangle by putting pressure on the edges to properly seal the triangle. Then, grab the two edges of the triangle, wrap it around the tip of your pinky and pinch it so it closes.
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In recent years, this doughy, sugar-coated sweet has become ubiquitous in Prague. But despite being billed as "traditionally" Czech, the dish was adopted from elsewhere.
In February 2023, newly-minted United States ambassador to the Czech Republic, Bijan Sabet, uploaded some of his first photos as ambassador to Instagram. The now-deleted post included a couple of shots of cobblestone streets near the US Embassy in Prague and a photo of him holding an ice cream-topped trdelník, a popular tube-shaped pastry.
The next day, the Czech press jumped on the photo of the trdelník. "The first mistake of the new American ambassador", read the headline in the daily newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes. Another Czech newspaper, Lidove Noviny, put it in the spectrum of American political scandals by calling it "TrdelníkGate".
So, what was all the fuss about and how did a pastry cause an international political scandal?
If you join the army of tourists in Prague's historical centre, you'll notice that every third or fourth shop – particularly between Old Town Square and Charles Bridge – features 15cm (6in) tubes of dough slowly spinning horizontally on a stick over burning charcoal and a sign above it proclaiming "Old Czech Specialty". The scent of caramelised sugar and baked dough wafts from these shops, and at each one, there is often a line out the door.
Meet the trdelník. Also called "chimney cakes", perhaps because they are long-ish and tubular, trdelník gets its name from the stick it slowly spins on as it cooks over coals (trdlo means "stick" in Czech).
When I lived in Prague for three years in the 1990s, there were no signs of the trdelník (pronounced: "ter-del-neek"). But starting around 2010, I began seeing more and more shops and street stalls selling them. Employees were dressed in historical garb and signs boasted of the pastry's Czech origins. Search for "Prague" or "trdelník" on TikTok or Instagram and you'll find legions of influencers raving about this "traditional Czech pastry".
The issue is that the trdelník isn't Czech: it's a sugar-coated riddle wrapped in a doughy mystery inside an ice cream-topped enigma of nebulous origins that tourists appear to love. At the same time, many locals say travellers to their country are being duped into thinking they're indulging in something inherently Czech. On a recent visit to Prague, I decided to try to peel back the flaky dough of the trdelník in order to understand this culinary conundrum and how it came to be a favourite "old Czech specialty" among the tourist masses.
According to a Romanian newspaper, the first-known mention of the trdelknik is in a mid-15th-Century manuscript in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1784, it turned up in a cookbook in Transylvania. From there, it seems, the pastry slowly made its way west from Transylvania, anchoring itself throughout Hungary where today it's called kürtöskalács, and eventually finding a warm welcome in the Slovakian town of Skalica. The fact that Skalica became part of Czechoslovakia might partly explain how the pastry ended up catching the attention of Czechs entrepreneurs decades later.
The first trdelník shop in the Czech Republic didn't fire up its dough-cooking coals until 2004, when Martin Figura opened a bakery in the country's eastern Moravia region. On his business's website, he claims the pastry comes from Hungary. A year later, another baker, Martin Švarc, opened a trdelník stand in the southern Bohemian tourist town of Česky Krumlov in 2005.
"These people inspired me, and I copied their business," he told me, referring to the first few people who opened up trdelník bakeries in the country. According to Švarc, trdelník shops started opening in Prague a year or two later. In 2015, someone got the brilliant idea to begin offering a scoop of ice cream on top of the dish and the city's new made-for-tourist dessert was complete.
Back in Prague, I met up with Janek Rubeš, a journalist whose YouTube channel, the Honest Guide, has 1.4 million subscribers. In his videos, he reveals some local favourites for eating and drinking in Prague, but he has also been very vocal about the trdelník, which has made him the face of anti-trdelník sentiment in his hometown.
One of the reasons why the trdelník is so popular with tourists in Prague can be boiled down to a simple and effective marketing technique. "My mom used to work for an international restaurant chain, and she used to say: if you can smell it and see it from the street, you're likely going to be enticed to try it," Rubeš said.
Rubeš isn't the only Prague resident who is annoyed by the ubiquity of the trdelník and its false association with Czech culinary culture. In December 2022, two theatre students at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague made a trdelník-themed project. Anna Hubená, who is studying costume design, created a life-size trdelník costume for Danny Takieddin, an acting student. Scrawled in large letters on the backside of the costume was: "I AM NOT CZECH TRADITION". The two of them hit the streets of central Prague as Hubená filmed Takieddin's interactions with tourists. Sometimes the life-size trdelník with legs would be standing next to trdelník-eating tourists – most of whom didn't get the irony, thinking that the plus-sized pastry was actually promoting a trdelník shop.
"Mostly only local Czechs appreciated it," said Hubená. Takieddin added, "Even a homeless guy yelled out at us, 'It's from Romania!'"
Prague doesn't have a street food tradition. Food here, traditionally consumed in pubs, is meaty, stodgy fare that pairs nicely with a golden-hued pilsner. I can't help but feel that trdelník shop owners are reimagining Czech history for their own financial benefit. The trdelník industry is betting that most visitors to Prague won't have an extensive knowledge of Czech cuisine. Case in point: the American ambassador to the Czech Republic. "I don’t blame him," said Rubeš, of the ambassador's "TrdelníkGate" photo. "If you walk through the centre of Prague and see so many shops selling trdelník, you're going to assume it's a big part of Czech culinary culture."
It's no coincidence that as tourism numbers have grown in the Czech Republic, so have the number of trdelník shops. In 2003, 20 million foreign travellers visited the nation and there were zero trdelník shops. By 2019, just before Covid restrictions, that number had nearly doubled to 37 million. There are no statistics on the number of trdelník spots in the country, but there is no denying that the trdelník industry has shadowed the rise in tourism.
"This is a cautionary tale about how authenticity, when paired with processes of urban touristification, can become a powerful tool for commodification, deceit and appropriation of third-party food traditions – in this case Hungary, Romania and Slovakia," said Alessandro Gerosa, a professor of sociology at the University of Milan and author of The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism. "The hostility from local Czechs seems powerless vis-à-vis the pervasiveness of Prague's growing tourism industry."
The trdelník can be seen as a way to appease travellers seeking out something that appears to be authentically Czech – a sugar-coated symbol of how tourism has transformed the city into something it didn't use to be.
Juliana Fischerová, a baker and food writer, said, "The trdelník likely made its way to Prague because of the festival circuit, such as Christmas markets, which was the only time Czechs would see the pastry up until recent times."
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Fisherová first started seeing trdelník pastries spinning on sticks in Prague about 20 years ago and remembered she had seen the pastry in Slovakia long before that. "In Prague, it's half the size and twice the price," she said. "The worst crime, though, is that they use very low-quality ingredients at the trdelník shops in Prague. And don't get me started on the quality of the ice cream."
Fischerová says that it won’t be long before the pastry enters the canon of Czech cuisine. "Fried cheese isn't inherently Czech either, but it's been eaten here so long that it's now part of our culinary tradition. [It's] on every pub menu all over the country and, with the exception of Czech food historians, no one questions the authenticity of it."
"Authenticity" is a word that popped up over and over in my research on the trdelník. The problem is that "authenticity" is a social construct, a subjective term based on a collective perception, so what may seem authentic to one person could feel inauthentic to another.
There was an Easter market on Prague's Old Town Square while I was visiting. And to prove Gerosa's point, I asked several trdelník stand employees if the pastry was an authentic Czech product. They all said yes. I then approached a stand selling lángos (fried bread that is indisputably tied to Hungary).
"Is lángos an authentic Czech street food?" I disingenuously asked the woman at the stall. She paused, looked me right in the eye and said, "Yes. It is traditional Czech street food. Like Czech pizza."
Trdelník purveyors in Prague are engaging in what sociologists call "impression management". By evoking an imagined historical community of costume-clad Bohemians cooking the trdelník on a stick over coals, they're not only commodifying the culture of neighbouring nations, but selling visitors a fabricated version of their own.
But does any of this really matter when hordes of tourists are literally and figuratively eating up the trdelnik? Is it really that delicious?
When I finished chatting with Rubeš at a cafe in central Prague, we walked out onto the street together. Rubeš spotted a sanitary worker emptying public rubbish bins and asked the worker, "What is the most common thing that you find in the trash in the centre of Prague?" The sanitation worker rolled his eyes and said, "Trdelník. When tourists eat through the ice cream towards the top, they just throw out the fried dough. They barely even eat the thing."
I have to confess that after witnessing the birth and extreme growth of Prague's trdelník industry over the last 20 years, I had never tasted one. So, on my penultimate day in Prague, I purchased a sugar-coated pastry (minus the add-on ice cream) at a stand at the Old Town Square. It was flaky and soft but so bland it was almost tasteless. Like nearly every trdelník-consuming tourist in Prague, I ate about half of it before it got cold and rigor mortis-like, and then tossed the rest of it in the bin.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the country where Skalica is located. That has since been updated.
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The flaky, buttery, layered croissant is irrevocably tied to France, its country of origin. But every 11 November, on the Feast of St Martin, the Renaissance-era city of Poznań in western Poland comes alive with an extravaganza starring a very special horseshoe-shaped pastry; the Rogale swiętomarciński, or St Martin's croissant.
While the rest of the country celebrates Poland's Independence from Prussian, Austrian and Russian occupation, waves of entertainers ranging from stilt-walkers to pom-pom-waving cheerleaders march through Poznań's streets for the St Martin's Day Parade. Around 1.25 million St Martin's croissants are consumed on that day alone – equating to about 250 tonnes of pastry.
This sweet treat's saintly origins go back to the 19th Century when a local priest encouraged his congregation to help the poor in the spirit of St Martin, who famously cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar. A local baker named Józef Melzer is credited with the idea of honouring the pious act by creating a pastry when he prayed to St Martin and dreamed that a white horse entered Poznań and lost its golden shoe. The next day, he made horseshoe-shaped croissants to give to the city's poor, and the tradition quickly spread as more bakers joined in. Over the years, the delicious treat evolved into a regional speciality.
Despite the physical resemblance and the similar name – rogale means croissant in Polish – the St Martin's croissant is distinct from the classic French pastry. Poznań's version is topped with sugar and nuts, and the flaky pastry layers ooze with a thick, luxurious filling made of white poppy seeds, nuts, raisins, almonds, sugar and butter. Each croissant weighs around 250g and comes in at belly-busting 1,200 calories. Sold by weight, the croissants are priced between 15-20 zloty (£2.90-£3.80) per pastry, reflecting the time and effort put into creating this legendary food.
Around three million St Martin's croissants are sold each year in Poznań, and it is taken so seriously in this part of western Poland that in 2008 it the croissant was given Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status by the European Union, joining Gouda cheese from Holland and handcrafted Dresdner Christstollen from Germany, as well as another Polish speciality: the kiełbasa biała parzona, a white sausage from the region of Wielkopolska.
This ruling means that only certified bakeries in Poznań are allowed to produce these croissants under the official name. They must also follow strict guidelines to ensure the quality is upheld and apply annually for certification.
Each baker applying for a certificate must make 24 croissants, which are tested to ensure they follow the exact ingredients and method, which includes folding the dough to create the required 81 layers before the filling can be added. The entire process can take up to six hours, with 35 minutes left between each turn to allow the dough to breathe. This year, just 84 bakeries were given certification by the Chapter of the Traditional Rogal Swietomarcinski.
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Production goes into overdrive in November, with tonnes of ingredients brought in to accommodate the city gobbling up more than a million croissants on parade day.
One of the Poznań's busiest bakers is Hanna Piskorska, who has six shops in the city and her products are so popular she also sells them online across the world. "On 11 November, we are literally besieged with people, which shows the great trust people have in our croissants," said Piskorska.
On St Martin's Day, the entire city stops to celebrate the saint and its beloved croissant. The thunderous procession starts at St Martin's Church (step inside to see a carving of the saint slicing off a swathe of his cape to pass to a cold and hungry beggar) and continues along St Martin's Street, ending after a nine-minute walk to the Imperial Castle, an impressive monument constructed under German rule in 1910.
At the forefront of the procession is St Martin on a white horse, portrayed by an actor in colourful historical costume. Around him are locals in traditional 18th-Century Bamberg dress – first brought to Poznań by German immigrants – with women donning long, flowing colourful clothes and hats made from flowers. People carry baskets of croissants through the crowds lining the streets to make sure no one goes hungry, and there's even a croissant fair where the 84 approved bakers sell their pastries so people can taste them all and pick their favourites.
"Traditionally, at the end of the parade, the Mayor of Poznań ceremonially hands over the keys to the city to St Martin, symbolising his authority for the day," said Weronika Duszak from the Croissant Museum. "The day is a public holiday, meant to be spent with family and friends, rejoicing over shared croissants, music and festivities."
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Nestled in Germany's picturesque Neander Valley where Neanderthals were first discovered, a museum is tapping into our growing fascination with our long-lost relatives.
Inside a museum in western Germany, a man in a tailored suit and a dress shirt leaned against a handrail and peered down towards the gallery below. A young girl briefly paused next to him as a few visitors stopped to stare. Something about the scene seemed subtly out of sorts.
The elegantly dressed gentleman had a noticeable ridge on his brow, his nose was large and his chin was recessed.
"We call him Mr Four Percent," said the museum's director, Bärbel Auffermann. Because he was clad in modern clothes, it was easy to overlook the life-like statue's secret: he's a Neanderthal.
The statue conveys an important point – this ancient cave-dwelling hominid is really not much different than us. Indeed, genetic research shows that many humans have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA. In fact, while scientists once believed that Neanderthals, who disappear from the fossil record around 40,000 years ago, were violently displaced by their more slender hominid cousins (us), they now believe humans and Neanderthals interbred for thousands of years until the Neanderthal population eventually disappeared.
Located 15km east of Dusseldorf, the Neanderthal Museum lies just a short walk from the spot where the species was first identified in Germany's Neander Valley in the 1850s. Using startlingly realistic models, Ice Age artefacts and easy-to-follow exhibits, the museum takes visitors on a four-million-year journey to discover humankind's distant origins. A visit isn't just an homage to paleoanthropology, it's more like a trip to see our long-lost cousins.
Since the pandemic, interest in the museum has surged. In 2023, 180,000 Neanderthal fans flocked to the museum – its highest number since the initial rush of visitors following its opening in 1996 – and according to Auffermann, the museum is on pace to hit that number again this year. Meanwhile, an accelerating stream of scientific discoveries and the increasing popularity of at-home DNA testing continues to spark curiosity in our fellow sapiens.
But despite our close relations, Neanderthals have a serious PR problem. Auffermann said most people consider this extinct group of ancient humans were little more than ignorant cavemen – grunting brutes with a club. "From the very beginning we understood it as our mission to rectify this image. We always understood ourselves as being their lawyers, their representatives," she said.
In the last two years, the museum has opened a Stone Age-themed playground with a crawl-through cave and giant spear-shaped timbers supporting a slide and swings. It has also unveiled a soaring 22m "cave view" observation tower and exhibit, topped with a massive Neanderthal skull, which was nominated for a European Museum of the Year award in 2024.
All this comes as perceptions about neanderthals are shifting. Some 400,000 years after they first appeared and 40,000 years after they went extinct, a surge of new documentaries, books and studies about the species have been published in the past 12 months.
In addition to its other new offerings, on 23 November, the museum will open a temporary exhibit focusing on the role women played in Neanderthal society. Author Rebecca Wragg Sykes, whose 2020 international best-selling book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art narrates the accompanying audio tour. Drawing on research, Sykes takes visitors through the lives of four ancient women as they give birth, raise children, hunt and care for their families.
Sykes, who also leads a 10-day holiday tour to Neanderthal sites across Europe, traces our current fascination with the species to the 2010 sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, which revealed that the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans are 99.7% identical.
"It changed the Neanderthal from something that once existed and vanished to something that's still present now," she told the BBC. "People found it an emotional thing. They said: 'I feel connected to part of my past in a way that's unexpected and really moving.'"
Research has continued to broaden our understanding of the species. We now know they were quite sophisticated, making rope, painting caves and caring for the injured and disabled, including – as one recent finding suggests – a child with Down syndrome.
"Neanderthals are individuals. They [were] hunting the same things [as us]… they have hearths at the centre of their social life, just like us," Sykes said.
Humans' first glimpse of our distant ancestors took place just 400m from the museum, which is located in the woods where the Düssel River once flowed through a towering limestone canyon. Even now, this quiet, pastoral pocket of industrial western Germany seems an unlikely site to have changed our understanding of human evolution.
Like England's Lake District and New York's Hudson Valley, the Neander Valley attracted Romantic painters during the early 1800s who were drawn by its untamed, picturesque landscape. After sketching the scenery, they'd retreat to caves and rock shelters for picnics and parties. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the mid-1800s, limestone became a valuable commodity for iron makers, and stoneworkers were brought in from Italy to quarry the cliffs.
In August 1856, labourers began digging out the clay floor of a cave and discovered16 fossilised bones from a single individual. A local teacher and naturalist named Johann Carl Fuhlrott was called in, and immediately sensed the find was noteworthy. The remains suggested a stocky, powerful body, unlike a typical human. Fuhlrott and a colleague named the species after the valley where it was found: Homo neanderthalensis.
While Neanderthals are certainly the prime attraction, the museum takes visitors on a journey through the greatest hits of human evolution. Life-size figures are arranged in a timeline, including Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), our ape-like ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago and is often considered "The Mother of Man". She poses alongside Homo erectus (our relative from 1.6 million years ago) and Homo sapiens, our modern species who first appeared 300,000 years ago.
But the star is "Mr N", a life-like statue of an impish, naked Neanderthal. With a thick beard ringing his jaw and stylish long hair, he reminded me of a prehistoric hipster. As I approached the exhibit, I was blocked by a small crowd of visitors gathering to take photos of the figure, who seemed to gaze back with a sly grin.
Today, Mr N serves as the museum's de facto mascot, and has been so popular that he had to be replaced after his predecessor's skin was worn down when too many visitors couldn't resist the chance to touch the past.
"He's some sort of identification figure," said Auffermann. "People of the region, they like him a lot."
Outside the museum, the steep gorges that once lured painters have been removed, quarry shovel by quarry shovel. Only one towering plinth remains, where a large metal tablet with gothic lettering commemorates the original Neanderthal discovery. Nearby, a path leads past the rock to the new observation tower at the edge of a forest.
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The wheelchair-accessible structure carries visitors up a circular walkway, interrupted by interpretive panels with recorded narration. The climb culminates at a viewing platform, where telescopes reveal a virtual-reality landscape populated with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and Neanderthals. The tower's peak stands at roughly the same spot and elevation as the cave floor where we first came face to face with our distant relatives.
"It's a bit like visiting the grave of your ancestor," Skyes said. "It's kind of crazy – this giant tower with a skull at top. It's a way to allow people to be as close as possible to the space where that actual cave was. I think it's rather wonderful."
As each new finding deepens our understanding of our world – and ourselves – Skyes said she expects interest in Neanderthals to continue to grow.
"Neanderthals are interesting for their own sake, not because of their relevance to us," she said. "Even if we had never interbred with them, it's still interesting as another experiment of what it is to be a human."
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It's home to vast, open steppes and an ancient nomadic culture, but as the nation rapidly urbanises, can the landlocked nation hold onto its roots?
With its thrilling horse races, ancient nomadic culture and a pulsating modern capital, Mongolia is increasingly luring adventurous travellers eager to experience its famed hospitality and vast, sweeping grasslands. In a recent episode of BBC's The Travel Show, host Lucy Hedges visited the country and got a taste of both the vibrant city life of Ulaanbaatar and the more traditional rhythms of the steppe.
Dominated by the soaring Altai Mountains to the west and the harsh Gobi Desert to the south, the world's second-largest landlocked nation is home to a varied tapestry of traditions shaped by its tangled history.
After Russian forces helped Mongolian revolutionaries drive out the occupying Chinese, the Mongolia declared its independence in 1924 and chose Ulaanbaatar (whose name means "Red Hero") as the capital of the newly formed communist nation. In the 1990s Mongolia transitioned to a democracy, and in the past 24 years, Ulaanbaatar's population has tripled to 1.7 million people. However, despite this rapid urbanisation and growth, the country is still best known for the nomadic lifestyles of the Indigenous communities who have called the area home for millennia.
Since at least the 3rd Century CE, residents of the Mongolian steppe have survived by herding livestock and living off the land. Even today, roughly 40% of Mongolians are nomadic. Around one-third of the country's population still lives in traditional dwellings called gers (yurts), which can be quickly deconstructed and moved to a new location – a process that happens around two to four times per year. Now however, a combination of urbanisation and extreme weather caused by the changing climate are threatening this ancient lifestyle.
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"We had never seen so much snow," a traditional herder named Manlai told The Travel Show. "It was hard for the livestock to get to pasture. From the end of January [on] they began to die. We are running out of money and there's no other way to make a living."
Yet, despite Ulaanbaatar's rapid growth and shifting weather patterns, many are still determined to carry on the traditions of their ancestors. And in the last few years, Mongolia has seen an increase in tourism, as many people are eager to experience this ancient culture – as well as the nation's snowcapped mountains, vast sand dunes and seemingly endless grasslands.
Travellers can witness traditional horse racing at events like the 10-day Mongol Derby (4-13 August 2025); learn to make traditional crafts like carvings from wood or antler with local families, and hear the once-banned artform of throat singing by catching a performance of the Tumen-Ekh Folk Song and Dance Ensemble. At the Altai Eagle Festival (held in mid-September every year), traditional eagle hunters showcase the prowess of their winged companions, while the Naadam Festival (held each July) is a Unesco-inscribed showcase of traditional Mongolian wrestling, archery and horseracing.
A number of national parks are located within easy reach of the capital, including Khustain National Park, home to endangered Przewalski's horses, and the striking rock formations of the Gurvan Saikhan National Park. Mountain climbing tours are available of the Altai Mountains, and trekking – either on camelback through the desert or on horseback across the plains – are just some of the popular outdoor activities available.
For those of a less outdoorsy bent, Ulaanbaatar is home to many beautiful temples and monasteries, such as Choijin Lama Temple Museum and the Gandan Khiid Monastery. Popular museums like Bogd Khaan Winter Palace Museum – the former imperial residence of the 8th Bogd Khan, or ruler of Mongolia – and the National Museum of Mongolia preservee a treasure trove of artefacts detailing Mongolian history and traditional life.
Visitors can also get a taste of how Mongolians' traditional lifestyles are changing, by visiting the so-called "Ger District" on the outskirts of the capital. The area is home to around 900,000 formerly nomadic people – many of whom are living in urban environments for the first time. GerHub, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to addressing social, political and infrastructural problems faced by the area's residents, is also helping families find new ways of supporting themselves through community tours and by selling traditional crafts to tourists.
"There's a lot of misconception that Ger area residents want to go live in an apartment building," explains Daria Azbayar, GerHub's social innovation lead. "But for some former nomads, it feels so constricted … being surrounded by four walls. So, we wanted to offer that perspective for tourists."
But whether she was in the city or the steppe, what Hedges found most enchanting about the nation was the warmth of its people.
"Coming from the bustling metropolis of London, I wasn't sure how I'd cope with the isolation," said Hedges of her time living with traditional nomadic Mongolians. "But I've been surprised by how big a welcome I've received. In many ways out here in one of the sparsestplaces on Earth, this is a less lonely place than the big city."
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Think Halloween, and most of us associate it with the hedonistic, multi-billion-dollar event that is seen in the US. Yet, its true origins actually lie in Celtic culture.
I didn't expect her to be holding a decapitated head when she arrived. But there she was, standing in the foyer of the Trim Castle Hotel in County Meath, clutching the angry-looking face of a man called Áillen under her arm. It was a suitably macabre introduction for the organiser of the Púca Halloween Festival here in Ireland.
"Sorry," said Claire Morrissey, "I've been busy painting him all afternoon – I'm just on my way to the workshop."
It wasn't a human head, of course, rather a papier mâché sculpture of a figure from Celtic folklore who, legend has it, would attend gatherings on 31 October and, using his melodic tiompán (a type of Irish harp), would lull everyone to sleep before setting the whole place on fire. This year at the festival (from 31 October to 3 November 2024), he will form part of a huge procession to the 12th-Century castle in the town of Trim, which, Morrissey tells me, will end in a pyrotechnic fire display for which everyone will be decidedly awake.
Think Halloween, and most of us associate it with the hedonistic, multi-billion-dollar event that is seen in the US ($12.2bn was collectively spent on it last year). Yet, its true origins actually lie in Celtic culture.
"It's much older than people think," said Dr Kelly Fitzgerald, head of the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at University College Dublin. "It can be traced back thousands of years to a cross-quarter day in the Celtic calendar that is halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice – known as Samhain. It was a huge celebration, so when Irish people emigrated to North America, they took their traditions with them, and over time they evolved into the Halloween we celebrate today."
Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced Sow-in, literally meaning "the end of summer"), was, and still is, huge in Ireland, with processions and festivals held across the entire island, from Derry to Waterford – including, since 2019, County Meath. This is when locals decided to cement their historic link to Samhain's origins, and called their event Púca, after the shape-shifting mischievous spirit in Irish folklore.
"It's different from Halloween in that we're celebrating a traditional origin story," said Púca organiser Morrissey. The four-day festival will include a parade, several music concerts, ghost tours and costume-making workshops – utilising fallen leaves and twigs rather than single-use plastic. And turnip-carving sessions will take the place of pumpkin carving, as this was the vegetable that Jack-o'-lanterns were originally made from to scare away spirits before the tradition reached North America and locals found pumpkins much easier to carve.
It sounded fun, but I was curious – what makes County Meath able to claim Samhain as its own?
"There's a mound called the Hill of Ward above the town of Athboy where remains of large, ancient ceremonial fires were discovered in 2014, thought to be from around 500 CE," explained Morrissey, "strongly suggesting that thousands of years ago the community would gather there on Samhain to celebrate the end of the harvest with a bonfire, marking the coming of the dark season. And afterwards, they would carry burning torches down to their homes to light their own fires to see them through the winter."
That excavation 10 years ago was the first to point towards a Samhain connection beyond folkloric accounts. According to Dr Steve David, the head archaeologist leading the dig, "There are very few monuments in Ireland that we consider comparable to this." He explained that not only is the mound a massive ceremonial enclosure, but its location right in the heart of a major monumental landscape is striking, with nearly 360-degree views around it. "We have found evidence of intense burning there," he added. "So, this monument is associated with fire and the medieval texts would associate this very strongly with an annual fire festival."
Whether or not that festival was the very first Samhain celebration is impossible to prove, but there are other links that support County Meath's claim as the birthplace of the celebration. For example, the original name of the hill is Tlachtga, which is the name of a Celtic sun goddess – and where the sun is mentioned, fire is implied. There are also medieval texts from 17th-Century writers specifically saying that on Halloween all other fires were extinguished to be relit from the one on Tlachtga's summit.
Eager to see the potential birthplace of Halloween myself – and learn more about the person for whom it was named, I headed to the hill, which is just 10 minutes north of Trim. As I walked to the summit I was serenaded by robins and song thrushes hidden amid the ombre blush of red, orange and yellow leaves. My boots crunched on fallen conkers from horse chestnut trees. Seeing nature visually mark the change between summer and winter, with leaves dying and dark nights drawing in, the Samhain celebrations seemed to make perfect sense. Fitzgerald agrees that the Celts took their cues from the natural world.
"Samhain was written about in the earliest literature to come out of Ireland," she explained. "We have the Otherworld, the world of the dead, and we have the natural world, the world of the living. And at this time when things are dying and the sun is fading, the veil between the two was said to be at its thinnest so mischievous spirits could come into our world."
To protect oneself from these spirits, the practise of dressing up caught on as a disguise to keep the wearer safe, lest they be dragged into the Otherworld. Someone who takes this practice very seriously is the person I was about to meet on the hilltop: Fiona Dalton or, as she introduced herself that day, Tlachtga herself (pronounced Clock-da). She was dressed in a green and brown flowing dress, clasping a staff made from hazel and sporting a headdress of autumnal leaves and berries. She explained how she was the powerful druid and daughter of a sun god, who, legend has it, died giving birth to triplets right here on this summit. If the hill is the birthplace of Halloween, then she is – arguably – its mother.
"You may know this as the Hill of Ward but that is only since the 17th Century. Its real name is Tlachtga, named after me, and my people celebrated here every year on Samhain," she bellowed, as I made my way over the grass-covered late Bronze Age earthworks that line its plateau. She then led me into town to the Fair Green – a community green space featuring a wood carving of Tlachtga, as well as a throne hewn from a felled tree and a circle of oak and horse chestnut trees that formed a so-called fairy fort.
This was a living history tour – the brainchild of Dalton and her partner Gerry Meade – that recounts tales from Celtic mythology to explain how they intersect with modern day Halloween in Athboy and County Meath. We ended, as all great tours do, in a pub for some lunch.
Amid the visually arresting parades and fire festivals, another important element of Samhain is the food – and I'm not talking about candies and chocolate. This time of year marked the end of the harvest and a time for feasting on the bounty of crops produced. Nowadays it sees a proliferation of barmbrack – a kind of fruited loaf – in Irish shops, as well as menus featuring colcannon (mashed potato with cabbage and a big knob of butter).
"Halloween is often called 'cally night' or 'colcannon night'," explained Regina Spector, food and culinary historian at University College Cork, whom I met later that day to ask about the importance of food. "It was a key part of Samhain feasting – being warming and a real treat because of all the butter. But at this time of year, food has a different function outside of feasting – to connect communities together through games and activities."
Apples, she explained, were traditionally peeled so the skin could be thrown to reveal the initial of a future suitor, or bobbed in water for in a matchmaking ritual. The barmbrack is an easy-to-make bread made special by seasonal fruit and nuts, with symbolic items – a ring for marriage, a cloth for poverty, a thimble for spinsterhood or a matchstick for an argument – folded in by the baker. A practise that, due to health and safety, is not nearly as widespread today.
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Filled up with comfort food (minus the foretelling of my future), I continued on my hunt for links to Halloween in County Meath among its ancient and mystical sites. At the imposing Trim Castle and the crumbling ruins of St Mary's bell tower on the opposite banks of the River Boyne, I undertook a ghost tour with local Cynthia Simonet, who regaled me with modern stories of an alleyway haunted by a monk, and Celtic legends of the Cú Sidhe – a black dog that can go from this world to the Otherworld. Almost in a whisper, she told me how "about 20 odd years ago, rumours started to circulate that there [were] white witches out in Athboy holding ceremonies at Halloween on the summit of Tlachtga", thus cementing a strong belief of its claim to the origins of Samhain.
Next was an exploration of the county's myriad Neolithic sites, including Newgrange (a 5,000-year-old passage tomb) and Knowth (an ancient burial ground with the largest collection of engraved megalithic art in the world). On the surface, both have no link to Halloween's origins as they predate the Celtic beliefs. Yet the former is said to be the gateway to the Otherworld, and the latter has a series of standing stones; and one of these, my guide informed me, casts a shadow that points towards the tomb's inner sanctum – at sunrise after Samhain evening on 31 October.
Finally I journeyed to the Hill of Tara (known famously as the seat of the High Kings of Ireland), whose Stone Age "Mound of Hostages" also has a passageway that, every year, is illuminated by the rising sun at… Samhain.
I left with multiple yarns of history and folklore spinning in my head, and attempted to weave them all together. Some historians and archaeologists point out that the links between Samhain and the area are difficult to prove conclusively, but there are certainly a lot of handy coincidences. And the one thing that does tie Samhain, Halloween and now Púca together here in County Meath, I realised, is their ability to bring people and communities together. Perhaps that's something we can all embrace as the nights darken, the leaves fall and we all try not to lose our heads.
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Every country has its ghost stories, its mythical monsters and its ghoulish urban legends. But the United Kingdom – the home of the Gothic novel and the birthplace of paranormal investigation – may stake a claim to being the most haunted country on Earth.
With one of the world's highest concentrations of castles and no shortage of centuries-old pubs and coaching inns, there are plenty of reputedly haunted places to enjoy a drink or a meal, or even lay your head for the night – if you're feeling brave.
In addition, the country's relatively small size means it's possible to combine several of these places into one ghost-heavy itinerary. Here's where travellers with a penchant for the paranormal should head to get spooked this Halloween.
1. Skirrid Inn, Abergavenny, Wales
With a history going back 900 years, the Skirrid Inn in the eastern fringes of Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park is the oldest pub in Wales. If you believe the locals, it's also the most haunted. The building's ghostly associations go back to its former life as a courthouse and jail, which saw hundreds of prisoners executed by hanging from a wooden beam that still sits behind the bar.
Reports over the centuries tell of glasses flying across the bar, creepy laughter echoing from the upstairs rooms and sudden drops in temperature. Ghost hunt evenings are held here several times a month, and you can also stay in one of the guestrooms, which are as cosy and traditional as the pub downstairs, with its stone hearths, log fires and hearty home-cooked food. It's also a lovely base for walks in nearby Coed y Cerrig, a wooded glacial valley tucked away in the Black Mountains.
2. Chillingham Castle, Northumberland
In the remote reaches of rural Northumberland – one of England's most beautiful yet under-appreciated corners – lies Chillingham, reputedly the country's most haunted historic castle. Beginning life as a monastery in the 12th Century, Chillingham frequently came under attack by raiders from Scotland, whose border is barely 15 miles from here. The monastery was fortified into a castle in 1344 as it was strategically important for the English armies heading north – King Edward I, for example, stayed here in 1298 while en route to fight Sir William "Braveheart" Wallace.
Throughout the medieval period, Chillingham harboured many prisoners, the most unfortunate of whom came under the dubious care of John Sage, a torturer with the well-earned sobriquet "Butcher of the Scots". Today, replicas of Sage's fearsome torture devices – spiked chairs, twisting racks, iron maidens and the like – are on display in the castle's dungeon. Evening ghost tours of the castle, meanwhile, tell of some of the wandering spirits said to roam its corridors, including the "Blue Boy", a glowing apparition of a child said to haunt one of the corridors; another often reported is a ghostly lady said to stalk one of the courtyards at night, begging passersby for water.
For the full Chillingham experience, though, stay overnight in one of the castle's historic guestrooms: modern self-catering apartments housed in the former dairy, guard quarters and lookout tower, among other sections of the building. Be sure to explore the grounds, too: a snow-white herd of rare, primeval cattle, unchanged since medieval times, complement the ghostly aesthetic.
3. Whitby, North Yorkshire
Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was Irish, not British – but it was the English coastal town of Whitby that inspired him to write his seminal novel, which went on to underpin the modern vampire myth. It's hard to imagine a more strikingly located building than the 7th-Century Whitby Abbey, the remains of which stand, skeletal and ragged, atop a windblown cliff. The ghost of the monastery's founder, Saint Hilda, is said to stalk the ruins, along with that of Constance de Beverley, a nun who broke her vow of chastity and was bricked up in the abbey walls.
The beach below the abbey is the spot where Stoker chose to introduce Count Dracula, who comes ashore here in the form of a beastly dog, padding up the 199 steps to St Mary’s Church, which still stands next to the abbey ruins.
Horror fans may wish to make Whitby the endpoint of a walk across the nearby North York Moors, a desolately beautiful national park of heather-carpeted upland that was the setting for another creepy classic: An American Werewolf in London. The opening scene of the cult comedy-horror sees two backpackers lose their way across the moors, meeting strange locals and even stranger beasts beneath the light of a full moon.
Ideally, time your visit to coincide with the Whitby Goth Weekend, a celebration of goth culture held twice a year, in late April and early November.
4. Ancient Ram Inn, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire's sleepy market town of Wotton-under-Edge is home to what some say is Britain's most haunted pub, the Ancient Ram Inn. As befits its name, the inn is extremely old, dating from 1492, and it looks it, too: a low, squat, ivy-strewn half-timbered Tudor building that age has warped and bent, giving the eerie impression that you're looking at it from inside a hall of mirrors.
The otherworldly atmosphere only ramps up once you're inside. At first glance it looks like any other atmospheric old country pub, with rough-hewn stone walls, ornamental horse brasses, roaring fireplaces and wooden beams. But look closer and you'll see strange artefacts: a ram's head affixed to a wall, a mummified cat in a glass case, and, by the dart board, a grill across the stone floor marking the spot where the bodies of a woman and two children were found – victims, so the story goes, of a human sacrifice.
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Ghostly monks and Civil War soldiers, strange orbs of light and flitting shadows are among the odd phenomena that have been reported here for centuries. You can come to your own conclusions after an overnight ghost tour, led by expert guides armed with Ouija boards, ghost-hunting instruments and all manner of spooky stories.
5. Edinburgh Castle, Scotland
Not all of Britain's haunted locations are found in sleepy villages and rural inns. London has a huge concentration of ghost stories, but so too does Scotland's capital, Edinburgh – with the most haunted spot in the city said to be its most famous building, Edinburgh Castle. Looming above the city from its seat on Castle Rock, a vast volcanic hill, Edinburgh Castle has existed in some form for almost 1,000 years, and it's accumulated plenty of myths and legends in that time.
Like many British castles and stately homes, the ghost of a Grey Lady has often been spotted here – in this instance, the spirit of Janet Douglas who was burned at the stake outside the castle in 1537. Other ghosts bear echoes of the Anglo-Scottish Civil War: one spirit sometimes reported is that of a headless drummer, who struck up a march in 1650 to warn of the oncoming threat of Oliver Cromwell, and is sometimes still spotted today drumming on the castle's battlements.
A ghostly black dog has also been seen roaming the castle. Most bizarre, though, is the spectre of a former prisoner who attempted to escape by hiding in a wheelbarrow full of manure – which was then tipped from a great height from the castle's battlements, sending him to an untimely death. This hapless prisoner is not just one of Britain’s more eccentric ghosts; he may be the only one who you smell before you see.
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With the Turkish government asking to have the döner kebab recognised as a Turkish specialty, everyone’s favourite late-night snack is the big topic of discussion in Germany right now.
If there's one thing that unites Berliners, it's an appetite for the döner kebab. Office workers in search of a quick lunch, children on their way home from school, late-night revellers weaving their way between venues – all of them stop in regularly at one of the city's many döner kebab shops.
What lures hungry Berliners is spice-rubbed beef cooked on a vertical spit, thinly sliced and piled into pita bread with crunchy salad, often slathered with garlic-laced yoghurt sauce. It’s a German take on the traditional Turkish döner kebab – the same meat served on a plate with rice and salad.
Yet, if the Turkish government has its way, every single döner shop in Germany – more than 1,000 of them in Berlin alone, according to Visit Berlin – may soon be banned from selling döner kebabs under that name.
In a recent application to the European Commission, the Turkish government asked to have the döner kebab recognised as a Turkish specialty, one that was born and developed in what is today Turkey. That would give it the same status as Italy's Neapolitan pizza or Spain's Serrano ham. Only kebabs adhering to strict criteria could be called döner kebabs – and Berlin’s more portable version would not pass the test.
Germany's Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMIL) was one of 11 organisations to lodge an objection. "We have taken note of the application from Turkey with some astonishment," a spokesperson said in a statement to BBC.
"The döner kebab is part of Germany, and the diversity of its preparation methods reflects the diversity of our country – this must be preserved," the statement continued. "In the interests of the many fans in Germany, we are committed to ensuring that the döner kebab can remain as it is prepared and eaten here."
The Berlin version of the döner, which has since been embraced around Germany, was born in the early 1970s, according to Visit Berlin. Two separate men lay claim to its creation. Mehmet Aygün and Kadir Nurman were both part of the wave of Turkish "guest workers" who helped fuel Germany's post-war economic boom. They took the classic Turkish döner kebab and turned it into an easy-to-eat sandwich that is now an economic force in its own right.
The humble döner is estimated to generate annual sales of roughly €2.3bn in Germany alone, and €3.5bn across Europe, according to the Berlin-based Association of Turkish Döner Producers in Europe. Its accessible price point has made it a tool for political point-scoring: earlier this year German left-wing party Die Linke demanded the government introduce a Dönerpreisbremse, or döner price cap. (The government declined.)
The elevation of this humble sandwich into a daily staple was a remarkable achievement by a generation of Turkish men, according to Deniz Buchholz. "Nothing was written down; their recipes were passed from mouth to mouth. Society placed no value on what they did but they did what they did with conviction."
Buchholz is the half-German, half-Turkish co-owner of Berlin's Kebap with Attitude, a restaurant that takes a more contemporary approach to the dish, introducing the sort of modern flavours to the döner that are now standard for pizzas and burgers.
Selections include Funky Mango, made with chicken, mango-cranberry chutney and sesame-coriander pesto; Vallah Vegan, made with plant-based meat, cauliflower and pomegranate; and a Truffle Delüks with beef, green asparagus, roast potatoes and grated truffle.
None of these would be allowed under the Turkish proposal, which regulates everything down to the width of each slice of meat (between 3-5mm thick). Beef would have to come from cattle that is at least 16 months old and be marinated with specific amounts of animal fat, yoghurt or milk, onion, salt and thyme, as well as black, red and white peppers.
Not everyone believes in a strictly defined döner, however. Culinary historian Mary Işın, who has written extensively about the history of Turkish cuisine, says she has seen the döner evolve during the decades she has lived in Turkey. For a start, she says, the beef döners served up across Turkey today, are a recent innovation.
"I was here in the '70s and döner was always made with lamb," Işın says. "I don't know how this happened, but they seem to have persuaded people that lamb is greasy and bad for you. Many people here won't touch lamb anymore – they only eat beef.
"And if I'm remembering correctly, you just had some sliced onions with it. You wouldn't have tomatoes and peppers like they force on you today."
Işın researched the kebab's history in a paper titled Ottoman Kebab Culture and the Rise of the Döner Kebab. "It's a history with many huge gaps," Işın says, noting that the phrase "döner kebab" doesn't appear in a written Ottoman source until 1908, although the earliest depictions of döner kebab roasting on a horizontal spit date to the 17th Century, in two miniature paintings in a Turkish translation of the epic Persian poem, the Shahnama.
"There's very, very little about it, but we know it must have been there, because all of a sudden in the 19th Century, you have foreign tourists coming in and talking about döner kebab. It's as if it was so ubiquitous that no-one [local] saw the point of talking about it."
Ottoman cuisine traditionally included a range of kebabs, or roast meats, including small pieces of mutton served on a skewer (şiş kebabı) and oven-roasted meat (tandır kebabı). Döner kebab, discs of meat grilled on a rotating skewer (the name comes from the verb "dönmek", meaning "to turn"), was originally an outdoor food, popular at picnics.
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One clue as to how it evolved comes from a 1433 account by Bertrandon de la Broquiere, a French traveller. He describes meeting a group of Turkish travellers in Anatolia who invited him to share their spit-roast sheep.
"Instead of waiting for the whole sheep to cook through, they are cutting slices off the outside, which, of course, makes a lot of sense – you're not going to wait for four hours before a whole sheep is cooked, right?" Işın says. "The horizontal spit becomes vertical later when they open kebab houses, where a vertical spit takes up less space."
The European Commission has directed the Turkish and German governments to engage in talks to find a compromise, but the ramifications of any agreement are likely to be felt right around the world, where döner has become one of Turkey's most popular exports.
Ülkü Gani, who leads Turkish food tours in Sydney for Gourmet Safaris, charts her love for food to a childhood spent helping her parents sell kebabs at Sydney's Flemington markets.
"After school I would watch my mum and dad prepare the ingredients at home: mixing the spices with the mince mixture, layering the layers of mince with thin layers of topside steak. My father used to say the steak holds it all together. He would wrap it tightly and carry it to the fridge – and that thing used to weigh 50kg."
The kebabs the family served up were similar to the classic Berlin recipes, with pita bread stuffed with tomato, lettuce and onions as well as the meat. A choice of sauces was available, including yoghurt sauce.
"The mince was blended with onion and red capsicum, and then there was paprika, black pepper, salt, maybe a little cumin," Gani remembers. "Turkish cuisine doesn't overpower food with too many spices and sauces. It is about letting the hero ingredient stand out."
Gani says that kebabs are not the only Turkish dish that have sent culinary echoes across the globe. "We make cabbage rolls called sarma – which means "rolled" – that they also make in Ukraine and Bulgaria," she says. "We have stuffed grapevine leaves that we call dolma – which means "stuffed" – that the Greeks call dolmades.
"Ultimately, food is something we all have in common. Everyone bonds over food."
Food Wars is a series from BBC Travel that invites you to feel the heat when passions flare around beloved dishes that shape a culture's identity.
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Home to just 4,500 people and set in a scenic, rural valley, this quaint market town has blossomed into a bastion of tolerance.
"None of the bars here are gay bars," said Liz Paton. "But at the same time, they all are."
Paton is the charismatic owner of Drink, an independent taproom in the Yorkshire market town of Hebden Bridge, where my boyfriend and I were visiting for a long weekend.
Nestled between Manchester and Leeds in the scenic Upper Calder Valley, for years this rural town – which calls itself a "bohemian paradise", thanks to its many eco-friendly shops, artisan markets, galleries and indie bookstores – had been on my wish list. And so on my recent birthday, we finally booked a trip to stroll its cobbled streets, explore its rivers and canals, climb the surrounding wooded hillsides and – of course – gaze down from its eponymous 16th-Century packhorse bridge.
Though only boasting a population of roughly 4,500 people, this small, peaceful community has long been known as "the lesbian capital of the UK" – 8.95% identified as LGBTQ+ in the last Census. I was curious to trace the queer history of "Trouser Town" (a nickname referencing Hebden Bridge's manufacturing heritage). But as I soon discovered, its evolution from a rural mill town to a tolerant bastion was a bit blurry.
Back in the 1970s, artists and activists were drawn here by cheap housing after the cotton mills shut down. "One historical and cultural factor [that helped establish a burgeoning lesbian community] may have been the separatist wing of 1960s and 1970s feminism," said Dr Andrew Moor, who teaches film studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. "There was an element which allied itself with alternative hippy culture's experiments in alternative living, communes and a resistance to full-throttle capitalism. Hebden was the right size and in the right place."
Former resident Bev Manders moved here in the 1980s. "Certainly up to 1986, lesbians weren't particularly visible as far as I can ascertain," she said. But so steady was the growth of the community that, in neighbouring Todmorden, a monthly Women's Disco was launched. "The first took place on New Year's Eve 1986 at Cornholme Church Hall," said Manders. "With a fair amount of women there, it's my belief that this is the point we became more visible, and it also gave others the impetus to be visible – and some to come out."
The disco was held in various venues before relocating to Todmorden Cricket Club, where it still takes place on the second Saturday of the month. "Within a short time, word got out and there'd be women coming from Bradford, Leeds, Burnley and even Cumbria, Blackpool and Nottingham."
From 1986 to the early 1990s, Manders recalls that "an influx of lesbians" descended on the small town. "A number moved to the valley as they knew someone who lived there or had previously visited. Others had heard through the grapevine about this 'new' place with lesbians. In addition to the disco, there were writers' groups, book clubs, a choir and walking groups. Some were exclusively lesbian, some women-only."
By the late 1990s a monthly pamphlet, Lesbian Zone, was available to buy via subscription or at specific bars – and by 2004 Hebden had the highest number of lesbians per capita in the UK.
Bar owner Paton was born and raised in Calderdale but drawn to Hebden from a young age. "I was aware of the 'lesbian hippy' moniker," she said. "It was about seeking refuge amongst more open-minded people: artists and new-wave travellers made for happy bedfellows during the 1970s and '80s."
Tim Whitehead, now artistic director of Happy Valley Pride, which welcomes thousands of people from across the country every July, is another Hebden Bridge resident who grew up nearby but was drawn to its countercultural side. "I used to come here in the 1980s with my family. Whereas other Yorkshire towns were like [the pensioner-centred 1970s BBC sitcom] Last Of The Summer Wine, you'd come into Hebden and it would be people in caftans wandering around. But there was always a mix: hippies, artists and the lesbian community, as well as traditional Yorkshire town people."
Lou Millichamp arrived in Hebden in 1994 knowing no one and started running the subterranean Nelson's Wine Bar in 1997: originally set up by two gay men, it was one of Hebden's first safe spaces that welcomed both lesbians and queer men. "In the '90s when I worked there," said Manders, "Friday nights would be heaving with lesbians and gay men from the valley and nearby areas."
Today, Millichamp still runs Nelson's in "a partnership" with two other women. It's now a candle-lit vegan bar and restaurant serving innovative small plates like king oyster "scallops" with coconut pea puree and crispy kale; and a tomato, pistachio and saffron tart. As we ate, we watched lively groups of mostly LGBTQ+ folk clinking wine glasses all around us.
Despite such tolerance, it was, sadly, still homophobia that proved the catalyst for Happy Valley Pride (the area's nickname – and the inspiration for the hit BBC show – is due to long-associated issues with drugs). In 2015 a piece of homophobic graffiti appeared in Hebden on "a big piece of tarpaulin", said Whitehead. "So a group of locals, led by Darren Spruce, took it down and invited members of the community to turn into an enormous artwork as a way of reclaiming it."
A year later, in 2016, Spruce contacted Whitehead to programme acts for a week-long festival with a main event on the Saturday, and Happy Valley Pride took root. Now attracting more than 6,000 attendees each year, the grassroots event nonetheless pulls in performers from legendary London club Duckie. "There are free events, workshops, talks and dancing," said Paton. "Very few things are ticketed, and it's a glorious cross section that shows how very mundane being gay is. We're not trying to overtake anything: we just want people to stop equating our sexualities with sexual deviance."
Part of Happy Valley Pride's focus is on its two neighbours, Todmorden and Mytholmroyd, both of which make scenic canalside strolls (in opposite directions) from Hebden.
Todmorden has a gritter, more industrial feel than its rival, and "the gay community tends to be on the younger side", said Paton. Here, we enjoyed pints at independent bar-venue Nan Moor's, popular with both local and offcumden (a Yorkshire word meaning "not-from-round-here") LGBTQ+ visitors.
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"We noticed a lack of programming of women, non-binary and LGBTQ+ folks in the area," said Lauren de Sá Naylor, who opened Nan Moor's in 2020 with her business partner Alice Jackson. "So, we put them to the front, along with 'experimental' performances. And these genres include more queers and women. We hold a monthly 'open-decks' just for aspiring female, non-binary and LGBTQ+ DJs, and fringe events alongside Happy Valley Pride."
Back in Hebden, the usually quiet town was rammed with tourists during a bank holiday weekend. According to Millichamp, these days Hebden is "a destination with big groups of day trippers at weekends" and she notes that "some locals [are being] pushed out and outpriced". Covid proved a turning point. "We had a big influx of people, both gay and straight, coming from the cities, wanting to change lifestyles and buying smaller mortgage-free properties, along with the rise of Airbnbs. The markets have changed from selling functional everyday wares to tourist trinkets, with more food stalls to serve the increasing flow of tourists."
Despite the thrum of visitors, a heady air of tolerance still pervades, and I soon understood what Paton meant when she said that everywhere and nowhere in Hebden was a gay bar.
After leaving Drink, we wandered to the taproom Vocation; queer-friendly pub The Albert, with its Progress Pride flags flying high outside; and – a must – the historic socialist music venue Trades Club. Literary-minded visitors will also thrill at iconic poet Sylvia Plath's grave, a steep climb uphill in Heptonstall, and Shibden Hall, the home of 19th-Century diarist Anne Lister, the so-called "first modern lesbian", half an hour's drive away.
"I feel the desire in Hebden has been simply to exist in a wider community without having to justify your relationship," said Paton. "There have been occasions when LGBTQ+ tourists have come looking for some mythical place where everything is set up for gays and everyone is gay. It is, in fact, a community that doesn't give enough of a damn about people's sexuality to make it a problem."
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The country's longest continuous bike trail – the Alps to Ocean – takes travellers on a 315km journey into the seismic-shifting saga of Zealandia, Earth's "lost" continent.
A young and restless country in Earth's development story, New Zealand lies along an exceptionally fractious crack in the planet's crust. Tectonically speaking, the landmass has been through a lot of upheaval in the (relatively short) 83 million years since it split from the Gondwana supercontinent to be on its own plate. And now I am with my husband and two friends on New Zealand's longest continuous bike trail – the Alps to Ocean (A2O) – that will take us through the heart of this seismic-shifting saga.
"What you're passing through on the Alps to Ocean trail is the story of Zealandia, the eighth continent of the world," says geoscientist Sasha Morriss.
After Zealandia departed Gondwana for Pacific isolation, it sank then erupted, giving rise to the Southern Alps extending across much of the nation's South Island and some of New Zealand's most remarkable landscapes. Its fossil-rich seabed also surfaced, revealing microscopic to megafauna skeletons that tell scientists about a disappeared sea and the severe weather patterns that followed to shape the country as we know it. A twist in the plot is that 94% of Zealandia remained "lost" underwater, hidden in plain sight, until satellite technology advanced and researchers officially mapped it 2017. "New Zealand is just the very top," Morriss says.
The epic 315km A2O, one of the country's 23 Ngā Haerenga Great Rides, starts in the foothills of the country's highest peak, Aoraki/Mount Cook (3,724m). From here, it meanders through the Southern Alps' broad, glacier-carved valleys into Waitaki Whitestone Geopark, established in 2023, which Morriss describes as a "vanished world" where dolphins with shark-like teeth once swam in a warm shallow sea. The trail finishes at Ōamaru, a town literally built from the ancient seabed we'll ride on.
In parts, the A2O is so remote that at night the Milky Way can be seen in some of the clearest night skies in the world. However, isolation shouldn’t put anyone off: several companies offer guided trips, which include luggage transfers to prebooked accommodation (farmsteads, lake lodges and boutique B&Bs). A support vehicle tags along. But the good news is, with the number of e-bikes now available, it's unlikely riders will need it.
Up until recently, the full A2O would only be tackled by very fit cyclists. However, e-bike supply chains have finally caught up from the surge in popularity during the pandemic and local adventure companies have invested in new fleets. The result is that the mainly smooth and predominantly undulating Alps 2 Ocean has opened up to a significantly wider demographic.
As adept cyclists with limited time, we've opted for regular mountain bikes on a customisable five-day self-guided trip. The raw newness of New Zealand hits us on our first easy 7km roll down a gravelly path to the Tasman Valley, where our ride is wonderfully interrupted by alpine headwaters that we need to cross by helicopter. Earth's forces only heaved up the Southern Alps – one of the world's fastest-growing and eroding ranges – within the last five million years. Streams of scree slide down near-vertical slopes. The sheer volume forces glacial meltwater into striking braids of milky blue and bright grey that fan out across the vast valley floor, which will eventually become the mighty 200km Waitaki River.
While the icy knife edges of Aoraki/Mount Cook glare from above, a five-minute flight – with our mountain bikes swinging precariously in a cage underneath – gives us a bird's eye view of the sparkling phenomena. Deposited deeper into isolation, we jump back on our bikes and ride a colossal, vibrant, flat grassy plain to Lake Pūkaki. At 178sq km, it's the largest in a chain of brilliant turquoise glacial lakes to come. The juvenile spine of the Southern Alps keeps us company until we reach our cosy motel in the subalpine town of Twizel to wrap up our first (77km) day.
The next morning, we enter the 7,200 sq km Whitestone Waitaki Geopark – Australasia's only Unesco Global Geopark – where we spend a good chunk of the day exploring its squiggly foreshore, popping in and out of sheltered bays where we skim stones – perhaps a microfossil or two – across serene waters. It's easy to imagine the killer dolphins that lurked long before glaciers shunted, sculpting its ragged mountain surrounds. These pre-human shores were also a penguin paradise. According to studies of fossilised bones found in the geopark, a giant, 154kg penguin (Kumimanu fordycei) once shuffled around here, three times heavier than today's largest species, the emperor penguin.
The following day is as tough as the A2O gets, with a steady 300m climb over a generous 5km through a shady forest to the journey's 900m highpoint at Tarnbrae. I'm several hundred years too late to spot a now-extinct Haast's eagle, but I can imagine this giant bird – the largest eagle to ever have existed, with a 3m wingspan and feet and claws as big as a modern day tiger's – gliding over the infinite prairie-like Mackenzie Basin. There's a big buzz in our plunge down a flowy trail into throngs of golden tussocks, where the huge eagle would've sank its claws into flightless prey, namely the ostrich-like moa bird that weighed as much as 250kg.
At this point, we think we've nailed the day, until we enter the hair-raising Sailors Cutting Scenic Reserve to ride a gusty 13km loose, narrow trail cut into the side of a sheer gorge that's so raw and exposed, I feel like I've been thrown back to Gondwanan times when plesiosaurs – ferocious long-necked marine dinosaurs – patrolled the shores. Prior to the A2O, seeing this part of the gorge was only possible by boat. By the time we get to our B&B in the tiny town of Otematata, we've clocked an exhausting 80kms that I'd move mountains to do again
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The next day, on the 75km ride to what feels like bustling Duntroon (population: 110), people play more of a part as the trail nods to cultural history and human development. We ride over the Waitaki dam and hydro-electric power station, built during the Great Depression, when locals (mostly) excavated half a million cubic metres (200 Olympic-sized swimming pools) using only picks and shovels. The ramshackle ruins of a hotel that served explorers in goldrush times is our rest stop and we sleep like logs in a lovingly restored 1908 farmstead.
The lion's share of geological action is packed into our fifth and final day. Here, the A2O overlaps with the 34km (drivable) Vanished World Trail where visitors can find the most accessible geological features, such as the oddly named Brewery Hole – a cavernous sinkhole in the ancient seabed from which "bubbles forth a [underground] stream of pure sparkling water", according to an article from 1877 in the North Otago Times. It's also an excellent demonstration of how acidic rainwater can perilously dissolve soft rock.
The nearby Valley of the Whales features a partially exposed baleen whale skeleton fossil, preserved in cliffs made from dead sea organisms that built up around 25 million years ago. A stone's throw away, we get more deeply immersed in the vanished sea as we ride on a grassy paddock through a surreal collection of grey mammoth boulders known as Elephant Rocks, which were formed when the seabed lifted and fractured. While softer surrounding sediments disappeared with the sea, weathering got to work sanding rough edges. Bizarrely, the rocks – some as big as houses – lie in a (accessible) farmer's field dotted with grazing sheep. Fans of The Chronicles of Narnia will recognise the scene (minus livestock) as Aslan's camp.
In the end, the country's largest fossil collection turns out to be Ōamaru, a grandiose Neoclassical port town built with rock quarried from its abundant limestone seabed surrounds. After all, limestone is mostly billions of decayed ancient sea creatures that have been cemented together over millions of years. And rather like the lost continent of Zealandia, it's been hidden in plain sight all along.
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The golden age of the package holiday is over, and tourism's final frontier has fled from the frozen poles to the vacuum of outer space. But among the shifting trends of the 21st Century, there's one key factor that's increasingly driving people's desire to travel: the spirit of scientific enquiry.
Expeditions used to be the preserve of professionals: scientists, academics and explorers setting off for parts unknown with the goal of furthering the field of human knowledge. An emerging industry of expedition tourism, however, is laying open the thrill of discovery to the general public, with companies offering expert-led tours with a focus on subjects such as science, conservation and anthropology.
"People don't just want to sit on a beach anymore – there's more of an appetite for self-fulfilment," said Kevin Currie, director of New Scientist Discovery Tours. "We launched in June 2019, at a time when experiential tours were growing at twice the rate of normal tourism. That's resumed since the pandemic; we're seeing exponential growth."
New Scientist Discovery Tours are accompanied by experts in their fields, who lead visits to conservation areas, historical sites or scientific institutions, explaining to guests in depth what it is that they're seeing and experiencing. Current tours include a trip to CERN in Switzerland with a particle physicist, and a cruise to Svalbard featuring on-board lectures from world-famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
Currie believes that travel becomes a deeper experience when the place you're visiting is illuminated by expert knowledge. "Anyone can visit Prague, and it's lovely. But an expert-led astronomy tour of Prague, through the eyes of [historic astronomers] Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, really brings it to life."
Many of the new breed of expedition tours include a citizen science element, extending the scope of the trip beyond mere tourism and giving guests the opportunity to participate in surveying, laying camera traps and other accessible science activities that can be carried out by the general public.
Exodus Adventure Travels offers guests the opportunity to collect DNA samples in the field, which contribute to global biodiversity survey eBio Atlas; while Hurtigruten Expeditions sells trips to Norway that offer guests the chance to contribute to Aurorasaurus, a crowd-sourced database of information tracking the Northern Lights. Hurtigruten also encourages travellers on their trips worldwide to submit their birdwatching photographs to eBird, an online database of bird sightings.
All of which raises the question: how useful to scientific endeavour can a tourist really be?
Currie is sceptical about the usefulness of citizen science activities being offered as part of an expedition tour. "I'm a little bit cynical about citizen science being used as a marketing tool – about how much of the data is actually going towards the development of science," he said. "We want people to understand how science works; that's why we run science workshops on our tours. But scientific research itself is a serious endeavour. We don't want to belittle it."
Other experts are concerned that some expedition tours are causing more damage to the environment than they can possibly help to resolve. Elina Hutton, a researcher in climate tourism at the University of Lapland, told me that Arctic cruises are particularly at fault in this regard. "They cause more problems than they solve," she said. "Trips that incorporate hands-on science, and lectures on science, are better than those that don't have the scientists there at all. But when we're increasing tourism with the pretext of studying nature, it tips the overall balance towards the negative."
Hutton believes that stricter guidelines, and the enforcement of them, are needed for Arctic cruises going forward. "There need to be more restrictions on how many people can go, and how close they can get to wildlife," she said. "The Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators have guidelines, but there's no way to monitor if they're being followed. When you look at the marketing photos the tour companies use, they show very close encounters with wildlife, which creates expectation on the part of the customer – they expect to get close to a polar bear mother and her young, for example."
Some experts, however, are optimistic about the potential benefits of citizen science tourism. A 2023 review by a group of academics from Australia concluded that citizen science is proving to be a reliable and useful source of data for scientific research, which is "just as unbiased and accurate as that produced by scientists" – even accounting for the problems that tourists can face when gathering data, such as accurately judging the size and age of animals.
The study also suggests that tourists who have a background of knowledge in a certain field (without being professional experts) are particularly useful, using the examples of holidaying birdwatchers, anglers and scuba divers: "Research reveals that recreational divers can be effective citizen scientists due to their reported ability to identify and estimate the abundance of marine species with considerable accuracy, even if they have limited scientific experience." The study concludes that, when done right, citizen science tourism can not only gather useful data, but can empower participants to take further action, which positively impacts conservation going forward.
This is a significant factor in the future of sustainable travel: tourism, when carried out responsibly, has a crucial role to play in capturing the hearts and minds of the general public in relation to environmental and sustainability issues.
According to Megan Epler Wood, an expert in sustainable tourism at Cornell University, trips with a citizen science element can help to engage members of the public with conservation issues in ways that traditional holidays can't.
"In places like the Caribbean, they're tired of seeing people who don't care about their ecosystems – they want to just sit on the beach. There are a huge number of places there that could involve citizen science," she said, adding that 80–90% of tourists "don't care about sustainability, period. So if we can inch the number of those that do care forward just another 1%, that would be hundreds of millions of dollars going towards places that need it."
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Epler Wood notes that conservation-minded tours can also bring huge benefits to fragile natural environments by bringing new opportunities to the Indigenous people that call them home. "Specialist tour operators leading expeditions to natural areas frequently have a very important role in the conservation of natural resources," she said. "I worked in the Amazon, where we would find protected areas being taken over by [local] people who needed farmland. As a result, you saw the Amazon burning. So Ecuador, Colombia and Peru all implemented tourism projects where they would employ or set up joint ventures with Indigenous people and create a conservation ethic. It gives the local people a new way of looking at where they live – there are many examples of people who were poachers who became tour guides, for example."
The main issue, she added, is not tourism per se, but the sheer volume of tourists. "The places that are being overwhelmed have to reconsider how many people they're letting in," she said, pointing to Rwanda as one of the best examples of 'high value, low volume' tourism. "They limit the numbers who can see the mountain gorillas. There's rigorous science going on at Dian Fossey's Karisoke Research Center, monitoring and protecting these species, which sits hand in glove with tourists going to these designated areas at designated times."
Clearly, there are a number of challenges that must be addressed to make sure that the growing field of expedition tourism does not further damage the very things it claims it wants to protect. But for proponents of this kind of tourism, travelling in the spirit of scientific discovery can change the way you look at the world, instilling a sense of awe that can empower you to take environmental action – and which you don't need to travel to distant climes to experience.
"We want to be as inclusive as possible. Not everyone can afford a polar cruise," said Currie. "Lots of people associate awe with scale – seeing a huge glacier that takes a day to walk past – but it can also be found in the small, detailed, things, like spotting tiny mosses or fungi. We did a 'science of rewilding' weekend recently; a lot of people want to learn what they can do in their own patch of the world. You don't need to fly to go on an expedition."
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Collecting data from the most extreme places on Earth can require the skills of the most extreme outdoor enthusiasts.
Surrounded by glaciers and roughly 6,400m (21,000ft) above sea level, Willie Benegas spotted a pop of green moss wedged in granite. "Wow, this is an odd place for moss to be," he observed.
In 2011, Benegas, an extreme mountaineering guide, was 500ft (152m) above the steep, exposed terrain of Mount Everest's Camp 2 and – despite having summited Mount Everest over a dozen times – he still found himself "impressed". Using a sterilised cloth Benegas scooped the moss into an envelope to be transported to a lab on another continent.
The moss travelled from the planet's peak to Montana State University's Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, where Tim McDermott, an environmental microbiologist, analysed the bacteria living on its surface. From there, the moss continued to Rusty Rodriguez, a microbiologist for the United States Geological Survey, who was researching how plants form symbiotic relationships with fungi that can help them survive extreme conditions. His research revealed that these fungi can programme plants to withstand drought and temperature stress.
As plant life expands to ever-higher altitudes, it was hoped this moss could reveal how crops can adapt to increasingly extreme weather, withstanding frost and high ultraviolet (UV) radiation.The findings were later used to increase crop yields around the world – and Rodriguez developed a Seattle-based company, Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies (AST). AST manufactures fungal spores to enhance crop tolerance to extreme weather. Without the help of mountaineers and volunteers, says Rodriguez, this would not have been possible.
Benegas collected the moss samples for the non-profit Adventure Scientists, which acts as a matchmaking service between outdoor enthusiasts and scientists. "Scientists like to have samples taken in locations where it's difficult – sometimes damn near impossible – to get funding [to go]," McDermott says. "I was flabbergasted [Adventure Scientists] were even willing to try."
Gregg Treinish founded Adventure Scientists in 2011 after spending 22 months hiking the Andes, a trip which earned him and his partner Deia Schlosberg the title of National Geographic's Adventurers of the Year in 2008. An outdoorsman for years, Treinish hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2004 and felt a deep sense of selfishness in the awe-inspiring terrain of the Eastern United States.
Treinish discovered his hiking-related guilt rendered him in good company. While contact with nature is linked to psychological well-being, the juxtaposition with climate anxiety can make enjoying the outdoors complicated. New terms like eco-grief, Anthropocene horror and solastalgia are emotional epithets of environmental woes.
"Climbing is selfish," says Hari Mix, a mountain climber who collected data for Adventure Scientists during his Himalayan expeditions in 2012 and 2013. "There's no real point to it. I was looking for ways to add meaning or some kind of contribution to my trips."
Adventure Scientists, which targets the UN Sustainable Development Goals, partners with scientists – typically from universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – who need data to address environmental issues. The non-profit trains and manages volunteers to collect remote data as a cost-effective accelerator for conservation solutions around the world. Adventure Scientists has had more than 10,000 trained volunteers gather data for more than 120 partners. "Countless people love the outdoors and wish they could make a difference," says Treinish. "If we could galvanise them in a common direction, what we could achieve would be profound."
Adventure Scientists exists within the growing ecosystem of community science, also known as citizen science, which allows people of all backgrounds and ages to collect data and contribute to scientific research. Volunteer opportunities range from collecting data for public sector organisations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or Nasa, to helping private organisations like Advancing Participatory Sciences which connects researchers and citizen scientists.
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Though many view science as a specialised enterprise, Treinish simply describes science as a "process of inquiry". "By academic standards, I am not a scientist," acknowledges Treinish. And, according to an expert from the United Nations, science should not be exclusively for scientists.
The strength of Adventure Scientists lies in its ability to mobilise many people, says USDA Forest Service wildlife biologist Betsy Howell. In 2012, Howell partnered with Adventure Scientists in Washington State, US, to understand the conservation status of martens with the first winter of surveys starting in January 2013. There had been only six verifiable marten sightings since 1968, she explains.
"Martens are important members of the community but were, as far as anybody could tell, gone from the entire state," says Howell. So local volunteers, lugging motion-activated digital cameras and bait, descended on the remote, rugged, snowy terrain of the Olympic National Forest.
"People had to ski or snowshoe in," says Howell. "It can be extremely difficult to get around." After the volunteers hiked through the backcountry to install cameras, they returned to check the footage for martens. That survey did not document any Pacific martens. Still, Howell maintained that the efforts with Adventure Scientists in 2013 and 2014 were useful, as they highlighted the challenges of finding the animals.
"After I worked with Gregg and the team – and because of their work – we were able to apply for some special money and hire crews devoted solely to marten survey work to move them up in elevation even more. [We] got into even more remote areas and then finally started to get some marten hits," Howell adds, noting subsequent survey efforts from 2015 to 2019.
In Washington State, John Soltys, a long-time volunteer for Adventure Scientists, says data collection bestows a sense of "purpose" on his family's alfresco activities. Soltys stumbled upon Adventure Scientists in 2013 while on a camping trip to Berkeley Park in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington State. Soltys's young children became "absolutely mesmerised" by the scurrying pikas – mountain-dwelling, mouse-like mammals. Soltys scoured iNaturalist, a social network for sharing biodiversity finds. There, he found Adventure Scientists, which was also utilising the platform to collect data on pikas. His family now volunteers with the nonprofit 100 times a year, he says. "Yeah, we're doing that crazy stuff," he says.
Soltys and his family also work with Community Snow Observations, Living Snow Project and Cascades Carnivore Project to foster a love for the outdoors and environmental stewardship. Soltys' daughter even went on to pursue a degree in environmental science at the University of Washington due to these experiences, he adds.
Expertise and grassroots science can coexist, posits Treinish. No doubt, researchers with specific areas of expertise are necessary. Even a former member of Adventure Scientists' scientific advisory board, McDermott, acknowledged these "off the beaten path" samplings that private citizens can obtain are limited in sophistication. But adventuresome generalists, who are keen to get their hands dirty, can aid in furthering human understanding of the natural world. "If you're going to go to extreme lengths, why not make it useful?" asked Treinish.
"Whenever the global scientific community thinks about addressing an issue with boots on the ground, I hope they think about the solutions without a limit to data," says Treinish. "It's at our fingertips. We've got one chance, and we better make the most of it."
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A solar farm with the potential to produce 10 megawatts of power - enough to power 5,500 homes a year - could be built on farmland.
The intended land east of Battens Farm would cover two agricultural fields between Yatton Keynell and Allington, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.
A planning application has now been submitted to Wiltshire Council by developer Noventum Power, following a consultation.
“The majority of comments" supported the principle of development and the need for renewable energy developments", a Noventum Power spokesperson said.
The developer added that feedback from the community engagement was "very beneficial", according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
The application states: “The solar farm would be operational for up to 40 years.
"After the 40-year operation period, the solar farm would be decommissioned.
"It is expected the decommissioning period will take up to six months.
"After the infrastructure is removed the site will be reinstated back to the original state before construction."
The point of connection to export energy to the National Grid would be via an existing overhead line which runs from east to west and connects to the Yatton Keynell substation, located approximately 462m west of the fields.
The council is expected to make a decision by early next year.
What is climate change?
Climate change is the long-term shift in the Earth's average temperatures and weather conditions.
Between 2014 and 2023, the world was on average around 1.2C warmer than during the late 19th Century, the World Meteorological Organization says.
And 2024 is "virtually certain" to end up as the world's hottest year on record, according to the latest projections by the European climate service.
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The largest solar farm ever proposed for Kent could generate enough power for 140,000 homes, 20% of those in the county, according to those behind the plans.
Energy firm Low Carbon has revealed plans for a 500 megawatt (MW) facility on Romney Marsh.
South Kent Energy Park could be built around the village of Old Romney, sitting either side of the A259.
Paul Thomas, who represents the area on Folkestone and Hythe District Council, said he wanted to see "a bit more detail" on the plans.
He said he will attend a public event to ask developers if the land will still be usable for sheep grazing, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
He added: "What impact is it going to have on agriculture and agricultural jobs across the Marsh?"
Plans for any solar farm of 50MW or more do not go through the local council for permission.
Instead, they need to get a development consent order from the government, after a long permission process.
Plans are yet to be submitted but Low Carbon said the site, if built, will become one of the UK’s largest solar farms.
Bosses say the facility, which spans the equivalent of 840 football pitches, would be connected to the National Grid either via an existing substation in Dungeness or a new substation proposed to be built nearby.
David Browne, of Canterbury-based solar firm Convert Energy, said "it could take some time" for the new scheme to be approved.
"Kent has a chequered history with large-scale solar developments, with the Cleve Hill solar park in Graveney drawing massive local opposition," he said.
He said the positioning of the proposed park made "a lot of sense", adding: "The existing infrastructure should be capable of handling the output of the solar park."
The company is taking comments on its proposal online until 20 December, and is hosting in-person events at Ivychurch Village Hall on 26 November and in New Romney Scout Hall on 27 November.
An online event will also be held on 12 December.
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The UK government has admitted in court that the country's largest untapped oilfield, Rosebank off Shetland, was approved unlawfully.
The move came during a case brought by climate campaigners against both Rosebank and the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea.
At the Court of Session in Edinburgh Chris Pirie KC, for the government, accepted that assessments did not include “the effects on climate of the combustion of oil and gas to be extracted from the fields.”
Rosebank was given the green light on 27 September 2023 and Jackdaw on 1 June 2022, both by the previous Conservative administration.
As part of the consenting process, the government was required to consider environmental impact assessments about the fields.
These take into account the impact on climate change of emissions caused by the process of extracting oil and gas but not of greenhouse gases which would be released when the fossil fuels were eventually burned.
In June the UK Supreme Court ruled in a separate case, involving plans to drill an oil well near London's Gatwick Airport, that both types of emissions should be included in an environmental impact assessment.
In the judicial review at the Court of Session, environmental groups Greenpeace and Uplift are arguing that this means work on Rosebank and Jackdaw should be paused while fuller environmental impact assessments are carried out.
If the judge, Lord Ericht, agrees, Sir Keir Starmer's Labour government may end up with the final say on whether or not drilling should go ahead.
Mr Pirie said if that did happen, the current thinking of the energy secretary Ed Milliband was not to require the assessment process to begin afresh but to request the additional information relating to the climate impact of burning the fuels, before issuing a new decision.
The firms involved — Shell, Equinor, and Ithaca Energy — say they should be allowed to carry on with drilling because permission was granted in good faith under the law as it was understood at the time.
For Shell, Christine O'Neill KC told the court that any temporary pause and resumption of works would not be straightforward and would amount to the Jackdaw project being "brought to a permanent end."
Lord Ericht took issue with that assertion but the lawyer insisted that in such a case the court could have "no assurance" that Jackdaw could proceed.
Shell, she said, had "acted lawfully" in relying on the government’s consent and should not "be punished" for doing so.
Ms O'Neill also took issue with the environmental groups' claim that it was "an accepted fact" that Jackdaw would have "a substantial impact" on the climate and human health.
She said Shell accepted the existence of climate change; accepted that greenhouse gas emissions contributed to climate change; and accepted that urgent action was needed to tackle it.
Ms O'Neill conceded that Shell also accepted the approval of Jackdaw had involved an "error in law".
However, she added “the question whether, how and to what extent any individual project contributes to climate change is a complex one”.
The hearing is expected to continue tomorrow but Lord Ericht is not expected to issue his judgment for some weeks or months.
In Scotland, an unusual new plan is being used to tempt predators away from the eggs and chicks of the critically endangered capercaillie. Will it be enough to save this magnificent bird?
In the depths of the old Scots pine trees of Abernethy Forest, researcher and conservationist Jack Bamber has just dumped a pile of deer meat in the hope of attracting every nearby predator in a half-kilometre (0.3-mile) radius.
It may sound ominous, but it's all part of plan to divert predators who might otherwise be interested in lunching on a capercaillie chick.
Capercaillie are the world's largest grouse, famed for the males' beautiful fan tails and "leks" – gatherings of males who put on a show for females during the breeding season. They're also extremely secretive and have a notorious hatred of disturbance.
"You're almost surprised that you still have them in the UK, because it's not the kind of species that you anticipate to associate with the relatively boring species of Britain," says Bamber. "They're so big and so unique in the colouration, [with] their big, massive fan tails."
Conservationists have been pursuing efforts to help the capercaillie in Scotland for decades, but efforts have continued to fall flat and the species is now in deep trouble in this part of the world. At the last count in 2021-2022, just over 500 of the birds remained here, putting them on the brink of extinction. "Capercaillie are struggling, there's no denial of that," says Bamber.
Bamber's experiment is part of a conservation tactic known as diversionary feeding. The idea is simple: divvy out hunks of meat in areas where capercaillie are known to live, at strategic times of the breeding season when the young are most vulnerable. Hopefully, predators that would usually target ground-based nests or young chicks on the forest floor will instead head for the easier meal.
It's a way of decreasing predation on capercaillies without killing the predators themselves, says Bamber, who is pursuing a PhD on the topic at the University of Aberdeen. In Scotland this is especially pertinent, as two of the capercaillies' main predators, pine marten and badger, are themselves protected species.
The tactic has shown promise so far. But it's just one of several new and sometimes surprising conservation measures being used in Scotland to try to bring the capercaillie back from the brink.
When I visit Abernethy in mid-September, Carolyn Robertson and I spend the day studiously avoiding capercaillies.
In fact, helping people – and their dogs – avoid capercaillies is more or less Robertson's job description. As project manager for the Cairngorms Capercaillie Project, she has been leading a charge to inform people about how they may be inadvertently disrupting the birds.
I meet Robertson in the car park of the Loch Garten Nature Reserve, Abernethy, a tract of Caledonian pine forest owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), one of a patchwork of landowners in the Cairngorms National Park.
Robertson has brought her dog, Mac, a huge, luscious brown flat-coated retriever who she keeps under control using a rope lead, gentle commands, a whistle and a pungent bum bag of sprats from which she occasionally feeds him.
We take a walk along the most used path of the nature reserve, to avoid the less-used parts where she says capercaillie are more likely to be. "Even if your dog is, as Mac is, on a lead, the very fact that he's here with us increases the likelihood of the capercaillie feeling threatened," says Robertson. Off the lead, dogs have been shown to flush out ground nesting birds with worryingly high rates.
Dogs are a common sight here: alongside resident dogs, the region has around 6,000 resident dogs and sees an estimated 150,000 visiting dogs per year. Robertson says an information campaign with resident dog walkers in the nearby Boat of Garten area has seen good results, with capercaillie now seen lekking for longer.
"The local dog walkers [now] feel that it's their responsibility to look after the capercaillies," she says. The hope is that residents will set the tone for visitors, who are less likely to have heard of a capercaillie, let alone understand the impact their dogs might have on them.
Many people use these woodlands for recreational purposes, and Scotland's right to roam gives them the right to, so long as they act responsibly. But people themselves also disrupt capercaillie. A 2011 study in Germany and Switzerland found higher stress hormone levels in capercaillie droppings found closer to tourism locations. Studies have found they will avoid woodland tracks by up to 120m (390ft), and thus may be avoiding up to 40% of the available Scottish habitat. "That's kind of how strongly they don't want to be anywhere near us," says Robertson.
Working out the best situation for capercaillie to thrive isn't easy, however. Robert Moss, a retired ecologist who previously worked for the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and has researched capercaillie for decades, says there could be an optimal amount of disturbance from people which scares off predators while leaving capercaillie relatively unaffected, sometimes known as the "human shield" effect.
The lichen-covered old Scots pine woodland Robertson and I are walking through is actually ideal capercaillie habitat: it's full of blaeberry (European blueberry) and young pine needles, which the birds feed on, and heather, which provides them cover. But Robertson views this path as somewhat of a sacrifice zone: her project encourages walkers to keep to paths like the one we are on, discouraging them from going elsewhere.
Mountain bikers, whose trails can pass through capercaillie habitat have been especially open to helping capercaillie, she says, such as by rerouting trails, putting up signs and avoiding early morning rides.
More difficult to contend with is some nature enthusiasts' desire to see or photograph a capercaillie, particularly while they are lekking.
Leks involve males gathering together on the forest floor in spring to strut around for hours, fanning their magnificent tails, sounding an array of pops, clicks and whistles, and fighting each other, while the far smaller females scrutinise them from the treetops.
A single photographer chasing a shot of a lek can end up disturbing and even disbanding it for good, says Robertson, adding that leks can otherwise remain in the same place for decades. When Robertson sees photos of capercaillie taken without a licence, she says, she just feels sadness for what are probably very stressed birds.
It's illegal in Scotland to disturb capercaillie without a licence when they are breeding. A seldom-granted licence from NatureScot, Scotland's wildlife agency is needed to visit nests or leks and requires strong mitigating measures. The Cairngorms Capercaillie Project's "Lek it be" campaign urges people to leave capercaillie in peace over the springtime. It has seen an especially positive response from the birding community, says Robertson.
Still, Scotland’s right to roam gives them the right to.
Every capercaillie matters, because at the last count in 2021-2022 only an estimated 532 of them remained in Scotland, a 52% drop since the survey in 2015-2016.
This is not the first time the situation has been desperate for capercaillie in the UK. Their status as a popular game bird led numbers to plummet, possibly to extinction, in the late 1700s. They were reintroduced from Sweden 50 years later, however: the only successful reintroduction of a grouse species anywhere in the world. By 1970 some 20,000 birds were thought to live across Scotland, but this fell to 2,000 birds in the early '90s. Even as conservation efforts have since risen, capercaillie numbers have continued to fall.
"The species has definitely declined alarmingly over the last couple of decades, and it will take a lot of work to stop it going extinct," says Neil Metcalfe, a professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Glasgow who chaired a scientific subcommittee which wrote a 2022 review of capercaillie conservation.
One major cause has been the proliferation of deer fences over the late 20th Century. A 2001 study by Moss found young birds suffer heavy mortality from flying into unseen wires, especially forest fences. Removing and marking fences has now been a long running intervention.
Capercaillies, huge, turkey-sized birds with wingspans of up to 1.25m (4.1ft), also need a lot of space, which is challenging in the Scottish Highlands, where patches of forest are surrounded by agricultural land. Just 1% of Scotland's original Caledonian Scots pine forests, where capercaillie thrive, remain.
The Cairngorms National Park, which includes Abernethy Forest, aims for 50% of its entire area to be managed principally for ecosystem restoration by 2045. Some areas in particular are working to expand Scots pine forests, including by a deer management project which sells venison (the national park has high numbers of deer, which nibble at young pine saplings, hindering their growth).
It is also working to restructure Scots pine plantations to better support capercaillie and restore forest bogs, which should be improving the hens' spring diet and that of young chicks, says Moss.
Woodland expansion offers benefits to many other species, as well as carbon uptake. It is part of an effort to move from a species-specific approach to ecosystem restoration to deliver benefits for multiple species, says Robertson. But forest expansion takes decades to provide a suitable habitat for capercaillies, which now need emergency measures to survive in Scotland.
Into this mix of measures has come Bamber's work on diversionary feeding using decoy deer meat. While culls of crows and foxes have previously been shown to help capercaillie, Bamber is looking at how to control predators, including protected badger and pine marten, non-lethally.
For his first study, published this year, he set up artificial capercaillie nests (using chicken eggs) across 60 sites of 1 sq km (0.4 sq miles) each, including in Abernethy Forest. In 30 of these sites, he stocked a central feeding station with deer meat over eight weeks in springtime. At the other 30 sites, no meat was put out. He also set up camera traps to watch what happened with the artificial nests.
Bamber used a waterproof kayaking sack to make it easier to carry the 10-15kg (22-33lb) of meat he would haul to each feeding station. "The smell was probably the worst part," he says. He'd also worry about coming across hikers who would think he was a murderer and flee the other way, he adds. "But thankfully, that never happened."
The work paid off: Bamber's research found that the areas with feeding stations saw 83% lower predation of the artificial capercaillie nests compared with areas where no meat was put down. "[The camera traps showed] pine marten were eating a lot of nests," says Bamber. "But we saw this massive reduction in the number of nests that they were consuming when we provided diversionary feeding."
Bamber's next study, not yet published, uses sightings of capercaillie chicks in camera traps as a measure of whether diversionary feeding is working and also shows positive results. "The early indication is that the impact is transferable," says Bamber.
It will be several years before the impact of diversionary feeding on the overall population becomes clear. "There's no silver bullet for saving capercaillie in Scotland, I don't think," says Bamber. "We may not save the species with reducing predation alone, but we may give them a bit more of a chance, kick the can along the road when we hopefully improve habitat [and] connectivity."
Metcalfe says the experimental trials so far are encouraging. "It needs to be done carefully… so that it does not lead to an increase in the numbers of predators – but I think that it can work," he says.
Boosting predator numbers is an obvious concern here, but Bamber says the short timeframe food is put out – and the season, when lots of other food is available – reduces the likelihood of that.
More land managers in the area are now starting to give diversionary feeding a go, says Robertson. "There's a sense that there's nothing to lose by doing it," she says. Anecdotal sightings of females with more chicks than usual late in the breeding season is promising, she says, though "time will tell whether or not it enables a population recovery".
Assessing the impact of these interventions so far is tricky. Every year, the RSPB does a "lek count" around Scotland. This year's survey found 153 displaying males in leks,15 fewer than in 2023, sparking concern.
However, lek numbers tend to give only a rough idea of how the population is faring and tend to fluctuate from year to year. They have remained at roughly similar levels since 2021.
The real impact of newer interventions such as reducing recreational disturbance and diversionary feeding will become clearer when the next population survey arrives, scheduled for 2026. "Anecdotally on sites they're talking about seeing more broods, bigger broods, more young birds, that kind of indicator," says Robertson. "I genuinely would be surprised if we've gone down in the last five years."
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Overhanging all these efforts, though, is another steadily encroaching change: climate change.
Research shows changes in climate have affected vegetation growth in spring, leading hens to be in poorer condition and so lay poorer quality eggs that hatch into less viable chicks, says Moss.
Wet springs are also difficult for capercaillie chicks, which can get cold and soggy and unable to dry off, says Robertson. "Essentially, chicks are dying of hypothermia." Colder, wetter springs also reduce the moth larvae insects chicks feed off, says Bamber.
Providing more bare ground and cover to help birds dry off and reducing stresses from other factors could help, says Robertson. But there's only so much that can be done. "The one big thing that will always impact [the population] is weather," she says. "We can be working our socks off, but if it's cold and wet, and chicks can't make it, then game over."
Research has also recently found a low genetic diversity in the Scottish capercaillie population. Along with the low numbers, this has led to early plans to reinforce the population with imported birds, including in a recent capercaillie "emergency" plan, delivered after a request from the Scottish government.
This is the "most comprehensive plan of its kind ever produced for this iconic bird", Eileen Stuart, NatureScot's deputy director of nature and climate change, told the press when the plan was launched in late September 2024. It includes plans to expand diversionary feeding and programmes to reduce disturbance, remove more fences and restore more woodland and bogs.
Metcalfe says he feels "heartened" by the plan, which will put "significant resources into a range of measures to protect the species".
Capercaillie may be on their last legs in Scotland, as well as in some other areas such as the French Pyrénées and the Spanish Cantabrian mountains. But elsewhere the situation is not so bad. There are significantly larger populations of capercaillie in Scandinavia and Russia, for example, where woodland cover is far higher than in Scotland. With the situation so desperate for so long for capercaillies in Scotland, are the conservation efforts worth it?
"For sure it's an iconic, amazing species and I just feel like there's that slippery slope, if we lose it, it's just another one that we've lost," says Robertson. "It's not unusual when you've got a really vulnerable species that you fix one issue and then another represents itself, and it's just a constant conservation challenge." Many of the interventions to support capercaillies, she adds, help other species too.
Back when Bamber was first studying zoology at university, he never expected to be doing a conservation project consisting of "roaming around the woods with a load of deer on my back", he says. "But here we are. It's still just as important, it still makes a big difference to species. So it's worth it in the end. They're amazing, amazing birds."
Despite being "very close" to extinction in Scotland, the capercaillie remains a "symbol of hope" here, says Moss.
"It is also a magnificent sight," he adds. "A single sighting can provide ordinary people with a cherished memory that enriches their lives forever."
*Jocelyn Timperley is a senior journalist for BBC Future. Find her on Twitter @jloistf
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From conserving water to scaling up solar, Sin City is investing millions in sustainability measures.
Las Vegas is notorious for bright lights, excess and hedonism. But America's playground – or to use its better-known nickname, Sin City – is going green. From water conservation and waste management to solar power, the city has invested millions in pushing sustainability initiatives.
"The effort began in earnest in 2005," says Marco Velotta, who serves as the city's sustainability officer, "and accelerated with the Recovery Act in 2009". The federal act set targets for renewable energy, water conservation, recycling and green buildings.
"With the Recovery Act and City Council direction, the city was able to make an initial investment of $75m (£58m) in sustainability projects," Velotta says.
Despite a dramatic population increase, water consumption has dropped "significantly", he says. By 2030, 50% of all Nevada's electricity is expected to be generated from renewable resources.
The Las Vegas strip in particular has doubled down on efforts to switch to renewable energy. Most resorts developed sustainability initiatives thanks to a 10-year-long 50% property tax abatement programme previously offered by the city (the scheme has now closed). The resorts are also required to comply with the state's standard of deriving energy from 40% renewable sources. "Most have exceeded 40%," says Velotta. "Las Vegas has come a long way in a short amount of time.
"Initially tourists were also surprised by the city's sustainability efforts. However, since Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in this area, sustainability has become a part of the city's overall story."
Even though the progress made by Las Vegas's notoriously excess-laden strip may seem impressive (Las Vegas's commercial sector accounts for one third of Nevada's total energy usage), the strip started from a "relatively low baseline", points out Steffen Lehmann, professor of architecture and urbanism at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. He adds, though, "notably, the strip is making strides, with a concerted effort to enhance the energy efficiency of resort hotels through solar power integration and increased natural daylight".
Solar city
Las Vegas is second in the US for solar capacity per capita – Honolulu is number one. "Sin City could be called Solar City," says Lehmann. And resorts have been capitalising on the 320 days of sunshine the city receives every year.
The hospitality company MGM Resorts International developed its own 100-megawatt solar array, which provides power to 11 of its properties in Las Vegas – the equivalent of powering 27,000 homes. But even this, plus additional energy bought from a solar supplier, isn't enough to power the 11 properties round the clock. The company has a goal to source all its energy from renewables by 2030.
Las Vegas lies in the water-scarce Mojave Desert, which makes water conservation "paramount" in the hotel chain's efforts to make its operations sustainable, says Michael Gulich, vice president of environmental sustainability at MGM Resorts International. He says the MGM hotel properties on the strip have conserved 16 billion gallons of water since 2007, thanks to "aggressive" water policies. These include replacing grass with desert-friendly landscaping, installing water-efficient taps across all properties, and reusing water at aquariums and in the Bellagio Fountain.
"The overall water use per capita [in Vegas] is still far too high," warns Lehmann. "There was simply such excessive waste before [resorts] started to conserve water in 2007."
In 2023, Resorts World Hotel announced it had achieved a milestone – being powered entirely by renewable energy sources, two years after it opened. NV Energy supplies the 3,500-room resort with renewable energy, derived from solar, geothermal and wind plants in Nevada.
The hotel's head of sustainability, Brandon Morrison, says that during construction, 13,000 tonnes of steel was salvaged from the framework of a development that was abandoned during the 2008 economic downtown. The firm invested more than $1bn (£772m) in energy efficiency upgrades, he adds.
"Although Resorts World presents impressive sustainability figures, it stands as an anomaly among the Strip's hotels, many of which perform poorly in terms of environmental responsibility," says Lehmann.
The significant solar power and water-saving initiatives that many resorts in Las Vegas are using are "necessary steps for a rapidly growing desert city", he adds. "The Strip has emerged as a notable case study in the effective use of renewable solar energy and water conservation."
A work in progress
There are still great challenges ahead for this vastly energy-intensive city.
"The primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the city are twofold: transportation, particularly from cars and trucks, and the excessive use of air conditioning," says Lehmann. "As a young desert city – only 119 years old – Las Vegas must work diligently to be resourceful and sustainable."
More resorts are developing their own solar power systems, which include battery backup systems so solar power can be stored and used when the Sun goes down. More than 97% of water used in Las Vegas is recycled, adds Lehmann, vital considering the rapidly depleting Colorado River on which the city depends for freshwater.
"It is gratifying for us to note that at one time Las Vegas was viewed as a city of waste and excess," says Velotta. "However, through our extensive sustainability efforts, we are now recognised as a world leader in sustainability and environmental commitment."
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Modern fences are often so thoroughly impenetrable, they can slice up already-scarce habitats and restrict wildlife to increasingly small scraps of land. What can be done to reduce their impact?
The Białowieża Forest, which straddles Poland and Belarus, is one of the last remaining primaeval landscapes in lowland Europe. This wilderness is still home to many of the animals that have been wiped out elsewhere across the continent, including bison, wolves and lynx.
Three years ago, however, a new threat arrived in the midst of this haven: a mass of steel and razor wire, running 186km (115 miles) down the border between Poland and Belarus, dividing the ancient forest in two.
The fence, more than 5m (16.5ft) high, was erected by the Polish government in 2022 in an attempt to stop migrants, largely from the Middle East and Africa, from crossing over. But as ecologists feared, the structure has been just as effective at preventing the free movement of wildlife.
There were good reasons to suspect that the barrier would harm Białowieża Forest's biodiversity. But tracking the real-life impacts of the new Polish fence has proven challenging. Scientists must negotiate the combined obstacles of exclusion zones, border security requirements and harsh winter weather.
Thanks to an urgency grant from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, however, a group of Polish scientists is giving it a try. Using camera traps, snow tracking and in-person observations, the team is beginning to measure the barrier's impacts on the forest. Their early results – which aren’t yet published – suggest that its flora and fauna are suffering in widespread – and occasionally surprising – ways.
Perhaps the most predictable of these impacts is that large animals can no longer move freely through the forest. "It's not a permeable barrier. Wolves, bison, even red and roe deer cannot pass because of these barriers that are now there," says Katarzyna Nowak, an assistant professor at the Białowieża Geobotanical Station, who is leading the research.
"This means that we're going to see a decrease in genetic diversity, especially for animals like moose and lynx… That makes them less resistant to disease or pathogens, given they are very genetically similar to one another, so we can anticipate effects 10 years down the line or sooner," says Nowak.
Some smaller animals can make it through to the other side, as Nowak's research has shown. Snowy weather has revealed the footprints of carnivores – red foxes, pine martens and invasive raccoon dogs – going right up to the border and probably through the steel bars. For these animals, the constant presence of the security guards, and the scraps of food they offer, is an attraction rather than a deterrent. Soldiers have even told the researchers about receiving visits from domestic Belarusian cats, says Nowak.
It is not just the animals that are impacted. The vegetation around the fence has changed too, says Nowak. Non-forest species are attracted by the light that forest clearance lets in, finding a rare opportunity to flourish in the absence of deer, says Nowak. Meanwhile, potentially invasive species like the perennial plant Canadian goldenrod, more suited to pavements than forest, have arrived on the building materials used to build the barrier. "So now we have this strip in the middle of Białowieża Forest that is just becoming something else," adds Nowak.
Many experts are now concerned that Białowieża Forest, which is renowned as one of Europe's most pristine ecosystems, may have become collateral damage in a political crisis.
A global problem
Around the world fences are ubiquitous, used for everything from border security to conservation, to farming or the demarcation of private property. They are frequently constructed but rarely removed, says Alex McInturff, an assistant professor at the University of Washington. As the length of the world's fences grows, experts are racing to understand their role in the landscapes they divide – and how to reduce their impacts.
Conservationists have historically focused on the impact of fences on the free movement of wildlife. But this underestimates the full spectrum of damage they can cause.
"The interesting thing about fences is that they are often invisible. They are so abundant, so common, that we've become almost blind to them. Yet, the length of fencing in the world could stretch to the Sun and back multiple times," says McInturff. In 2020, McInturff authored a paper highlighting the impact of fences on ecology. In doing so, he hoped to correct this blind spot and provide some pointers to conservationists and landowners who are considering putting up a fence – or perhaps taking one down.
According to McInturff, the impacts of fencing are both complex and nuanced, which can make dealing with them a challenge. The collateral damage caused by fences isn't limited to large mammals: they also affect everything from insects to songbirds to plants. Some creatures might even benefit from – even depend upon – their existence, says McInturff.
As at the Białowieża border, fences can lead to a "reorganisation" of the natural world, rather than a one-way loss of species. "To put it simply, in a fenced world, there are winners and there are losers," McInturff and his co-authors wrote in their paper.
As a general rule, however, the losers tend to be more numerous. The winners, meanwhile, are often the generalist species that can thrive within a range of habitats – the domestic cats and the invasive raccoons, for instance – at the expense of the delicate species with more specific requirements. In this way, says McInturff, fences reduce the richness and variety of the natural world.
An opportunity
McInturff is careful to stress that fences are not universally bad. They are an important tool in conservation, too. Fences can be used to exclude deer from certain areas, giving forests a chance to regenerate. Or they can keep a certain animal in. Many rewilding projects use them to confine reintroduced species to a chosen area, before they are licensed for general release. A small herd of bison have been introduced to Blean Woods near Canterbury in the UK, for instance, which for now are living and breeding behind a fence.
Even in such cases, however, there can be trade-offs. The success of a conservation fence is usually judged on whether it helps the target species – often a charismatic mammal, or something else valued by humans – ignoring the side effects on smaller animals and plants. One example highlighted in McInturff's paper is a fence in Australia, erected to exclude non-native foxes and domestic cats and dogs from the Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve, which accidentally led to a higher death rate among eastern long-necked turtles.
"It's rare that a fence is exclusively good or bad, but in general, the negative impacts of fences on ecology tend to outweigh the positive ones, when you look at this broad-scale lens of their impacts," says McInturff.
The most obvious way to deal with a fence is to remove it. But, given the trade-offs involved, that decision is not always an easy one. There are, however, some easy wins.
"There are a lot of legacy fences that are no longer really serving a particular purpose in the landscape," says McInturff. "I know there are some places in the US where there have been efforts to try and identify those and remove them. You just have to cover the cost of removal. From there, as the world awakens to the many impacts that fences can have, hopefully we'll be better positioned to do the calculus required to make these harder decisions," he says.
On the occasions when a fence is still necessary, it is possible to make certain adaptations. By ensuring that fences are visible, and that they provide enough space for animals to either jump over or crawl under, fence-builders can limit the damage of their work. Replacing barbed wire with smooth wire means that animals are less likely to become entangled and die.
With new technology has come further innovation. Increasingly, conservationists and farmers are putting GPS collars on their livestock to create virtual fences. These deliver a signal – either a high-pitched sound or an electric pulse – when the animal gets too close to the chosen boundary, while wild animals and plants are completely unaffected.
For most people, however, the humble garden fence offers an opportunity for change. The urban landscape has become fragmented and disconnected from the wider environment, and biodiversity is suffering as a result.
Yet it is possible to benefit local wildlife without actually removing these barriers. One way of improving connectivity for wildlife is by cutting small holes in the bottom, allowing small animals to move more easily between properties, boosting their chances of finding food or a mate. In the UK, hedgehog conservation groups advocate for 13cm x 13cm (5in x 5in) "hedgehog holes" at the base of walls and fences, to create "hedgehog highways". This allows the spiky mammals to roam more freely among gardens, which in some places are their primary habitat.
Another way to think about fences is as an opportunity to add habitat, explains wildlife gardening expert Kate Bradbury. "I think all bare fences are a complete waste of space, so I cover everything in plants," she says. "I've got climbing roses, clematis, a few types of honeysuckle, hops, ivy, climbing hydrangea. All of that provides a smorgasbord of food, flowers, berries and leaves," she says.
As these plants mature, they can also provide nesting places for birds, Bradbury explains. Even mice, frogs and toads might clamber into this three-dimensional habitat. Drilling holes in fence posts, meanwhile, can provide a helping hand to solitary bees. While this doesn't necessarily get around the fact that fences are a barrier to the free movement of some wildlife, it can still boost their ecological value.
Another option is to replace fences with hedges. Hedges provide habitat for a wide range of wildlife, from frogs to birds, and though they have the advantage of appearing like solid barriers to human eyes, for many species they are just as easy to navigate through as any other vegetation. They also tend to require less maintenance when chosen carefully, though some hedging plants can be invasive.
A suburban garden may look very different to the primaeval forests of Białowieża. But just like vast woodlands, gardens can provide valuable habitat for wildlife. As countries throughout the world grapple with the challenge of migration, many experts believe that border barriers are more likely to go up than down. And yet, the individual can have an impact. We can literally begin in our own backyard.
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Scientists added a new shade to a graphical representation of global temperature change to keep up with our warming world. They are now adapting the idea to illustrate other environmental challenges.
Their journey had taken 115 days at sea, travelling 15,810km (9,823 miles) between Norway and Homer, Alaska. Along the way, the crew aboard the hand-built expedition sailing yacht Abel Tasman had threaded their way past the rugged coastlines of Iceland, Greenland and Canada before passing through the Bering Strait to their final destination.
Once impossible to cross, this sea lane between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans – known as the Northwest Passage – is becoming more accessible as the Arctic sea ice disappears, accelerated by a warming planet.
"It's wild. It's different. You don't know what to expect," says Keith Tuffley, owner of the Abel Tasman, environmental activist and leader of the expedition. He left a career in investment banking to embark on this adventure, as he'd always wanted to cross the Northwest Passage.
"I was keen to use this expedition to communicate and further explore the vulnerabilities of the Arctic to climate change," Tuffley says. "We need to communicate that this is destabilising the entire planet. Not many people live there, so it's sort of out of sight, out of mind. That's absolutely wrong."
Back in January 2024, before embarking on the trip, he realised that one of his sails, the gennaker (a large downwind sail), needed to be replaced as it was falling apart. In a moment of inspiration, he had an idea.
"The climate stripes have always been something that impacted me, it's such a powerful image," he says. "It suddenly occurred to me, we should put them on the gennaker."
The "climate stripes" – also known as the "warming stripes" – are a graphical representation of the changes in the planet's temperature over time since 1850, shown as vertical bars of colour. The pattern generally goes from blue shades to redder ones, illustrating how the planet has warmed as humans have emitted more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Although it was not easy, Tuffley managed to get a custom-made sail with the climate stripes printed across it.
"It was a lot of fun sailing it," he says. "There's no other sail quite like this one, it's beautiful and has a great statement. We wanted to make people wonder about the story behind, and I think that's what's powerful about the climate stripes, you can create images that draw people in."
Tuffley says that one of the most striking days for him was travelling across the Disko Bay in western Greenland, where its biggest glacier meets the sea. The Greenland ice sheet is melting, and the rate of ice loss has increased six-fold since the 1980s. Both glacial and sea ice melt are contributing to an enormous amount of freshwater into the ocean, with global implications.
"It just so happened that when we were crossing that Bay, it was actually the hottest day ever recorded," he says. "We realised that we were seeing and hearing a melting planet. It really was beautiful seeing all these icebergs melting, but it was also sad."
That day – 22 July 2024 – was the hottest day on record, according to a Nasa analysis of global daily temperature data.
Although it may feel distant, the Arctic plays an important role regulating the global climate, and it is warming faster than the rest of the world, with consequences for marine ecosystems, sea levels and food security. The warming of the Arctic also affects belts of wind known as the jet streams while melting ice alters ocean currents, leading to further changes in the Earth's climate, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
Earlier in 2024, the climate stripes were updated with an extra colour at both ends – a darker blue and a darker red. The reason was that 2023 was so hot that the team behind the stripes at the University of Reading, in the UK, decided to change the scale.
But it is already looking likely that temperatures will outstrip the scale again if the current trend continues. The boreal summer for 2024 (June to August) was the warmest on record globally. It has raised concerns that average surface air temperatures for 2024 will surpass those seen in 2023 to become the hottest year since records began.
If this happens, then the stripe for 2024 will be the darkest red on the updated scale, says Hawkins.
Some scientists believe that recent extreme weather events have been worsened by climate change. One study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that global warming may have caused over 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of the US, while the World Weather Attribution group reported that climate change was a key driver of the hurricane's catastrophic impacts. Similar statements were made about Storm Boris, which caused damage in Eastern Europe, Austria and Italy.
More like this:
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"We're warming the planet through our actions, and it's causing these types of events to become more severe and more common, causing financial damages, deaths and misery for millions of people," says Ed Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading who created the climate stripes graphic. "And it's only going to get worse until we manage to stop the planet warming."
The climate stripes are also being reimagined to help illustrate other crises facing the planet. Not all have a negative story to tell either.
The "air quality stripes" for major cities around the world, show outdoor concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution from 1850 to 2021 based on satellite data and climate models. In some major cities the stripes show how air quality has actually improved as measures to tackle air pollution have taken effect. But there are still many where the air has worsened.
"We were very much inspired by the climate stripes because they are a very effective tool for messaging," says Kirsty Pringle, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and project manager of the air quality stripes, which launched in August 2024. After testing different styles and asking for feedback, they decided on a version that uses colour stripes, but with additional layers of information such as a legend with air quality ratings (ranging from 'very good' to 'extremely poor'), an average concentration line and in some cases annotations of historical context.
"The response overall has been really positive," Pringle says. "I certainly don't think we would have received as much interest if we had just done a series of line graphs, without them being visually striking as well as informative."
Pringle believes that by now many people are familiar with the climate stripes, which helps those outside the academic community quickly understand the message they convey. But they also demonstrate some of the subtleties in the challenges facing many areas.
"Whereas the climate stripes have a very simple, global message that the Earth is warming, the air quality stripes have a more complex message, in that you have some cities where the air is getting cleaner, and other cities with increasing pollution," she says. "So we have two different stories depending on where you are."
Another notable distinction with air quality, Pringle says, is that we already have a lot of the solutions and it is easier to address than climate change.
"It's a really fixable problem," she says. "Acting on climate change is obviously very urgent, but with air pollution you have the benefit that if you take steps, you will see the effect relatively quickly."
Another variation are the "biodiversity stripes", which in a similar manner use bars of colours to show the loss of biodiversity over time, mainly going from green to grey.
Miles Richardson, who leads the nature connectedness research group at the University of Derby in the UK, was troubled that biodiversity loss gets less coverage than other global issues. Richardson was familiar with the climate stripes and thought it would be good to do a version for biodiversity since nobody had done them.
"There's a battle for attention every day, especially if you live in an urban environment. But the stripes format seems to breakthrough and grab people's attention," he says.
He found biodiversity data, spoke with ecologists, consulted with other experts, and released them in 2022. He wanted the stripes to represent the data and engage people to get a message across about the decline of biodiversity around the world.
"They became very popular. Within three months they went global, which I think speaks to the power of the stripes format. People get it," says Richardson. "I think both the climate and the biodiversity stripes show the symptoms of a failing relationship with nature. That's the underlying cause, and we need to change that."
For Tuffley, that change is possible, but it requires a shift in mindset to view the problem as an opportunity.
"We do have a battle on our hands with this, but we can create huge economic and social change by addressing these challenges," he says. "If we get inspired, then we can create positive energy and we can solve this, but each of us has a role to play."
In the meantime, the Abel Tasman yacht is out of the water for the winter, but next year Tuffley intends to unfurl the climate stripes sail again to continue spreading their message.
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The climate-damaging vapours left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight.
Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect.
Researchers argue these smoky trails essentially double the amount of heating that’s caused by aviation's use of fossil fuels.
The problem will be discussed at the UN climate conference, COP29, in Baku for the first time.
Contrails form in the sky in the same way that your breath goes misty on a chilly morning.
When a plane passes through cold humid air, the contrails form as the vapour from the engines condenses on unburned fuel fragments in the exhaust stream.
While the causes of contrails have been known about for decades, it’s only in recent years that the climate warming impact of these human generated clouds has been recognised.
“They create an artificial layer of clouds, which traps the heat from the Earth that’s trying to escape to outer space,” said Carlos Lopez de la Osa, from the Transport & Environment campaign group, which has carried out a new study on the solutions to contrails.
“The scale of the warming that's associated with them is roughly having a similar impact to that of aviation carbon emissions.”
Conspiracy theories have grown up around contrails, with some people alleging they are in fact “chemtrails” that contain chemical or biological substances.
The aim of these chemtrails is either vaccinating the population, spreading pandemics or controlling the minds of the masses, the conspiracy theories go on to claim.
All of these ideas are completely untrue.
“It is unfortunate that these conspiracy theories are muddying the water on an issue where we need a lot of consensus, a lot of clarity,” said Matteo Mirolo, from Breakthrough Energy, and one of the organisers of the COP29 discussion about the contrails.
“Chemtrails are an unfounded theory. There's simply no scientific backing.”
The COP event aims to draw attention to the fact that relatively simple changes to aviation practice could eliminate much of the warming impact of these trails.
According to the Transport & Environment study, some 80% of the warming associated with contrails is generated by just 3% of flights.
Tweaking the flight paths of a handful of aircraft could reduce contrail warming by more than half by 2040, at a cost of less than £4 per flight.
Geography and a flight's latitude have a strong influence on whether a contrail is warming. Flights over North America, Europe and the North Atlantic region accounted for more than half of global contrail warming in 2019, the report said.
Time of day also influences the climate effects of contrails. Those formed by evening and night flights have the largest warming contribution. Seasonality is also important - the most warming contrails tend to occur in winter.
“Planes are already flying around thunderstorms and turbulence areas,” Mr Lopez de la Osa said.
“We will need to add one more constraint to flight planning, which is avoiding areas of contrail formation.”
“Of the climate solutions which are being discussed at COP29, it's arguably one of the simplest ones.”
The researchers are hoping that by holding this event at COP they will spread awareness of the problem and the solutions.
They point to the huge amounts of money and research going into developing sustainable aviation fuels.
They believe that tackling contrails could achieve a major win for the climate, at a fraction of the cost.
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The president of COP29’s host country has told the UN climate conference that oil and gas are a "gift of God".
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev criticised "Western fake news" about the country's emissions and said nations "should not be blamed" for having fossil fuel reserves.
The country plans to expand gas production by up to a third over the next decade.
Shortly afterwards, UN chief António Guterres told the conference that doubling down on the use of fossil fuels was "absurd".
He said the "clean energy revolution" had arrived and that no government could stop it.
Separately, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer pledged further reductions on emissions, saying the UK will now aim for an 81% decrease by 2035. The UK called for other countries to match the new target.
"Make no mistake, the race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, the economy of tomorrow, and I don't want to be in the middle of the pack - I want to get ahead of the game," Sir Keir told the conference.
Some observers had expressed concerns about the world’s largest climate conference taking place in Azerbaijan.
Its minister for ecology and natural resources - a former oil executive that spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar – is the conference's chairman.
There are also concerns that Azerbaijani officials are using COP29 to boost investment in the country’s national oil and gas company.
But addressing the conference on its second day, President Aliyev said Azerbaijan had been subject to "slander and blackmail" ahead of COP29.
He said it had been as if "Western fake news media", charities and politicians were "competing in spreading disinformation... about our country".
Aliyev said the country’s share in global gas emissions was "only 0.1%".
"Oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all... are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them."
Oil and gas are a major cause of climate change because they release planet-warming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide when burned for energy.
The US is also under the spotlight at the conference, following the election victory of Donald Trump - a known climate sceptic.
On Monday, US President Joe Biden's envoy John Podesta called out president-elect Trump's view that climate change was a hoax and said the US team would continue to work on the deal passed at COP28 in 2023.
He added that Washington was also working on a deal passed last year in Dubai to triple renewable power by 2030.
Addressing the conference in Baku on Tuesday, UN Secretary General Guterres decried “doubling down on fossil fuels”.
"The sound you hear is the ticking clock," he said.
"We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and time is not on our side."
He called 2024 a "masterclass in climate destruction" with disasters being "supercharged by human-made climate change".
The UN's World Meteorological Organization previously said that 2024 is on track to be the world's warmest year on record.
Guterres said "a new finance goal" was needed, with wealthiest countries paying the most.
"They are the largest emitters, with the greatest capacities and responsibilities," he said.
"Developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed."
The Azerbaijani president's comments are unlikely to derail talks behind the scenes, which are largely about getting more cash for poorer countries to help implement their climate plans.
Developing nations are calling for richer countries to agree together on a fund that could add up to $1 trillion, using public and private money.
Leaders of most of the world's biggest polluters were not present in Baku, including Biden, France’s leader Emmanuel Macron and India’s Narendra Modi.
The environment minister for Burkino Faso, a central African country among the poorest in the world, told the BBC that more cash was essential.
Roger Baro said it would help his nation deal with the current impacts of climate change in the country, which is experiencing widespread drought, flash floods and disease outbreaks.
The disasters occurred in the Sahel region, which saw temperatures of 45C this year in a heatwave that scientists said would have been impossible to reach without climate change.
Among other world leaders to take to the stage on Tuesday was Spain's prime minister, who called for "drastic measures" after floods killed more than 200 people in the country.
Experts say that climate change contributed to the heavy rainfall that caused the floods.
"We need to undergo decarbonisation, adapt our towns and infrastructure," said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
COP29 is scheduled to last until 22 November, but there are already fears that the tricky issues on the table could make a final agreement very difficult.
A Soviet zoologist with a passion for long-extinct mammals set out to reinvigorate the landscape of the Caucasus in the 20th Century. Azerbaijan still bears the scars of his ambition today.
In the middle of the 20th Century, Russian zoologist Nikolai Vereshchagin set out on an ambitious mission across the mountainous landscape of Azerbaijan, and neighbouring Armenia and Georgia. He wanted to collect every possible record of the animals that had vanished from this region. Along Azerbaijan's Caspian Sea coast, cave paintings record an otherworldly savannah where humans hunted auroch bulls, gazelles and wild bezoar goats. Vereshchagin criss-crossed the Caucasus on his travels, finding endless signs of ongoing change and loss, including thousands of fossils and bone fragments from lost animals such as steppe mammoths and Turanian tigers.
In 1954, Vereshchagin used his finds to write a sweeping narrative charting the evolution of the Caucasus over more than 11,000 years; first amid a naturally warming climate and later due to "chaotic human activity", he wrote. His book, The Mammals of the Caucasus, was greeted by his Soviet superiors as a brilliant and "somewhat unusual book", not so much an authoritative history as a collage of fragmentary evidence, that linked up ancient paleontological data with recent stories of great game hunts led by deposed dukes and tsars.
To modern eyes, the book stands out for a very different reason. Its author was not just recording the region's ecological history, he was experimentally changing it. Vereshchagin sought to remake the ecosystems he documented, replacing the extinct creatures in the landscape with imported animals on a massive scale. His efforts left a mark on the region that can still be felt today, leaving Azerbaijan and its neighbours with thriving, stubborn populations of invasive species.
The decades following the 1930s were a time of audacious experimentation in the Soviet Union's wild spaces. Vereshchagin was part of the team that spearheaded efforts to reimagine these landscapes, providing animals to trap for fur and hunt for game. Vereshchagin was a keen hunter, and once startled a conference audience with his own homemade "Palaeolithic" spear, tipped with an authentic point. Beyond hunting, there was also a more nebulous goal of "enriching" local ecosystems.
Experiments in so-called "acclimatisation" of animals from one country to another were prolific. In Azerbaijan, nine species of mammals were introduced, including short-tailed chinchillas from the Andes, raccoon dogs from China and Sika deer from Japan, as well as striped skunks, the famously pungent residents of North America.
Most of these species struggled to get a foothold in the varied and rugged landscape of Azerbaijan – but one species in particular thrived. Through the 1930s, Vereshchagin had personally supervised the introduction of an initial community of 213 giant South American rodents – known as coypu, nutria, swamp beavers, swamp rats or river rats – whose durable hides could be used to make fur hats and coat trims. Without realising, Vereshchagin and his team had proudly brought to the Caucasus an animal that would, by the 21st Century, be recognised as one of the world's 100 worst invasive species.
Today, 70 years on from publication of Vereshchagin's book, coypu can be found across almost every wetland in Azerbaijan, says ecological researcher Zulfu Farajli. When Farajli leads walking tours around the Gizilagaj State Reserve, a wetland reserve bordering the Caspian Sea, visitors are always interested in this hefty rodent with a long, naked, rat-like tail. "They always ask, 'What is this animal?'" says Farajli. Few expect to discover these shy rodents originate in the swamps of South America, nor to learn of their ability to sow destruction in their adopted surroundings.
In the past five years, Farajli's curiosity has grown into a campaign that aims to kickstart recognition of historical introductions of alien species and track the extent of the coypu's spread. He aims first to stimulate research on the coypu's impact, and answer some basic questions: just how many coypu are there in Azerbaijan? And how much damage – over the course of 90 years or so – have they really done?
A prolific rodent
Adult coypu are typically about two feet (60cm) in body length with a foot-long tail. Fully grown, each weighs as much or more than a Jack Russell terrier (7-9kg/15-20lb). Though similar in appearance to capybara – the world's largest rodent and beloved star of internet videos – coypu tend to have fewer adoring fans. Perhaps their most noticeable feature is their buck teeth: a pair of long, orange incisors that never stop growing.
In their native range in the Argentinean Pampas and across the southern half of South America, they are found living in pairs or large colonies, on wetlands, lakes and riverbanks. Emerging to feast in the evening, these rodents graze voraciously on roots and swamp grasses, with studies showing they prefer aquatic plants as they are safer from predators around water. Coypu are capable swimmers, thanks to a pair of large, webbed feet on their hind legs, and are able to dive for up to five minutes to feed and escape from predators, including caiman, jaguar, mountain lion, ocelot and eagles.
The coypu's journey to becoming an invasive pest began with Spanish colonists in the 18th Century. Conquistadors sailing the Rio de la Plata, the river that divides Argentina and Uruguay, mistook it for otter and gave it the name "nutria", the Spanish word for "otter". The name "coypu" comes from the indigenous Mapuche word used in Chile and eastern Argentina. Under the Spanish, coypu hides began to be exported to Europe, mainly for hats and neck-warmers, and by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, live coypu were shipped to breed in fur farms in Europe and North America. The rodents readily adapted to domestication.
Today, coypu can be found on every continent except Antarctica and Oceania. Populations can quickly multiply. Female coypu typically give birth to four to five offspring in one litter, and can get pregnant just days later, allowing them to give birth two or three times each year. In many places, they are free to multiply without the natural predators they face in South America, although there are signs they have become enmeshed in local food chains: they are eaten by red fox and grey wolf in Italy, by golden jackals across the Balkans, and by a white-tailed eagle in Croatia. Humans have sometimes followed – in the 1960s coypu meat was reportedly sold in British restaurants disguised as "Argentine hare" and a Moscow burger restaurant has sold it in the past decade as a healthy meat (it is leaner than beef).
Untold numbers
Outside of Europe and North America, the coypu's spread has been less well-documented. The spread of coypu is believed to be widely underestimated and new arrivals mistaken for beaver, muskrat or other rodents. One study that analysed videos and photographs on YouTube and Flickr found coypu living unrecognised in Kenya, Iran and Lebanon, with major clusters in the Caucasus and in East Asia.
Throughout the world fur farm escapees are common, but the Caucasus history is slightly different. Farajli's research found that many coypu were acclimatised to their new surroundings in enclosed areas, before being released into open or "semi-wild" areas where they could once more be trapped. In many areas of the former Soviet Union, acclimatisation efforts were responding to a long history of trapping – capturing animals in traps, often for fur and meat – adds Sandro Bertolino, an animal ecologist at the University of Turin.
By the time he wrote The Mammals of the Caucasus, Vereshchagin believed his task was only part-complete. One piece of unfinished business was the "planned extermination" of species he saw as undesirable, such as wolves and jackals, which hunted game and livestock. Coypu should be introduced much more widely, he believed, including semi-wild into new areas like the Lenkoran Lowlands, neighbouring the Gizilagaj State Reserve, on the edge of the Caspian Sea. In conjunction, he saw these efforts as a way to make the environment better suited to supporting human residents, at a time of rapid economic development in the Soviet Union.
No one knows if Vereshchagin ever got his wish for a mass release into the Lenkoran Lowlands or whether the coypu made their way there anyway, says Elshad Askerov, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Azerbaijan. But by 1966, a report looked at whether there were "biotechnical measures", such as hunting their predators, that could help the species to spread, finding that many coypu were being eaten by predators such as wolves. Throughout the 20th Century, Soviet authorities supported hunting of these apex predators.
"One hundred rubles they gave for one killed wolf," says Askerov, adding the bulk of that fee was a reward for killing a pest. "At that time, my father's monthly salary was 120-140 rubles."
From the initial 213 coypu introduced to Azerbaijan by Vereshchagin, there might now be thousands, says Farajli – with populations spreading into Armenia and Georgia. "I don't remember any wetland I've been in and not really seen the tracks," says Farajli. The animal leaves behind it a characteristic trail made by two webbed hind feet bisected by a dragging tail.
Coypus' full population and range in Azerbaijan are key facts that would allow ecologists to understand its impact and how to respond, but there are no comprehensive estimates of either.
"Vereshchagin mentions that in five years their numbers boosted to 400-500 animals and they only released just over 200 animals. So they doubled in five years," says Farajli. "It's super-crazy for me how capable these animals were."
In Azerbaijan, the impacts of the coypu are felt in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The Caucasus region sits at a "biogeographic crossroads" where the flora and fauna of Europe meets Central Asia and the Anatolian peninsula, earning recognition from Conservation International as one of the 25 most biologically rich and most endangered terrestrial ecosystems in the world.
Farajli became aware of their impact in Gizilagaj State Reserve on the Caspian Sea coast. A Ramsar wetland of global importance designated for the protection of birds, the reserve is an especially important area for migration and wintering, supporting endangered species such as the white headed duck, ferruginous duck and marbled teal. In recent years it has been a resting place for the final Siberian Crane in a western population that has declined to hunting and the degradation of wetlands on its 5,000km (3,100-mile) migratory route between the Arctic and Iran.
An experiment led by Bertolino in central Italy showed that coypu posed an extra risk to birds by crushing eggs when they clumsily sit down for a rest in nests. As a bird watcher, Farajli says he wants to see more research about the interactions between coypu and Azerbaijan's birdlife. "During the bird watching trips or tours, we always see them in the exact same habitats where we see wetland birds," he says.
Even without new research to understand their impact on sites like this, we have the knowledge from experiments abroad, like Bertolino's, to make sound decisions, Askeov and Farajli believe, including that populations should be managed in protected areas like Gizilagaj State Reserve.
The bounty problem
Few countries have managed to fully eradicate coypu. The UK, however, is the "classic example" of a country that succeeded, says Bertolino.
Having been imported in the 1920s, coypu reached an estimated 200,000 animals in the early 1960s. After a coordinated hunting and trapping effort, the UK Department of Agriculture's Coypu Research Lab trapped the final wild coypu in Britain in 1989. But such comprehensive removal is much more challenging in countries where numbers have grown very large, resources are scarce, and new coypu can reenter across national borders.
Many countries and US states instead focus on managing coypu populations to minimise harmful impacts. "It is heavily controlled in some [states] on the south-east coast – Louisiana, for example," says Bertolino. In Louisiana, where millions of coypu roam free, the state pays bounties of $6 (£4.60) or more for each of the copyu's rat-like tails delivered, averaging more than 200,000 each breeding season. The approach has been credited with reducing the amount of healthy marsh being converted into open water.
In Azerbaijan, WWF's Askerov advocates a similar approach, bringing back some of the Soviet-era bounties but for invasive pests rather than native predators. But such programmes come with risks, warns Friederike Gethöffer, wildlife biologist at University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in Germany. Bounties often improve hunting rates, she says. "Nevertheless, they are discussed controversially, because they might also create a market and result in a management that does not aim at eradication," she says.
Bounties attract hunters to areas where there are high density populations of target species, where they can gun down many in a day, says Bertolino. This can thin out large populations but rarely removes them from a location completely. "When the trapping or shooting becomes less profitable, you move to another area and then to another area because you want to maximise your income," he says. In contrast, effective management as in the UK continues once the population has started to decrease. "Otherwise, you simply remove some animals but then the next year reproduction can compensate," he says.
In Azerbaijan, Farajli says the most important thing is overturning the current fee systems that means hunters must pay if they shoot a coypu. Since 2004, Azerbaijan's Cabinet of Ministers has charged 1,65 AZN (about $1) for each nutria tail, and may also fine hunters an additional 22 AZN ($13/£10) for "damage to nature" for illegal hunting. These payments exceed those for hunting some protected species listed in Azerbaijan's Red Book of endangered species, Farajli notes. (The Government of Azerbaijan did not respond to a request for comment.)
But the first step, Farajli says, is for local people to know more about the coypu's story. Nine decades after their first releases, coypu exists today in wetlands near Gizilagaj State Reserve. Local shepherds and fishermen see the animals every day and pay little attention, Farajli says. "It's not dangerous, it's not affecting their lives," he says. "So they don't really care."
Farajli wants to see that change. Some nine decades after the acclimatisation strategies got underway, the animals at risk are those like the Siberian crane, whose last individual, named Omid ("hope" in Persian) was not seen in Azerbaijan last year. On every tour Farajli sees this ecosystem and how important it is for rare birds. "And then one guy or a group of guys decides: 'Let's bring another completely new animal to the environment', and destroys everything, in a sense," he says.
Despite Vereshchagin and his colleagues' belief that they were replenishing the Caucasus' fauna, it seems evident now that invasives like coypu are depleting it.
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The election of Trump last week was a worrying development for action on climate change, as least in the short term experts have said.
“He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement," Mr Podesta said.
“That is what he has said, and we should believe him."
The 2015 Paris agreement saw countries agree to try to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C.
Leaders from nearly 100 countries will address the meeting in the coming days.
COP29 had been billed as an opportunity to solve the crucial issue of getting money to poorer countries to help them deal with the impacts of climate change and help them prepare for it.
But expectations for what the summit can achieve have been lowered by a Trump victory that makes Biden administration negotiators from one of the world's largest carbon emitters a lame duck in this process and unable to really promise much.
However, the election wasn’t the end of the struggle, Mr Podesta told reporters.
He believed that as a result of the policies put in place by President Biden and with the support of states and cities, US emissions would continue their downward trajectory, albeit at a slower pace.
“The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle and one country. This fight is bigger still because we are living through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country of the world."
As evidence that countries will continue to make progress on the issue, in the absence of leadership from the US, delegates signed off the final and most controversial component of the Paris climate agreement late on the first night of COP29.
It means that a global 'carbon market' can now been established, allowing richer nations to pay for projects in developing nations that reduce emissions and use this to meet their climate obligations. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas released by human activities.
This proposal is very attractive to richer countries in Europe as it is far cheaper to pay for a wind farm somewhere in Africa, for example, than to subsidise heat pumps at home.
Agreed over this had proved very tricky. There have been concerns about fraud and whether the carbon removals are real and permanent.
And despite it being passed some of those concerns remain, but supporters say it could unleash a flurry of market activity, worth up to $250bn a year flowing from rich to poor.
As a reminder to negotiators of the urgency of the situation there was fresh scientific gloom. The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report released to coincide with the conference's start, that 2024 is on track to be the world’s warmest year on record.
Its latest State of the Climate report also finds that our oceans are heating up rapidly and glacier melt is accelerating.
“We are on the road to ruin,” Mukhtar Babyaev, president of COP29 said in his opening remarks.
He went on to list examples of climate impacts now around the world, saying “these are not future problems” as rising temperatures were doing huge damage around the world right now.
The mood of delegates wasn't improved by the scale of the main task facing negotiators here.
Amid energy and economic crises, developed countries are expected to find billions extra in climate finance for developing nations.
Richer countries are willing to increase their contributions, as long as major emerging economies like China and the Gulf states also chip in.
UN climate change chief Simon Stiell said that two thirds of the world cannot afford to cut emissions quickly enough to keep the 1.5C temperature threshold alive.
If they didn’t get the cash to cut their carbon, everyone suffers, he said.
“Let's dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity. An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest,” he told delegates.
One issue exercising the minds and pockets of attendees at this gathering is the price of food and drink in the conference centre
Our colleague Aygul Mehman, a journalist with the BBC’s Azerbaijani service, was charged 41 AZN (the Azerbaijani currency) for her modest lunch of soup, a bean salad and a dry roll. That’s about £18 ($24).
"It’s like they are taking money from our pockets," one delegate told BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt as he was queuing up for food.
This is a serious issue. Delegates from poorer nations often complain about how much these big conferences cost them when you add in flights and hotels and the total can come to many thousands of pounds.
When it comes to solving climate change, every word counts. From the pitfalls of metaphors to the multiple meanings of the word "energy" – this is how translators at global climate negotiations navigate the language of global warming.
"I remember one morning we returned to our hotel at around 4:00am and slept for two hours. Then we were told that the final document was adopted so we had to rush back to the conference to translate the outcome documents," says Jianjun Chen, a Chinese language translator at the United Nations, based in Geneva.
He is recounting the frantic hours before negotiators reached a deal at the 24th Convention of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – or COP24 – in Katowice, Poland, in 2018. Chen, who has worked at the UN for 14 years and translated multiple documents from the UN climate talks into Mandarin, isn't fazed by the long hours or lack of sleep.
This year's UN climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, will be his 13th. As world leaders gather for COP29 in Baku, Chen and 25 other translators are preparing for a slew of new climate vocabulary to enter the discourse – words that will dictate the ways countries and campaigners approach climate action.
Chen also translated important documents when the landmark Paris Agreement was signed at the UN climate talks in 2015 (COP21), pledging to try to prevent global warming to well below 2C, with a stretch target of a 1.5C limit. (Read more about why 1.5C is a critical threshold in this story by Martha Henriques). "I was called to start working in the middle of the night at 2 or 3am. Since there was always a tight deadline, we didn't have the luxury to fall asleep," he recalls.
"The final text is the result of negotiations, sometimes very intense negotiations. So you have to be very careful about the wording. It probably just looks very ordinary, but the member states spent days and nights to reach an agreement on this final wording."
The work is strenuous for negotiators and translators alike. "I've heard some of the delegates actually sleep in the conference room," Chen says.
Translating page after page of climate policy under immense time pressure is not an easy task. "A lot of these reports that we translate on climate change are written by scientists," says Chen. They contain complex technical terms such as "carbon neutrality" and "loss and damage", which require knowledge of the basic meanings of the individual terms, as well as the environmental context.
"The challenge for us as translators when it comes to these types of documents is that we need a lot of technical expertise," says Chen.
Word choices
At COP28 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last year, negotiations almost collapsed as almost 200 countries argued over how to include fossil fuels in a UN climate pledge for the first time.
The phrase "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems" appears in the UAE Consensus, the final agreement which Chen and his colleagues translated. The 21-page document took aim at fossil fuels and their role in exacerbating climate change. The UAE Consensus signaled a landmark commitment toward reducing the world's reliance on coal, oil and gas, though to what degree and how quickly remained unclear. Politicians at the conference praised the "historic achievement", but many climate activists and scientists criticised the language for being too weak.
For translators like Chen, the goal is to keep translations as close to the connotation and intent of the original language, regardless of the climate politics. But translating the text still poses some serious challenges. "In Chinese, the phrase 'transitioning away from something' is difficult to describe without specifying what the object transitions toward," Chen says.
Chinese media outlets had translated the phrase into Chinese in several ways: "getting rid of fossil fuels", "eliminating", or "abandoning", says Chen, which he and his colleagues decided felt "too strong".
"After several rounds of discussions with my colleagues, I settled on something along the lines of 'realising a transition in energy systems by gradually distancing ourselves from fossil fuels' [in Mandarin] which I believe was closer to the original tone," Chen says.
In other places in the world, translators may have to be more creative, especially when a word or phrase has no direct equivalent in the target language – sometimes termed "untranslatable" words or phrases. (Read more about how certain "untranslatable" terms affect our emotions.)
A "just transition" is term that refers to how countries can shift to a greener economy in a fair and inclusive way for everyone. Even in English it can have a second meaning – without context it could simply be a request to get on with things. But in other languages it can be even more complex.
Sabir Ahamed, a researcher at the Pratichi Institute in Delhi, India, worked with a linguist to translate "just transition" into Bengali for a study on local mine closures in West Bengal, India. As of 2023, India is the world's second-largest coal producer and millions work in the coal mining sector. The Pratichi Institute's effort is part of a wider move by some English-speaking think tanks in India to make jargon-heavy climate change dialogue more accessible to Bengali-speaking communities.
The concept of the phrase is complex and has no direct equivalent in Bengali, says Ahamed. The linguist and he settled on the phrase kalo theke aalo, which together means "from darkness to hope". The phrase, while not an exact translation, contains the word kalo, which in West Bengal communities is already associated with coal, and thus captures a shared cultural understanding of the meaning, Ahamed says.
"It is easy to understand as the equivalent English is too complex and very technical – not for the lay person," he says. Since then, Ahamed says some members of the community have reached out to him regarding further research.
Conveying this information successfully is "vital" for tribal and minority communities in India who do not understand Hindi, says Ahamed. India's most recent commitment to net-zero emissions could affect thousands of jobs being phased out in the country's coal industry in the next two decades, according to a report from the nonprofit the National Foundation for India.
Lost in translation
Another language issue that comes up at climate talks is the problem of figures of speech, or what is called framing, says Arran Stibbe, a professor in ecological linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK. Stibbe is also founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association, a network of researchers who examine the role of language in the environment and the lives of humans.
There are different kinds of framing that affect the way people contextualise broad issues like climate change. For example, framing climate change as a global security threat creates a sense of immediacy and pressure to act, Stibbe says.
In the context of climate change, metaphoric framing can sometimes be misleading, says Stibbe. For example, climate change is sometimes likened to a time bomb, which he says is problematic because when a bomb goes off, the destruction is immutable and final, but climate change is a gradual change. Using this framing could suggest that climate action is a waste of time. "The [term] time bomb could make people give up. It's like, 'well, we're not going to be able to diffuse it, so it's going to happen, let's party,'" says Stibbe. "[But climate change] is not an all-or-nothing kind of situation."
Then there are dead metaphors. These are figures of speech that have lost the power of their original meaning through repeated popular usage, and they are a particular challenge for translation across cultures, says Stibbe. For most English speakers, killing time doesn't elicit the image of stabbing time with a knife – it simply means to let time expire. However, this kind of metaphor can undergo a change in what Stibbe calls "activation levels" when translated directly. What is "really a normal expression in one language can sound like a really strong metaphor in another language".
He has also heard climate change being described as "a rollercoaster which we may not survive". He chuckles at this comparison because rollercoasters are "typically not deadly".
"The other problem with the roller coaster one is that [it implies] we're going up and we're going down, but we don't actually have any control," says Stibbe, whereas the choices that governments and societies make can still sway the progression or de-escalation of the climate crisis.
Effective climate change discourse involves "being aware of the kind of frames that are being used, being aware of the problems that these frames have and being aware of a whole set of alternative ways of framing climate change", Stibbe says.
When Chen encounters metaphors, he tries to maintain them in the translation. In most cases, he will be able to translate metaphors literally, like "carbon footprint" (碳足迹, tàn zújì), but "if for some reason we cannot recreate the metaphors in Chinese, we will try to convey the meaning instead of the form". For example, the phrase "tipping point" is translated into Chinese as "critical point" (临界点, línjiè diǎn). But Chen says metaphors are fortunately not common occurrences in UN documents.
Beyond the crucial work in overcoming language barriers, there are other benefits to working closely with a translator, says David King, the UK's former climate envoy who led the country's negotiations during the Paris Agreement. Communication via a translator tends to be more thought-through, King explains.
"Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to," he says. "But to be honest, I love it, because it means that I speak sentence by sentence. And then, in the gap when it's being translated, I'm thinking of the next sentence. So instead of just rattling things off, I think your presentation is much clearer because of the need to provide that time for translation."
Climate justice
One of the biggest discussions at the UN climate talks every year is who is responsible for climate change and where the burden should lie in taking action to combat it and protect those most affected by mounting climate threats. This is considered an integral part of achieving climate justice.
Loss and damage, which focuses on whether wealthier countries should pay developing countries for the climate change damage they have caused, is a particularly thorny subject. Following decades of opposition from wealthy nations, a loss and damage fund was announced at COP27 in 2022. How much countries should pay into this fund will be discussed in Baku in November 2024 as part of climate finance negotiations.
Translators must carefully navigate the political waters at UN climate talks. Since there are major financial implications if countries are held liable for the climate harm they have caused, "we need to be cautious and strive to understand where the political sensitivities are", says Chen. (Find out more about what the world would look like if polluters footed the climate bill in this story by Isabelle Gerretsen).
Climate justice also involves including indigenous groups and poor countries, who tend to have been disproportionately impacted by climate change, in negotiations.
International organisations like the UNFCCC, the UN organisation responsible for the annual climate talks, have made efforts to include and recognise indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems. Yet, spaces for climate discourse can still harbour remnants of what Stibbe highlights as epistemic colonialism, where Western worldviews and ways of thinking are imposed on indigenous cultures. This can manifest in green colonialism, where discussions on environmental policies can outright disregard the rights of indigenous peoples. Framing issues with minority populations in mind can be beneficial in creating a more holistic climate discourse.
Indigenous and minority communities have important insights into the positive and negative impacts of climate change solutions, says Lisa Hayward, community engagement manager at the University of Washington Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. But in order to make those assessments, they often need information from academic and government sources to inform their decisions, which must be translated correctly, she adds.
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And in some cases, this a lack of adequate translations can lead to miscommunication and confusion when relaying critical climate information, which in turn cause harm to members of linguistic minority communities.
Asian, Arabic and Somali residents in Houston, Texas, missed out on outreach and resources following Hurricane Beryl in July 2024, according to local media reports, with some of them unaware that a storm of that magnitude was even heading to their area. A little under a quarter of Houston residents have limited English proficiency.
Such practices are not in line with climate justice, says Hayward. "Climate justice demands effective communication."
As Chen prepares to translate for COP29, his mission remains the same as when he started translating at UN climate talks in 2012.
"Translation becomes our universal language, bridging understanding and fostering collaboration, ensuring that every voice resonates in this vital dialogue," he says.
* An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Hindi was a non-Indo-European language and was corrected on 13 November 2024.
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Former dissidents, released secret service files and a zine in an East Berlin basement reveal a little-known chapter of Cold War history.
East Berlin, late November 1987, around midnight. In the basement of an old tenement building, 14-year-old Tim Eisenlohr is stapling pages coming off a printer smuggled in from the West. He and his friends are publishing a semi-legal magazine about the environmental problems plaguing their Socialist state, the German Democratic Republic: air pollution, dirty rivers, acid rain and hazardous nuclear reactors. Cut off from Western Europe by a fortified border with a death strip, and separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall, they are trying to spread information the East German censors don't want anyone to see.
Suddenly, the door flings open, and "around 15 armed members of the Staatssicherheit burst into the room, some with their guns drawn, led by a prosecutor", recalls Eisenlohr, referring to the East German secret police, also known as the Stasi. "They call out: 'hands up, switch the machine off, stand against the wall!'"
The men search and photograph the room, confiscate the printer – and then one of them utters the Stasi's notorious, cryptic line used to take away people for interrogation: "You're summoned to clear up an issue." One by one, Eisenlohr and the others are bundled into cars and taken to the Stasi's headquarters.
Named "Operation Trap", the raid and arrests were part of the Stasi's attempts to crush a group of people fighting for a cleaner environment – and for the right to speak out. The secret police's tactics ranged from interrogations and jail to bizarre mind games. In one incident, informants who managed to infiltrate the environmental movement covertly took coffee from a shared pantry without putting money into the coffee kitty. It was a psychological manoeuvre, aimed at sowing conflict and mistrust within the groups.
That plan did not work out – neither the psychological manipulation, nor the dramatic crackdown. On the contrary: Operation Trap became one of the very rare cases in history in which the Stasi was forced to back down. Standing against them were a tiny group of self-described peaceniks and eco nerds, who printed a magazine with a run of just a few hundred copies, and regularly ran out of ink. At one point, the US Congress even weighed in and sided with the producers of the little magazine. How did it all happen?
Interviews with dissidents from that time, and internal reports from the Stasi's secret archive, which was opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall, tell the surprising story of how a small environmental movement managed to take on a powerful dictatorship – and ultimately, won.
"I actually grew up as a very normal child in the GDR, but in a family where we were encouraged to ask questions," says Eisenlohr. His parents had grown sceptical of the regime. The family loved animals, and their flat in Berlin was always filled with "something fluttering about" he recalls – rescued birds, and once, even a pig. Eisenlohr spent as much time as he could outdoors, watching birds and beavers, camouflaging himself with a bedsheet in winter to observe animals in the snow.
In theory, such a passion for nature should have been in line with East Germany's stated goals: looking after the environment was enshrined in the GDR's constitution. In practice, however, state-owned industries and the heavy use of lignite (brown coal) as an energy source polluted the air and water. The pollution was so bad that it harmed people's health, and East German children grew up with poorer lung function than those in West Germany. Of course, democratic countries in the 1980s also had environmental scandals: West Germany dumped toxic waste in East Germany; French intelligence agents bombed a Greenpeace ship to clear the way for nuclear tests.
But in East Germany, without a free press or freedom of opinion, highlighting even basic environmental problems was taboo. On days when West Berlin imposed a smog alert due to high levels of pollution, a newspaper in East Berlin reported "cloudless skies and sunshine". Environmental data was considered a state secret in East Germany, activist gatherings were banned, and criticism of the state was punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
"The basic formula of any dictatorship is, firstly, spreading lies and suppressing the truth. And secondly, destroying any kind of solidarity, so that in the end, you don't even care anymore if your neighbour is arrested, and you just keep quiet," says Christian Halbrock, one of the co-founders of Umweltblätter, the environmental zine printed out of the tenement building basement in East Berlin that Eisenlohr helped to publish. "We didn't want to live with those daily lies, we wanted to live with the truth, and to show with our own, authentic, truthful lifestyle that we were serious about that."
A zine disguised as a church newsletter
The Umweltblätter – German for "environmental pamphlets" – were an attempt to counter the pervasive misinformation with facts. Its headlines spanned from "Baltic Sea: The nation's sewer", to "Chernobyl is everywhere" (about the risk of nuclear energy), to tackling free-speech issues.
To print magazines or books for the general public in the GDR, one had to apply to the authorities for a printing licence and was then given paper. Since that licence, and therefore paper and ink, could generally only be obtained for state-approved publications in East Germany, producing any alternative media was difficult even before the actual censorship process set in.
The Umweltblätter zine circumvented this effective ban of free media: it was printed in a basement belonging to a liberal pastor at the nearby Zion Church, and carried the line "for internal church use only". As part of a compromise with the state, churches were allowed to print internal documents. In reality, the magazine was circulated widely, passed from hand to hand, and read far outside Berlin. The ink was smuggled in by visiting supporters from the West. (Though once, according to Halbrock, one of the East German activists posed as a member of the Young Pioneers, a state-controlled youth movement, and successfully asked GDR manufacturers for ink samples for his Pioneer project.)
Also in the basement, and run by the same activists, was an environmental library open to the public, with books were smuggled in from West Germany. "We were always trying to push the boundaries of what was possible," says Eisenlohr.
Elsewhere in the GDR, people were also testing the state's boundaries with environmental action, be it by planting trees, collecting rubbish or cycling through cities to protest against air pollution and promote car-free transport. The Stasi had its eyes on all of those groups, including a surveillance operation against the cyclists code-named "Ventil" or "Valve", as in, bike valve.
"Unlike today, where climate change still feels a bit abstract for many people, back then, we could feel the destruction with all our senses," recalls Gisela Kallenbach, a chemical engineer who worked at a research institute in Leipzig, and was both an environmental activist and a member of a progressive church community. "We could basically taste the sulphur dioxide in the air, we could see the smog, we could smell the rivers that had been turned into open sewers. We couldn't ignore it, it was with us every day."
However, even cautious attempts to highlight these issues could have dramatic consequences.
In 1983, Kallenbach and a colleague put together a poster about smog pollution and hung it in the corridor of her institute. Knowing that environmental data was considered a state secret, she only used facts from scientific books already published in the GDR. That way, she thought, she could not be accused of publishing secret data. In any case, the poster was internal and would only be seen by people at the institute.
"Usually, no one looked at those internal posters, but the news of this one spread like wildfire. People started crowding around it," she remembers. After two hours, an order came from a socialist party official to remove the poster. The next day, Kallenbach and her colleague were summoned by the official and asked to apologise. She saw no reason to apologise for showing scientific facts, and refused to capitulate, she says. The Stasi put her under surveillance in response, along with other activists. As her environmental and peace activism grew, the secret police eventually put Kallenbach on a list of people of people who would be sent to internment camps in the event of a government crackdown. She was also given a veiled threat that her three children might suffer if she continued to speak up.
"It wasn't only about protecting the environment," says Kallenbach. "Because of the way the state tried to repress us, it was also about basic human rights, about questions like, 'Can I state my opinion freely? Can I share facts about our situation? Or is all that persecuted and punished?'"
It was in this pressure-cooker atmosphere of growing opposition, and heavy-handed suppression, that the Stasi put together Operation Trap.
At the age of 14, Eisenlohr was the youngest member of his group but had already experienced years of friction with the state. It began when he was eight years old and watched a US TV series about the Holocaust broadcast on West German television, which many East Germans were able to secretly watch. Wondering how humans could stand by while others did such evil, he began noticing some worrying parallels to his own society.
"The Nazis were a different level of evil, no doubt, but it irritated me that we, who were supposed to build a new Germany, were using some similar methods," Eisenlohr says. Specifically, the pressure to conform from early childhood and unquestionably follow a leader disturbed him. "It was like a kind of scratchy feeling that wouldn't go away and bothered me more and more."
At the age of 12, in a stance against conformism, Eisenlohr decided to leave the Young Pioneers, the Socialist youth group for East German children. His teachers warned him of the consequences. He would not be able to go to university, and would have to forget about his dream of becoming a veterinarian. But their pressure only made him more determined, he says. As his contact with activists grew, he began to help out at the library and the magazine.
On 24 November 1987, unbeknownst to Eisenlohr, the older members of his group had a secret plan. That night, instead of printing their usual, somewhat legal magazine, they were going to help another group print a much more clandestine publication called Grenzfall, "border case". In the eyes of the Stasi, Grenzfall was "illegal and defamatory". Copies of it were showing up as far afield as Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. When the Stasi learned about the plan through an informant, they saw a golden opportunity to arrest the activists in the act of printing it.
But at the last minute, the group abandoned that plan – Eisenlohr was with them, and the activists did not want to endanger a minor. So when the secret police struck, the group were not doing anything illegal. That made no difference to the Stasi, who arrested everyone present anyway, but it was the start of Operation Trap's descent into shambles.
"I heard about it first thing in the morning, on West German radio," says Halbrock, who was at a different meeting when the arrests happened. Many others in the East secretly listened to the Western broadcasts. The church, a powerful institution in its own right, was furious. The raid included the supportive pastor's private flat and was seen as a shocking intrusion. West Germany's influential tabloid the BILD-Zeitung ran an article asking "Stasi in the church, peace group arrested: What's going in East Berlin?" A spontaneous solidarity protest sprung up in East Berlin. The Stasi's feared chief himself, Erich Mielke, weighed in and urged his staff to crack down on the sympathisers.
Halbrock, standing in the bitter cold and protesting against his friends' arrest, couldn't believe what he was seeing. "We had teenagers showing up [at the solidarity protest], and elderly people, and someone from a bakery even brought us rolls," he recalls. "In East Germany, that kind of public support was so unusual. More often, people would tell us, 'Are you crazy, risking jail for such nonsense?' But that time, we managed to break through that sense of isolation."
Even the US became involved: a US Congress resolution expressed concern over the arrests. The timing was critical, too. In December 1987, shortly after Operation Trap, US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, met for a crucial summit in Washington. Earlier that year, Reagan had famously challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
Faced with the mess of Operation Trap – arresting people who were doing nothing illegal, failing to stop the protests that followed, angering the church, accidentally arresting a child, having no evidence of criminal activity, and having foreign journalists report it all to the world at a time when the GDR was already increasingly in chaos – the state backed down. Stasi chief Mielke cancelled the detention order for the two activists who were still being confined.
Eisenlohr had already been released on the morning after his arrest and driven back home by the Stasi: "They dropped me at home and said, 'Don't mention this to anyone at school.'"
For the Stasi, that was far from the end of it. Its people spent months writing reports about the botched mission and the protests, and launched further surveillance operations to deal with the fallout from the raid – all for a mission that, very briefly, netted seven people and a printer.
As Halbrock sums it up: "The raid was a total, embarrassing fiasco for the Stasi." In his view, it exposed the weakness of the entire system. "The GDR's dictatorship was a bit like a nuclear reactor, everything was so tightly controlled and regulated that even a tiny disturbance – like this raid that went wrong – could cause a massive malfunction," he says.
And the library and magazine? "We continued, of course," says Halbrock.
He had already endured many arrests and attempts to intimidate him, been repeatedly beaten up by the police and interrogated by the Stasi. His general strategy was to brush it off. Asked if he had noticed that the Stasi was tampering with his group's coffee kitty to disorient the activists, he shrugs: "They were always doing that kind of thing. Also things like breaking into your flat and taking a bunch of keys, just to let you know they'd been there. I always just ignored it. I was aware that they wanted me to be afraid, and to share that fear with others, and I didn’t want to give them that satisfaction."
The arrests brought the library and its magazine unprecedented publicity.
"For the state, the entire operation totally backfired," says Eisenlohr. "Before, no one in the GDR had any idea who we were. But now lots of people knew about it, because they watched West German TV, or listened to West German radio, and they came to us in droves."
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Separately, momentum for change was building due to huge global and societal forces, as Kallenbach points out: reforms in the Soviet Union; the GDR's collapsing economy; masses of people trying to leave; the solidarity movement in Poland; and, ultimately, mass demonstrations where people took to the streets. Then, a press conference about travel reforms triggered a run on the border and the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 Nov 1989.
"The environmental movement was ultimately one piece in the huge mosaic of the peaceful revolution," Kallenbach says.
The transition period leading up to German reunification on 3 October 1990, and beyond, brought further wins for the environment. More than 4% of the former GDR's territory were turned into nature reserves, including the former death strip along the border. Previously secret environmental data was released. The air and rivers were eventually cleaned up. For Eisenlohr, one major achievement of the movement was simply to dare to fight for change: "It shows the power of the few." (Learn about the 3.5% rule – how a small minority can change the world.)
Kallenbach, Eisenlohr and Halbrock continue supporting environmental and human rights causes to this day. Kallenbach, now 80, has marched with climate activists from Fridays for Future. Eisenlohr visits schools in East Germany to talk about climate change and his experience as a dissident. Halbrock studied history after the fall of the wall, having been prevented from attending university in the GDR. In a neat twist, he then worked at the Stasi archive, where former Stasi victims and researchers can access released files. Halbrock has also written several books about the Stasi and the GDR.
For him, one lasting memory is the bravery of the young people in the 1980s, who were simply fed up with the regime and decided to stand up for their rights. "David Bowie captured that Zeitgeist perfectly with his song from that time, Heroes," says Halbrock. "That feeling of: let's do something. Let's be heroes. Even if it's just for one day."
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