“This bar is off the tourist map but worth finding. The interior is quirky with an eclectic mix of stuff… The BBQ is to die for and the bands they get in to play are always super different and interesting... The few times that I have been here this place has been literally packed to the brim, but since it is hidden away in the back streets means that you are only going to get people that know about this place here, other than randoms simply wondering off the street…”

The randoms of Trip Advisor have spoken: The Gem in Melbourne is a great little neighbourhood boozer. After relocating from Sydney a decade ago, Julia Jacklin stumbled across the pub. Trying to find her feet, and her people, in a new city, it became a welcoming place for the singer-songwriter hang, to chill, to low-key network with the musicians who frequented the place.

Fast-forward to 2023. After three brilliant albums – Don’t Let the Kids Win (2016), Crushing (2019) and Pre Pleasure (2022) – and multiple international tours and the completion of her record contract, Jacklin was looking for a reset. Where better to do that than The Gem?

The result: 10 warm, woozy, hypnotic tracks, recorded in bits and pieces, fits and starts, at the pace the songs and her muse demanded, in Rat Shack Studios, located above her favourite pub. Her co-producer is Robert Muinos, owner of the studio. Her wingwomen and -men are Gem-friendly musicians from the world of those bands that are “always super different and interesting”.

The Gem is an album of reinvention and re-emergence. As Jacklin sings in the indie-rock shuffle of opener ‘Brand New’, “I’m free now let me be brand new”. On the art-grunge of ‘God Sometimes’, a plangent mix of Throwing Muses and The Lemonheads, she’s talking and taking agency: “you have to be a god sometimes / force the moment to shift / unlike the mountain / you gotta move it”. On the bittersweet ‘The Hardest Thing’, she’s taken her own advice and moved on, but the confusion and upsett are still raging: “where to go now? / I stood behind the horses to find hey’re running towards nothing…”

A highpoint: the shuffling, syncopated rhythms of ‘Real Life’, a vocally hushed, beautifully observed portrait of domestic bliss gone amiss: “Had a dream that I watered your plants, it felt like real life / I didn’t do it I didn’t even try / now all your plants have died”. Ouch.

An even higherpoint: the simple, stark, spartan folk of ‘Angel Vision’. Jacklin’s voice tingles like Mary Margaret O’Hara’s (no higher praise), the backing vocals of acoustic guitarist Jacob Diamond embrace and reassure, and Richard Bradbeer’s double-bass adds just the right amount of robustness to this most delicate of songs.

Back on Trip Advisor, they’re still ungrammatically digging the place. “[The Gem] is worth a try if you want to experience true Australians not tourist traps.” Equally, The Gem is worth a listen if you want to experience true, heartfelt, crafted-above-a-pub, rooted-in-the-soul artistry. A gem? Yeah, it is.

Orville Peck is a baritone-voiced country music artist. Pseudonymous and with his face permanently concealed by fringes or tassels or Lone Ranger-style eye coverings, his identity is still largely mysterious, despite the telling details offered by hench arms that are fully and ornately tatted. But he’s known to be South Africa-born, Canada-raised, Los Angeles-resident, mixed-race and queer.

Last year he did a long run as the MC in the Broadway production of Cabaret. He’s in the upcoming new film adaptation of computer game Street Fighter, playing Vega – a “masked claw fighter from Spain,” it sez here (“here” being Wikipedia), “who uses a personal fighting style combining Japanese ninjutsu and Spanish bullfighting, earning him the nickname of "Spanish Ninja”.

Peck is, then, to say the least, a very new kind of country artist. But he’s no man in the irony mask. His take on the genre is deeply felt, musically sincere and, in the quality of his writing, wholly authentic. As much is toweringly apparent on Mule.

Rich and resonant, beaten and bruised, his fourth album is even true to the pill-poppin’, bottle-got-me-down-again tropes of country – which, on top of that oaky voice, casts him as a millennial Johnny Cash. That’s how strong his writing and singing are, and that’s how brutal his life experiences have been.

Mule is a song-cycle account of Peck, after splitting from his partner, descending into addiction, overdose and near-death. Of his self-inflicted morphing into someone, or something, he doesn’t recognise. It opens with ‘Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule)’, a beautiful, 74-second close-harmony hymn sung by Emmylou Harris, Noah Cyrus and Allison Russell. The video shows them standing sentinel, three black-veiled sisters of mercy, as a zonked-out Peck lies in a desolate shack.

Then it’s into ‘Big Ol’ House’ and ‘Already Gone’, sturdy country-rock songs of isolation and desperation, anthems that are very much singalong rather than, well, moan-along. Because even when he’s in his cups, Peck’s songwriting soars with captivating imagery and earworm melodies.

As he sings on the finger-snapping ‘Rehab Blues’: “I hate it here, I don’t care and I wanna die…” He goes on, over the raucous sounds of a buzzy bar and honky-tonk piano, painting a picture of black despair and even blacker humour: “Get a spoon, dig a hole, buy a bottle and a ball, and get the gang back on the road… So catch me on the evening news, ‘dumb fag dies from the rehab blues’”.

But heading towards of the heart of the album, on ‘Ring the Bell’ – a defiant, celebratory, woozy yarn of late nights and sexual recklessness – Peck is seeing, if not the light at the end of the tunnel, then at least a widening of the tunnel. He might be sprawled on the bathroom floor, but at least he’s reaching for the sink.

That said: no one ever said recovery was linear or easy. By the next song, the crashing, tumultuous blues of ‘Blue Skies’, his anguished yodel working at full pelt, Peck is back in the ditch, staring up at oblivion. A couple of songs later, on pedal-steel boot-scooter ‘Cowboy Heart’, he’s upright at least, strolling Hollywood Boulevard, “nothing on my brain, just old cocaine”.

And on he rollercoasters, heading to the power-pop, syncopated beat of ‘Too Little, Too Late’, co-written with Dan Wilson, the one-time Semisonic man who co-wrote Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’. But for all Peck’s sobriety now IRL, on Mule there is, ultimately, no wholly happy ending for this man caught between the perils and prizes of stardom. As he recently explained, his album is titled after the pack animal that is half horse, half donkey.

On the closing title track, a fiddle-and-mandolin bluegrass ballad, Peck promises that “baby, I’m comin’ home”. Thirteen songs in, he's not there yet. But Mule proves that, in terms of this brilliant, bracing, bold blast of artistry, it's very much not the destination but the journey.

Material excellence is the calling card of Agnona. Francesco Ilorini Mo established the business in 1953, originally as a highly specialised fabric mill. A true aficionado, Ilorini Mo travelled the globe in pursuit of rare fibres, returning to the Sesia Valley, in Italy’s Piedmont region, laden with cashmere and alpaca from Mongolia and Peru. There, he and his team created fabrics used in the Paris ateliers of couturiers including Cristóbal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. Over the decades, the concept of an Agnona collection of ready-to-wear womenswear evolved, with designs shaped by the brand’s expertise in yarns and cloths.

‘Agnona is first and foremost a house of material intelligence. Everything begins with the fibre – with its hand, its weight, its warmth, its behaviour – and from there the garment takes shape,’ says Stefano Aimone, a designer – and great-grandson of Ermenegildo Zegna – who has been the CEO and creative director of Agnona since 2021. ‘But Agnona is also about a certain attitude towards life,’ he adds. ‘It is quiet, cultivated and deeply rooted in the idea that beautiful things should be made with patience and care. We are not interested in producing more for the sake of more. We believe in making things that have a reason to exist, that can accompany someone for a very long time. At its core, Agnona is about creating a sense of continuity – pieces, ideas and experiences that become more meaningful with time and that can be carried forward from one generation to the next.’

For this season’s collection, Aimone looked beyond northern Italy for creative stimulus. His starting point: an English garden in the hours just before dawn. ‘I was interested in that very particular moment when everything is quiet and the landscape feels almost suspended – the coldness of the air, the softness of the light, the textures of the vegetation, and the contrast between fragility and protection,’ he says. Then, he focused on sensations. What does wet earth, leaves and bark feel like to the touch? How do you translate the ‘feeling of wrapping oneself in something warm against the cold’? Cue double cashmere fabrications and enveloping silhouettes that shield against the outside. The collection is a blend of artisanal traditions and technical advancements. Aimone worked with RainWeaver cashmere, an Agnona speciality made of pure cashmere treated with a water-repellent finish. ‘The silhouette comes from this dialogue between softness and protection; nature and technology,’ he adds.

Earlier this year, the first Italian flagship store of Aimone’s Agnona opened in Milan, rooms fitted with Botticino marble terrazzo tiles, natural walnut boiserie and simple brick. The latter is a detail chosen in tribute to Piedmont farmhouses. In London, Aimone’s work can be found at Harrods; opened in 2024, a dedicated Agnona space on the department store’s first floor can easily be spotted from afar, fitted as it is with monochrome tiles made from marble pebbles. Another address of note is the company archives, a treasure trove of rarely seen creations, swatches and ephemera. It’s an important space to Aimone, and one that he describes as ever-evolving. ‘The archive is not simply a record of what Agnona has done; it is part of what Agnona is doing now,’ he explains. ‘A fabric developed today can become tomorrow’s archive, and something we discover in the past can become the starting point for something completely contemporary.’ As is the Agnona way.

As a rule, The New Yorker doesn’t run hotel reviews, but it’s worth noting that it dedicated an article to the most recent takeover by the world’s fashionistas of The Mark. This 100-year-old hotel, on the corner of Madison Avenue at East 77th St, serves as the centrum gravitas for those attending the annual fundraiser for the city’s Costume Institute in May, more commonly known as the Met Gala.

Since the advent of social media and a seemingly bottomless appetite for ‘getting ready’ videos, The Mark has attracted the Gala’s glittering guest list as they prepare for the giddiest night in the haute couture calendar. As the New Yorker piece explained, on the first Monday in May, its 153 rooms and suites are mobbed by teams of stylists equipping their clients for the ‘red carpet reveal’ as they depart for the nearby Metropolitan Museum. But in truth, The Mark has long served as the rallying point for the fashion industry, beginning with its 2009 refurbishment under the artistic direction of French interior designer Jacques Grange, who turned this Upper East Side stalwart (originally built in the Renaissance Revival style in 1926) into a cool redoubt of modern luxury – not least in the lobby, which Grange transformed from old‐school vestibule into a black-and-white themed catwalk in its own right, flanked by a snug cocktail bar and a rotating collection of contemporary art. More recently, the hotel’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant has been joined by the first US outpost of the legendary Parisian fashion haunt Caviar Kaspia, thereby cementing its culinary credentials among the smart set.

As befits the breed, fashionistas have had their gripes about the property – notably a shortage of sufficient elevator capacity to cope with the demand for rides to its vast private roof terrace adjoining the largest penthouse suite in America. Perhaps more surprising, however, has been the lack of a standalone spa. A Frédéric Fekkai salon opened in 2009, and remains a cornerstone of the area’s beauty offering, but this month sees the unveiling of The Mark Wellness and Longevity Spa by Augustinus Bader. Here, Professor Bader’s patented TFC8 technology – an anti-ageing powerhouse that improves cell function to reduce the effects of ageing on the skin’s appearance – will be available in a number of skin- and haircare therapies at the brand’s first dedicated US hotel spa. Complementing The Mark’s Technogym-equipped 24-hour fitness centre, its three treatment rooms – custom built to deliver a calming, sensory-led retreat from the bustle of the city – promise to add a further pinch point come next May, when preparations for the Met Gala will surely require an appointment.

In this era of the micro-drama, something (micro-)novel from Bloc Party. Their seventh album is the true story of a rollercoaster, 11-month relationship and its aftermath, experienced by songwriter Kele Okereke in the wake of his split, after 10 years, from the father of his children. With production by legendary studio alchemist Trevor Horn (Grace Jones, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ABC), Anatomy of a Brief Romance comprises 14 chronological songs – bulletins, even – of rebound and recklessness, rebuff and recrimination, love and pain.

Chapter 1: As the title – on the nose and prosaic – tells us, ‘22-01-22’ is when this relationship begins, their eyes meeting across a sweaty gym. Over glockenspiel-like pings in his heart, Okereke, crooning, swoons. “So it begins,” he says, leaning in at the end. Are we sitting… comfortably?

Chapter 2: “He says that I look like all he needs…” Everything, instantly, is ‘Coming on Strong’: driving guitar, throbbing synths, melodramatic chorus. Okereke, already, has lost himself, headless and heedlessly: “I was happy as a pig in… in… in… spite of myself…”

Chapter 3: “I’m thinking about scaling your fence and leaving a single red rose by your door,” he sings over electric-guitar jitters and fat, electronic bass. These are the throbs and pulses of a relationship in the phase of, as the title has it, ‘Love Bombs’ flying overhead.

Chapter 4: Their first summer of love is hymned in ‘Pigwig’, its giddy rush incarnated in a jittery indie-dance rush that recalls Bloc Party’s early days in the early years of the new millennium, as the angular wing of the British guitar revolution.

Chapter 5: We are smitten, we are intimate (“he says he likes the way I sigh when his hand brushes against mine”), we are drifting in a blissed-out reverie titled ‘Lagoon Blue’. As the romance crescendos, so does Okereke’s songwriting, with lines such as “so we head in to watch a Studio Ghibli film” landing just the right side of the confessional/cringe divide.

Chapter 6: Uh-oh. Something – or someone – is up, and it looks like it’s another attendee of the gym of the title, ‘Muscleworks’. Over watery synth-pop, Okereke, anguished, wants to know the identity of the boy watching them, presumably, over the weight machines. Meanwhile, “I’m starting to recognise the voice you use when you’re lying to me”. That means lying in his safari print sheets, keeping their hands to themselves. Hard pivot, then, with the images stronger than the tune.

Chapter 7: Might it be that his new love isn’t Superman but a mere ‘Clark Kent’? A sluggish, slumped moment and song.

Chapter 8: They made it to Christmas but not New Year, with Okereke’s beau, born on 1st January, seemingly unmoored by the ‘Worst Birthday Ever’, the relationship wrecked by his bully brother and homophobic “pig” dad, and Okereke “betrayed by your silence”. Rage makes for another creative peak in a ranting, railing, agit-rock song, vivid with brilliant images such as “the cadaverous queens rub their hands in glee / as the rumours go round SE16”.

Chapter 9: ‘Not Your Problem’ – Okereke spits rhymes and feathers. Hip hop funk that’s in a funk.

Chapter 10: Post-split post-punk: the recrimination sets in, meaning ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’. Spiralling and splintered, Okereke falters, and so does the song-cycle momentum.

Chapter 11: Okereke hits rock-bottom, drifting around ‘Rotherhithe’, the rage dissolving into anguish and confusion – but luckily, musically, coalescing in a beautifully sung lament.

Chapter 12: ‘Stories’. Stalking your ex- in the digital age means hovering over their Instagram Stories. And scribing bitter, basic, musical DMs.

Chapter 13: ‘Moving On’ and moving up: as Okereke’s spirits start to soar, so does the songwriting in a pulsing, racing, U2-like anthem.

Chapter 14: ‘Eulogy’. Does what it says on the title. Lovely, reflective, Joy Division on a sunny(ish) day.

Reviewer’s epilogue: five stars for the concept and storytelling, three for the musical encapsulation, giving us a median four stars. Looking forward to the stage adaptation Bloc Party should definitely consider, where these alt-musical-style songs would work better.

Whether it lies in the historic architecture, the remarkable acoustics or a sense of reverence among the audience, there is something quite sacred about concerts held in churches. Across London, centuries-old spaces have increasingly become stages for contemporary music.

The Union Chapel in Islington has been leading the way since the 1990s – initially as a way of raising funds – and has since become a world-renowned venue with artists including Björk, Noel Gallagher, Jarvis Cocker and James Blake taking to its stage. More intimate churches have since joined the movement, such as St John in Hackney and St Mathias in Stoke Newington, welcoming indie singers-songwriters and electronic artists. Now, the concept of bringing contemporary music into religious settings is about to reach a new scale, as St Paul’s Cathedral and fabric team up for a curated programme of live music running until 2030.

The two London landmarks have already collaborated on sold-out performances by Australian singer RY X in 2023 and Patti Smith in 2024. The new partnership will build on those events, bringing Fabric’s history of championing electronic and underground music into one of the capital’s most iconic spaces.

“Fabric has always been about bringing people together through music and creating experiences that stay with people”, says Cameron Leslie, co-founder of Fabric. “It’s an extraordinary and unexpected coming together of two very different parts of London, and we’re looking forward to building on the success of the events we’ve already held and creating something genuinely special and befitting of this incredible space.”

Sandra Lynes Timbrell, Director of Visitor Engagement at St Paul’s Cathedral, says: “We hope the partnership will introduce new visitors to the Cathedral, encouraging people to discover and engage with this historic building in new and exciting ways”.

A centuries-old place of worship, St Paul’s Cathedral offers a particularly striking contrast to fabric’s home in a former meat-processing warehouse in Farringdon. The first event will take place on 29 October, with a performance by The Cinematic Orchestra and guests from the group’s past, present and future, including Patrick Watson.

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Paris Paloma’s gaze – female, male, all points in between and around – roams far, wide and deep on her second album. The Brighton-based singer-songwriter is backed and inspired by an army of followers, with seven million monthly listeners on Spotify. Their biggest passion is overwhelmingly focused on 2023 single ‘Labour’, the feminist anthem’s three-quarters-of-a-billion combined streams speaking to a raging hunger for big songs tackling both the millennia-deep pressure to be a “24/7 baby machine” and everyday sexism with extraordinary songcraft.

Now, her creativity let loose and wild, comes a record inspired by, variously and among other things, the foundational writings on intersectionality by bell hooks; the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko; the pre-Raphaelite poetry and art of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Greek mythology, as refracted through Pat Barker’s, The Women of Troy, specifically the “ancient inceldom” of Pyrrhus, son of Achilles; and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, from the opening line of which The Fatal Flaw takes its title.

This, then, is a very learned, art-soaked, culture-savvy and assiduously thought-provoking collection of songs. But that never means stodge or pseudery; Paloma’s thoughts and theses are always shaped with poetic aplomb and irresistible melodicism. As she sings in the opening Miyazaki, her anti-AI hymn to the power of non-stop, non-slop human creativity: "I have something to say / As has anyone who’s ever made / Anything worth enjoying / Nobody can destroy it / Left unchecked it mutates / Bleeding desperation to create / Collapses me like a star / Sickness inside my heart”.

‘Pre-Raphaelite’ is a lung-bursting, life-giving arena-scale anthem of the type perfected by Florence Welch, with whom the 26-year-old has toured and with whom she undoubtedly has emotional, intellectual and soulful kinship. ‘Good Girl’ is a BPM-powered rage-rave hit (“if you call me good girl one more time, then my fist will meet your skull”) about body politics and commodification, its spoken-word intro glorying in its own intersectionality with the polemical power of Self Esteem.

Paloma can do quiet storm, too. The excellently titled ‘get her the fucking flowers’, a lower-case ballad of jaundiced romance, is an upper-case wonder, the verdant, pre-Raphaelite colours of the expertly arrayed guitars, pianos and strings leaving ample room for her gentlest, tenderest vocal.

On a brimmingly singalong album built from song hooks as much as bell hooks, Paloma finds space, time and again, for beautifully turned writing and deft construction. The towering ‘Good Boy’ opens with a statement – smart, wearied, aware, dismissive, empowered – from Emma Thompson. “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn’t expect them to be such losers,” the actor/writer says to appreciative laughter from a small audience of women. As Paloma explains of the song: “It is a message to men that you have more in common with me, more in common with everyday women, than you do with men in power pushing capitalist patriarchy, so don’t be their good boy.”

This man duly hears and endorses that, and professes his allyship – and his four-star enthusiasm. The Fatal Flaw is a big-thinking. big-swinging triumph.

Every book is a journey… now, quite literally. A new travel trend is emerging, with book retreats inviting people to escape. Into the story, yes, but not only. Moving beyond visits to famous authors’ homes or locations from novels, this new form of literary tourism is about travelling specifically to make time for reading – and to meet fellow readers along the way.

In Cambridge, the historic University Arms hotel has introduced a programme honouring the city’s literary legacy. Stay for the Story: a Reading Retreat is a two-night stay inviting guests to hand in their phones and switch off for the joy of reading. Designed to create intentional downtime, the package includes a personalised reading list and reading journal, a private consultation with a “Book Butler” for guests to discuss their favourite topics and authors, and a complimentary drink in the Library to be enjoyed during their own private reading session. Cambridge Literary Festival is involved, too, curating seasonal reading lists that feature a selection of books by authors from their own line-up. “It's fascinating to watch reading tastes shift with the seasons. At the moment, we're seeing a real appetite for crime, mystery and thriller,” notes a representative of the University Arms. “Romance is proving equally popular, particularly stories woven into Cambridge itself. Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us, which follows two Cambridge undergraduates across six decades of parallel lives, has struck a chord with guests, as has the poignant love story at the heart of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Gate of Angels.”

Also tapping into the literary history of a destination are the Reading Retreats by Slow Travel Co, set at Churchill Manor in the Cotswolds. The itinerary includes a day trip to Oxford for a literary tour, but for some travellers, the real appeal lies less in the destination itself than in the chance to spend time with people who share their love of reading.

Participants, typically women aged 28 to 74, are active on Goodreads, engage with the BookTok community and other similar platforms. Rather than simply reading at home, they come to discover new titles through conversation, a bond with fellow readers, and turn a personal interest into a shared experience. At the retreat, they exchange books on the first night, explore local villages, and gather for chef-prepared dinners. This model isn’t confined to Britain’s literary cities, either: with more than twenty reading retreats a year, the programme spans a growing range of locations, from the Maldives and Costa Rica to Aruba.

Boutique Book Breaks takes the community experience one step further: it offers readers the chance to hear directly from writers through on-site interviews and group discussions – an opportunity to meet authors in the intimate setting of a weekend getaway, rather than at a large literary festival. “Our retreats are a bit different from others on the market as we always have new release or early access books and authors onsite to chat through the story,” says founder Emma Donalson. The November edition held at the Talbot Malton, North Yorkshire, will welcome Sara Sheridan, Alison Barrow, and Deesha Philyaw, with guests receiving an advance copy of the latter’s new book ahead of its UK release. Between other bookish activities (past editions included bookshop pop-ups, bibliotherapy sessions and book-themed quizzes), guests can settle into the lounge and make progress on their reading by the two fires. So, with summer ending, time to leave the beach read behind. The book is proving to be more than something to pack for a holiday; it is now the reason for going.

The Exhibition to See: The Edge of Things

Four decades of Nadav Kander’s work is celebrated in The Edge of Things. It runs from 18 September to 20 January and is also the subject of a must-have monograph from Thames & Hudson. London-based Kander is the creator of some of the most instantly recognisable portraits in contemporary life, from President Obama to David Lynch, Rosamund Pike and Mark Rylance (and not forgetting the King). His search for moments of transcendence makes this retrospective in Foam’s spectacular canal-side temple to the medium of photography a great reason to get to Amsterdam.

The Film to See: Pressure

Pressure is a British war film with a stellar cast which you can see in cinemas from 9 September. Working Title developed David Haig’s play, examining the fraught run-up to the D-Day landings to make a slickly contemporary take on a World War 2 drama. The film belongs to Andrew Scott, with support from Brendan Fraser and Damian Lewis. After dismay that his devastating performance in All of Us Strangers didn’t attract awards season acclaim in 2024, Scott also shines this season in Elsinore. He plays the late Ian Charleson (1919-1990) as he played Hamlet at the National Theatre in the last months of his life. Ahead of the UK release, it features at the London Film Festival as their gala opening film and is without doubt the cinema ticket to try to book this month.

The Theatre to See: Hay Fever

If you want to see Richard E Grant on stage, get booking for the classic Hay Fever, which will be at Wyndham’s Theatre from 22 September. Opposite Grant will be Broadway and Cybill star Christine Baranski, which sounds like a sparkling mix for Noel Coward’s country house party from hell. See you there…

The Album to Buy: Ride Lonesome

After his longest-ever gap between albums, Beck has new music with Ride Lonesome, finally following 2019’s Hyperspace. There’s also the chance to see him on tour this month in the US and Canada. That’s sadly not the case for Timeless, which is ten tracks of rare and unreleased studio and live recordings from Prince, but true fans will be seeking out the limited-edition purple vinyl.

The Literary Event to Attend: Chelsea Arts Festival

Chelsea Arts Festival is a reminder of the Royal Borough as a place for writers, artists and bookshops. Its second edition takes place at venues across SW3 from 16 to 20 September with the chance to hear from the likes of Susie Cave, Bernardine Evaristo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Don’t forget a stop at John Sandoe and Book Bar too, to keep them thriving… Or if you want to get your ideas out of town, Sir Don McCullin, Esther Freud and Carlos Acosta and many more are on the programme for Mariella Frostrup and Jason McCue’s new two-day Somerset festival Big Brue (in beautiful Bruton of course) on the 19th and 20th.

The TV to Watch: Slow Horses

BAFTA-winning Slow Horses has been renewed for a sixth and seventh season… the sixth arrives on 16 September on Apple TV, with episodes released every Wednesday for six weeks. If you possibly can, save Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas’s sensational spy performances up for an immersive viewing session of the best-written drama that you can watch at home.

The Collaboration to Look Out For: The Last Dolls at Atlas Gallery

It’s 20 years since the untimely death of photographer Bob Carlos Clarke. A London/Irish original, his legacy is celebrated in style with The Last Dolls at Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street from 5 to 26 September. The first London exhibition of his work for a decade, this sexy selling show is curated by Brandei Estes of the NPG and feels as though he is still pushing boundaries. Whether you’re an admiring window shopper or a serious collector it’s a must-see, organised in collaboration with the Little Black Gallery.

The Theatre Tickets to Book: The Lives of Others

The premier of Stasi drama The Lives of Others, adapted from the Oscar-winning 2006 film, has lured Keira Knightley to the Adelphi in a very rare chance to see the star on stage. She is under surveillance opposite Luke Thompson. Directed by Robert Icke, be transported to East Germany in 1984 from 20 October to 9 January.

The Books to Read: Threads and Man & Dog

A British institution with an unconventional route to success, get behind the scenes with Sir Paul Smith’s memoir Threads out on 10 September with Macmillan. (A brilliant raconteur, the audiobook is read by his pal Bill Nighy). Also this month, devastation at the loss of Stan has led Tony Parsons to meditate on the love humans have for our dogs in Man & Dog: A Love Story (DK books). His ability to explain what so many people feel made Stan a viral column and now a book for anyone that’s grieved for a dog as a true member of the family.

In June 2018, Mike D popped up at an ex-serviceman’s club in Hackney, east London. The onetime Beastie Boy was playing a semi-secret DJ gig at the tiny MOTH venue. He bust out a set of old-school hip hop, and the vibey indie joint was jumping. Well, as much as a joint full of forty- and fifty-something blokes can jump.

“It didn’t seem like the place that would normally have shows like that. How do I describe it?” wondered Diamond when, four months later, in a central London restaurant, I met him and former bandmate Adam Horowitz. “It was like a World War Two veterans club, for 80-year-olds. A time-capsule,” he offered, accurately – MOTH stands for Memorable Order of Tin Hats, which was indeed founded as a veterans’ organisation.

He had gone out on the road to clear his head after completion of the artwork proofing on Beastie Boys Book, the brick-thick memoir and lovingly compiled by childhood friends Diamond and Horowitz, and crafted partly in tribute to third member Adam Yauch, who died in 2012, aged 47, of salivary gland cancer. The London gig, one of a short series of DJ shows, was a low-key victory lap, he explained to me, bobbing in his seat, all angular limbs and ants-in-his-pants jitteriness, “a little summer break without this guy [Horowitz] and without looking over computer screens and photographs”.

The partnership on the book, though, had been a dream, due to both their lifelong friendship and their complementary conditions. “I’m ADD, he’s OCD,” said D, beaming. “It’s a great combination.” Still, there wasn’t much sign of any new music. “After Yauch died, I honestly couldn’t even open ProTools on my computer. I tried! But it was just too sad, even to work on something completely separate musically.”

Now, eight years on from that line-in-the-sand encyclopaedia about the groundbreaking, rules-breaking New York trio, and 14 years since the passing of his friend, Mike D has finally moved on sufficiently to make his first solo album.

Thank You is the sound of the 60-year-young rapper and musician returning to the pre-rap, hardcore punk and No Wave roots of the Beastie Boys, with a topspin of contemporary techno. He’s gone there with the help of his musician sons Davis, 23 and Sklyar, 22, who perform as LA indie/electronic duo Very Nice Person.

Opening track and lead single ‘Switch Up’ is a hammering glitch’n’riff fest, D speed-rapping over a tumble of bleeps and beats. ‘What We Got’ is head-banging sludge-rock, D spitting his echoey bars over proudly basic drums and guitars that are sprinkled with electronic squeals, before the whole thing dissipates into spacey ambience. ‘True Colours’ and ‘That’s Right’ keep up the intense pace, and the buzzsaw synths/breakbeat template, and it feels like forever before ‘I Don’t Care’ brings some relief and contrast. It sounds like the title line is an interpolation of a lyric from ‘I Love It’, the 2012 stadium-pop Icona Pop song co-written by Charli XCC. It isn’t credited as such but either way, it’s a blessed moment of space and melody, as is ‘Back to Start’, a blast of lo-fi bedroom indie.

Then it’s back to all things hectic. ‘Make It Stop’ sounds like Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’ with added agitation. ‘Crypto’ has a buzzing, dentist-drill beat. All of which, over the course of the album, is intense, in-your-face and just a bit exhausting, as if Mike D has made rock’n’rap flesh of his ADD. You might find yourself yearning for a bit of the spacing and pacing that Kim Gordon magicked on her solo albums, which plough similar genre furrows.

The closing title track, though, is lovely. “We were just kids, figuring it out, working it out,” he sings, delicately, repeatedly, over spangles of shimmering guitar. It’s a note of exhalation and gratitude to the creative playground of New York that Patti Smith also hymned in her memoir Just Kids – and also to his late friend and bandmate. If it’s taken Mike D 14 years to process the loss of Adam Yauch, for this track alone, it’s been worth the wait.

After the languor of a summer spent holed up in some divine beachside paradise or other, the arrival of autumn offers a welcome jolt to the system, as the seductive appeal of dressing up returns and you prepare to hit the streets, hair bouncing from those resumed blow-dry appointments, and feel the immediacy of an urban buzz. Now is the time to appreciate city life in all its glory.

New York

Nowhere is the allure of ‘fall’ more potent than in New York. Sited in the heart of Tribeca, the cobblestoned former neighbourhood of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (and today home to Beyoncé and Jay-Z), Warren Street Hotel – the third New York property by Firmdale Hotels – is the embodiment of hotelier Kit Kemp’s trademark whimsical sensibility. Yes, the area might feel electric, but this hotel is a deeply mellow place with a proper grown-up slickness, where all the individually designed rooms (69 in total) are fabulous – loft-style on steroids, in keeping with their Downtown location. Locals and guests flock to the restaurant, an eclectic mélange of rich interiors where the menu is a paean to autumnal comfort food: chicken schnitzel and arugula salad, or corn risotto with Cotija cheese. But nothing compares to the ambience of the roof terrace, with its storybook views across glittering Manhattan.

London

Across the Atlantic, Maybourne has many seductive attractions in its London portfolio, but the cocooning nature of its latest offering is among the most reassuring. Arguably the best night’s sleep in London is to be had in one of The Emory’s 61 suites, their generous size and expansive views across Hyde Park the work of a flotilla of interiors stalwarts including André Fu, Patricia Urquiola, Champalimaud Design and Pierre-Yves Rochon. Downstairs, there’s a subterranean spa/wellness club, Surrenne, a no-expense-spared holistic (and medi) wonderland with doctors on hand for biohacking, alongside Stella McCartney facials and massages that range from Ayurvedic to a memorable Scalp and Body Spa Ritual, as well as London’s first Tracy Anderson studio, whose dance/ cardio classes have garnered quite the cult following. So too has Jean-George Vongerichten’s three-in-one abc kitchens, bringing his trio of New York outlets to London for the first time. Still, the crowning glory has to be Bar 33, where you can see the whole of London’s Peter Pan skyline come to life as you sip an icy vodka Martini. And what could possibly outshine that view? Arriving by helicopter as part of The Emory’s collaboration with Flexjet for guests, perhaps?

Antwerp

Antwerp remains the ultimate pilgrimage destination for the fashion crowd, but a great hotel scene has never prevailed, until Botanic Sanctuary opened its doors in 2021. You might not imagine a gourmand awakening in a 786-year-old monastery, but there is more to this Antwerp hot spot and horticultural landmark than meets the eye. First off, it houses three separate Michelin-starred restaurants, including the two-star Hertog Jan for an interesting take on an omakasestyle menu with Flemish fare and herbs picked from its own on-site garden, and a more low-key bistro for elevated moulesfrites. You will also truly appreciate the magic of massage here, with the most extensive menu conceivable, including the detox option, which is profoundly calming – especially with the vast array of herbal oils from the hotel’s own botanical gardens. But the wonders of this cavernous hotel don’t end there. The suites are taupe boudoirs with fabulous beds that you’ll never want to leave, although the Spa Suite comes with its own sauna, which may succeed in luring you out.

Rome

The Eternal City always delivers, but there is something particularly enchanting about the golden glow it casts in September. Whatever the season, when in Rome you want to stay somewhere unrivalled in the momentous stakes, somewhere that positively radiates glamour. One word: Bvlgari. Of course, the house is synonymous with Rome, where its founder, Sotirio Bulgari, opened his eponymous maison 140 years ago – and as the group’s second Italian hotel, sitting in a prime position on Piazza Augusto Imperatore, overlooking the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus, Bvlgari Hotel Roma has become the most gilded place to stay. With its museum-worthy décor (the landmark Rationalist building was designed by architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo), the hotel is also an entertainment destination in itself, the tone set by the soaring lobby and a rooftop restaurant and pool where those views can best be enjoyed with a Negroni Sbagliato.

Nice

And when you want to feel a touch of summer in autumn, Nice remains an unparalleled option on the Côte d’Azur, especially with the recent opening of Hôtel du Couvent, TRAVEL hotelier Valéry Grégo’s sought-after holistic hideaway, which commands a huge swathe of the Old Town and draws a glamorously arty crowd for extremely good reasons. Never mind the infinity pool carved into the terraced gardens (artfully landscaped by Tom Stuart-Smith); nor the chic take on monastic interiors, with antique busts and urns, and colossal clouds of sweet peas or sunflower arrangements from a local florist; nor the enchantment of having an on-site herbalist, Gregory, who can prescribe tonics and teas. Grégo’s keenest interest in restoring this former convent is in the preservation of the innate peace and simplicity of an historic haven, so as well as the power of herbs, menus are devised around the seasonal produce from the garden and the hotel’s farm. You can slink down to the restored Roman baths to relish an incredibly effective relaxing massage with rosemary oil. Then savour the short-but-sweet menu of perfectly executed classics, such as grilled tuna steak with a ratatouille, or enjoy natural wines at Grégo’s bistro next door, where they serve the world’s best lightly battered sage leaves, freshly picked from the herb garden. The cumulative effect makes for an extraordinarily magical urban experience.

Located at the edge of Marylebone, Mayfair and Soho, the BoTree, which opened in 2023, is taking the gym and spa concept beyond traditional fitness. I has just launched triplebond, its new members’ club, bringging treatments, training and socialising under one roof.

Triplebond is home to Marylebone’s first rooftop pool. But what really sets the club apart is its science-based approach to wellbeing. Its programme was shaped by health practitioners around three pillars: activation, restoration, and connection. After joining, members receive a personal diagnostic assessment from the Health concierge, based on their blood analysis, DNA profiling and gut microbiome testing. They can access classes from high-energy training to stretch- or breathe-led recovery, book treatments ranging from cryotherapy to red light therapy, and relax in high-tech lounges equipped with zero-gravity massage chairs and weighted blankets. There’s also in-ear circadian-synchronising therapy to ease jet lag, as the club is open to both local members and hotel guests. Those staying in can even choose from the in-room technology rental menu to request compression boots, red light face masks and more to be brought to their rooms.

This holistic offering taps into a broader move: modern wellness is becoming less about the occasional spa day or solo retreat, and more about where people spend their social time. The club was designed as a place for members to connect, and comes with a wellness café, a bar and a full programme of events.

“Science has long told us that the benefits of human connection and belonging are as vital to our long-term health outcomes as sleep, movement and nutrition. We know that wellness is no longer a solo pursuit to be squeezed into your calendar when the moment allows,” says Louise Rumball, creator of vision and concept at triplebond. “We set out to create an integrated social wellness experience, where belonging, human connection and vitality are the foundation, and state-of-the-art wellness, recovery and performance treatments, services and protocols layer on top”. Tech-savvy or not, people might join for the new wellness offering and stay for the community.

Londoners may be familiar with Karl Lagerfeld’s Future Legacy flagship store concept, which opened two years ago on Regent Street. This month, the house has opened another space in Amsterdam, on the corner of Raadhuisstraat and Herengracht. With a monochromatic palette and a combination of brushed metal, raw concrete and reflective surfaces, its interior design reflects Lagerfeld's distinctive aesthetic.

Here, however, instead of men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collections, visitors can enjoy speciality coffee and pastries. “We wanted to create a place where people can connect with the world of KARL in a new way, beyond fashion," says CEO Pier Paolo Righi.

Located by the brand’s international headquarters, the café was co-curated with Amsterdam hospitality atelier Pantopia, founded by Youssef Zyat, known for their seasonal approach to menus. Every detail was considered, from the branded cups to the takeaway containers. Shoppers can also purchase limited-edition merchandise including a curated selection of accessories, coffee table books, candles – and even the brand’s signature white shirt. Until mid-September, an adjacent pop-up showroom is showcasing a curated selection from the Karl Lagerfeld collections, including seasonal pieces and signature styles.

With roasters scattered across the city, Amsterdam is known for its vibrant café culture. As a recent addition to this scene, the Karl Lagerfeld Café concept extends the house’s offering beyond fashion, making it accessible to both local visitors and international guests. It also reflects a broader trend of luxury brands expanding into the lifestyle and hospitality space, offering a taste of a premium experience at a more accessible price point.

KARL LAGERFELD CAFÉ
Raadhuisstraat 32
1016 DG Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Monday – Sunday
8am – 5pm

When Matthew Freud decided to enter the hospitality world, purchasing an inn (dating back to the 16th century) and the neighbouring former Post Office in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Burford, his vision was not about bucolic luxury and fluffy bathrobes. Instead, he envisioned a convivial retreat where one would benefit from mind-expanding activities, nourishing food and good company.

Freud set about creating a gorgeous environment (18 rooms), with plenty to do over and above the regular country-hotel offer of massages and hikes. “A mental-health spa is the best way to describe Bull – A Coaching Inn, somewhere where you can experience human connection through learning,” says Freud of a rolling programme that might include a morning of breathwork and meditation, workshops in perfumery or acting, a lesson in bee-keeping or Padel tennis, topped off by an evening book club or a Night on the Tiles session making ceramics with his artist niece, Martha Freud. Flourishing is the end goal of these action-packed two-day stays, devised to seduce you into a flow state – where anxieties and status-jockeying slide away and you have a moment to explore and catch your breath.

The design of Bull and its outlying workshop buildings, called Coach House (a five-minute stroll), is beautifully soft on the eye, with terracotta and slate-grey walls, linen curtains, marble-tiled bathrooms, sumptuous beds, rugs, and dried oak branches arranged in vessels. Walls are hung with provocative art (Damien Hirst, Harland Miller and Jean-Michel Basquiat included) and a selection of Freud’s own photography collection.

There are four dining options (the room price includes the workshops, food and soft drinks); one can enjoy sushi at Hiro, presided over by Hiromi (formerly of Nobu in Ibiza, with 18 years working with Nobu Matsuhisa); tuck into meat and fish on the grill at Guy Ritchie’s tented dining area, Wild; or graze casually outside on the terrace. The evening is dominated by a communal supper at Horn, with no menu (“It’s family dining style, with people serving one another as the conversation flows,” says Freud), after which the night might segue into poker, backgammon or chess with one’s newfound learning buddies.

Freud is as invested in the venture as much as in the village that he has made his home since painstakingly restoring Burford Priory, a Jacobean estate where some of the activities take place. The kitchen at Bull, meanwhile, benefits from the produce from the Priory’s vegetable and cut-flower garden, which has been brought back to splendour by Freud’s partner, fine jeweller and horticulturalist Sheherazade Goldsmith.

As summer draws to a close, wardrobes are making room for autumn layers. Trench season is just beginning, and it’s a little bit more special this year: the V&A is celebrating the Burberry’s 170th anniversary with an exhibition dedicated to its most iconic creation – the trench coat.

Opening on 21 September in the Prince Consort Gallery, “The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon” will bring together rare material from the Burberry Archive and the V&A’s own collection, tracing the evolution of the garment from its practical outerwear and military roots to its status as a fashion icon.

Renowned globally yet quintessentially British, the Burberry trench is considered “a symbol of innovation, creativity and timeless style,” says Carly Eck, Brand Curator for the fashion house. “A myriad of objects from the brand’s Archive will be publicly exhibited for the first time – from early 20th-century catalogues to a Burberry trench coat worn by fashion designer Hardy Amies”.

Covering Invention, Craft and Creativity, the display traces the history of the garment from Thomas Burberry’s invention of cotton gabardine in 1879, establishing the trench as a popular item both functional and stylish, to its continued reinvention on today’s runways.

This collaboration marks a first step in a partnership between the brand and the museum, ahead of the launch of The Burberry Gallery in 2028, that will see a major transformation of the V&A’s fashion galleries.

21 September – 3 January 2027
Prince Consort Gallery, V&A South Kensington

Botswana

There are some places where you don’t even need to close your eyes to be transported back in time; places or journeys that conjure up such a weirdly vivid intimacy, it’s as though you had been here before. Quad-biking or horse-riding to Kubu Island (or, as it’s affectionately known, ‘the island of lost baobab trees’) in Botswana, with Natural Selection, has this effect. The landscape here is so vast and pure, it’s as close as you can get to the world as it was made – undisturbed, unpolluted and flooded with a prehistoric silence. To stay at San Camp as your base is a ‘trip’ in itself; it’s as remote as it is romantic, and the sense of freedom is exhilarating. Without electricity, the camp comes into its own at nightfall, when hundreds of oil lamps are lit and everyone congregates with their guides for dinner. But safari guides Super Sande and Ralph Bousfield are much more than safari specialists – a quixotic mix of time-travellers and historians, who whisk you back millennia, showing you pieces of neolithic pottery, rock drawings, animal skeletons and petrified fossils along the way. There’s also something satisfyingly primaeval about stopping to walk on the salt pan, where the crust feels like ice cracking. And when you do eventually reach the island, another special quality of these guides is that they make you feel as if you, personally, have discovered it all for the first time. It’s best to visit when a full moon beams off the salt crystals, but whatever the lunar cycle, you sleep beneath stars so close, you feel you could touch them.

River Nile

For sunrises, nowhere is more spectacular at dawn than the River Nile as the sun emerges rose-pink from its glassy waters. Gustave Flaubert would have loved Set Nefru, a recently restored dahabiya boat that feels like entering a romantic time portal. It was once owned by the Egyptian royal family and is now under the care of the illustrious Hotel Al Moudira in Luxor. And what a party you could have on board; the boat sleeps up to 10 people, and its five cabins (and the rest of the vessel) have been meticulously restored. So too the interiors, with the softest Malaika Cairo bedding, and antique Limoges tableware on which are served fabulous meals of zingy salads, soups, grilled river fish and the best bread – delivered daily from Al Moudira. Days drift by as you pass biblical landscapes and wide fields of bananas and date trees, gliding up to the riverbanks of El Kab, best admired while sitting on cushions around low copper tables, sipping hibiscus tea. On-board guide Ahmed is an exceptional Egyptologist, bringing to life the Ptolemaic temple of Kom Omobo, where the double altar is dedicated to crocodile god Sobek and sky god Haroeris, or the temple of Esna, home to the most ornate floral capitals and beautiful zodiac ceiling in the world. Come nightfall, back on the boat, it’s the kind of place that makes you want to dress up and slink around in bias-cut satin dresses and dinner jackets, languorously enjoying Martinis by moonlight.

The Mani Peninsula

Another place where you feel something close to nostalgia from the moment you arrive is the cultural retreat of Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermorhttps://patrickleighfermorhouse.reserve-online.net/aboutthe cultural retreat of Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor. To stay in their house in the Mani Peninsula is to embrace an enclave of the Peloponnese that’s redolent of Byzantine glamour. Patrick, an adventurer and travel writer, chose a plot on the outskirts of the town of Kardamyli, with its castellated fort and mountains that plunge into the sea. He later wrote that it was ‘Byzantium Restored’, as local lore has it that the descendants of the Byzantine emperors fled here as the Ottomans conquered the rest of Greece. Leigh Fermor bequeathed his home to the Benaki Museum to be run as a cultural site and writers’ retreat, but for three months a year it transforms into a small hotel, where guests can luxuriate in this authorly paradise complete with steps to a secluded beach. The buildings, furniture and vast book collection still bear the couple’s high-bohemian mark, from the main three-bedroomed house to the two neighbouring guest houses (one of which was formerly Leigh Fermor’s writing studio).

A large part of the magic here is when, softened up for dinner by sundowners on the spectacular terrace, you feel a frisson of the ghosts of guests past: you can imagine the soirées the Leigh Fermors gave when Evelyn Waugh or Bruce Chatwin visited (Chatwin’s ashes are buried in the mountains above Kardamyli). It’s a place that intoxicates with rhythm and magic, as Leigh Fermor wrote in Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese: ‘There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth.’ You feel that magic in the shade of the fig-scented patios and secret gardens, garlanded with cypress trees, olive trees, white oleanders and wild flowers, that roll down to the sea. It is a calm, almost spiritual place, where you still feel you could be staying in the private summer redoubt of a friend – and, with any luck, it will stay that way.

The last time Brandon Flowers fully leant into the heartland music on which he was raised in Nevada and Utah, it was 20 years ago. Sam’s Town was The Killers’ epic, desert-wide take on Bruce Springsteen’s East Coast Americana, and the band’s second album was huge in the UK and beyond. But, ironically enough, it stiffed in the US. As frontman Flowers told me a couple of years after its release, at home Sam’s Town sold less than half of its predecessor, the Las Vegas band’s three million-selling 2004 debut Hot Fuss.

Now, on his third solo album, here he is again, channelling the music his dad called “country-western”. Worried, much, about it, too, tanking? Not a bit of it. For this formerly unashamedly numbers-focused rock star, commercial success “is not as important to me anymore,” he told me earlier this summer. That said, he added, he was aware that that position is “also a luxury of having the [band’s career-long] success. It's not lost on me.” Equally, he had only recently heard, courtesy of a producer friend, the phrase "Good art is its own reward." It was a new one on the 45-year-old dad to three teenage boys. “But I understood it, I had felt it before, but no one had ever expressed it to me."

So to Thrasher, a record on which this practising Mormon and stadium-filler who can crowd-please like the holy lovechild of Elvis’n’Elton goes full double-denim – “the Canadian tuxedo!” as he put it to me while dressed in exactly that. And as befits a set of songs from this time-served anthem-merchant that are influenced by family, faith and fatherhood, it’s an impassioned collection of downhome songs straight from heart and hearth.

Flowers doesn’t mess around in doffing his Stetson: the opening ‘Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?’ is a straight-up country song that wouldn’t appear out of place on the jukebox on a Taylor Sheridan drama. It features lines such as “I could have been born in Bangladesh, but I wasn’t, I was born here” and “some may call it coincidence, I prefer design” speaking to, respectively, his pride in his homeland and, it seems, this man of God’s belief in Creationism.

But don’t let either of those ideas put you off. Firstly, Flowers is no Trumpist America First-er – “this administration has been scary,” he said to me, worry lines creasing his rock-star brow. Secondly, thereafter, Flowers gets invigoratingly less route one/Route 66. If someone had told me that the gorgeous ‘Plans’ was a great lost Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell collaboration, I would not have disbelieved them. ‘Paradise’ is a twanging hymn to a paradise lost: the Las Vegas that formed young Brandon, teenage bellhop in a Sin City casino, and his extended clan.

He further excavates the family Flowers on two powerfully evocative mini-dramas worthy of a happy-hour Cormac McCarthy. ‘Miss America’ is a guileless, tear-jerking, pedal-steeled written from the perspective of his sister Shelly. Fifteen years older than this youngest of six, she was trapped in an abusive marriage that it’s taken her baby brother the best part of three decades to reckon with. "You used to call me Miss America before you got hooked on speed,” he sings in that rich, Presley-meets-Bono quaver. “Maybe I'll go and get me a Mormon boy, ones that treats me like a queen.” *

The boot-scooting ‘One of Us’ is similarly radio- and jukebox-friendly, and another tribute to another family member. Mike was married to Flowers’ sister April, 17 years his senior. His passing a couple of years ago deeply affected the musician, hence this simple, charming and folksy tribute to a Canadian brother-in-law who was “always one of us”.

Thrasher ends with a song called ‘An American Dream’. “Of course it does,” a Euro-atheist-cynic might say. But it’s no MAGA-swagger. Rather it’s a near-six-minute, end-of-the night, swaying-on-a-haybale singalong, conjuring images of his beloved parents, a Tesla-driving Elvis (resplendent, natch, in his ’68 Comeback Special black leathers), plus Presley daughter Lisa-Marie, Jesus, “God and glitter” and “lights that flicker on hubcap chrome”, Flowers singing – beseeching – of a desire to “take me back home”. It’s another dustland fairytale from this unabashed romantic, and a fitting close to an album that takes us all back home, no matter how distant we are from desert of any kind.

*And, reader, she divorced him. Then Shelly did indeed meet and marry a loving Mormon boy. Romance isn’t dead, it just takes a while sometimes.

At John Pawson’s Cotswolds farmhouse, in the open-plan, refectory-style kitchen that regularly hosts lunch parties of 12 or 14, a 3.6m-long table of the minimalist architect’s own design takes centre stage. Another, longer story was told in Italy, where Brunello Cucinelli, the king of soft-tailored munificence, launched his Autumn/Winter 2014-2015 collection by imagining an alfresco dining moment stretching down a cypress-hemmed avenue into the Umbrian hills. And beating them both to the punch, the house of Ferragamo hosted a dinner at Burlington Arcade back in 2012, with a single dining table running the 179m length of the covered Samuel Ware-designed shopping landmark, its tableclothed surface disappearing down the famous gentle gradient to Piccadilly.

The modern long table – whether dressed, candlelit or whiteclothed – has its roots in medieval monasteries, where the utilitarian, refectory-style table was first used by monks for communal dining during the 14th century. Leonardo da Vinci depicted the drama, scale and social reach of the long dining table in his Last Supper, painted a century later, but took artistic licence by arranging Jesus and his 12 disciples along one side of the table, when in reality, of course, they would have been sitting across from each other.

Today, the long table has moved beyond the army mess, garden fêtes and street parties to conquer civic banquets and grand receptions. At a wedding lunch or significant birthday bash, a single long surface negates the snooty, outdated notion of a “top table”. Here is a democracy in dining that cannot be achieved with myriad round tables and the attendant class system of the table plan. Instead, parallel placement encourages sitters to move freely (once the entrée plates have been cleared), without the worry of leaving gaping empty spaces.

The Connaught hotel in London currently stages regular, extended dining events in its private rooms; tablescapes of dreamy infinity, tessellations of candelabras, flowers, glass, silverware and linen glinting into the Mayfair distance. The long story continues…

At the height of his late-20th-century British Saturday-night TV fame, the late Australian TV critic and travel broadcaster Clive James would show clips of Endurance, the most extreme game show Japanese television had to offer, in which people would eat insects as they tumbled from huge inflatable ladders into empty swimming pools full of mouse traps. No wonder a generation grew up believing Japan to be some sort of giant self-harm version of It’s A Knockout.

Fortunately, five years ago, an alluring shot of Mount Fuji on Instagram drew me back to Japan, after a 25-year break, where I discovered a world beyond sado-masochistic game shows; one of forests, rivers, landscapes, seascapes, sculpture parks, architecture, food, fashions and shops that were so magnetic I’ve been back four times since.

If arriving into Tokyo for the first time, a degree of international familiarity, as well as uninterrupted views of Mount Fuji, can be found at the Mandarin Oriental in the business district of Nihonbashi, the very centre of the original Tokyo. Look down from your room and you will see Shinkansen (bullet trains) sliding gracefully into Tokyo Station.

A few blocks away is the Tokyo Imperial Palace, the main residence of the Japanese Emperor and a must for fans of enormous moats, stone walls and history. There are, of course, countless restaurants, people and adventures to experience and enjoy in Tokyo, but the bookshop chain Tsutaya at Daikanyama is on another level to any other bookshop anywhere, the Kapital clothing shops stretch your imagination like few Western shops will, and Daiwa Sushi in the docks is a must-visit.

Board a Shinkansen and 90 minutes away from the metropolis, in Hakone, the Japanese Lake District, you will find a tree-lined valley overlooking a powerful river and numerous hot-spring onsen hotels. Choose the KAI Hakone and, as you sit with your feet in the river, gazing up at the dense forest as the water crashes from boulder to boulder, you’ll soon forget the city of 37 million people you’ve just left behind. No wonder Tokyoites are apt to pop down for a day’s rest and relaxation.

Unexpectedly, at 808 Monsmare, Hakone, you will find some of the world’s best pizzas outside of Naples. And at the truly astounding Hakone Open-Air Museum, you’ll discover sculptures like the brilliantly playful kids-only hand-knitted playscape by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam, and a Picasso ceramics gallery.

Next stop: the Shinkansen propels you towards Naoshima. You may have seen images of Yayoi Kusama’s giant pumpkins on Japan’s famous ‘art island’. However, her presence starts on the white car ferries that take you on the 20-minute ride across the Seto Inland Sea, each emblazoned with huge scarlet chevrons or circles – as if the Pet Shop Boys have redesigned a Red Cross boat.

For high-end accommodation, check in to the hotel at Benesse House Museum – in its grounds sits Kusama’s much Instagrammed yellow pumpkin. Here you’ll find Yukinori Yanagi’s sizeable wall of international flags made of sand, which holds your attention for quite some time before you realise that the whole installation is connected by Plexiglas tubes and is home to an ant colony. The slight degradation of each flag is a result of the insects’ busy travels.

Elsewhere, Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden features 1,700 stainless-steel spheres spread out across the paths, pond and layers of a garden and into the corridors of a concrete structure. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s stunning collection of sea photographs is presented on either side of a view of the Seto Inland Sea itself.

There’s no end to the quality and impact of the artworks here, best enjoyed by hiring electric bikes, which allow you to explore an art trail of truly diverse works housed in the alleyways between homes with Shou Suggi Ban charred-pine exteriors. Here you’ll frequently run into utterly unexpected installations: a room of total darkness; a former dentist’s house where extracted teeth are embedded in the walls; a huge Statue of Liberty climbing two storeys of a house filled with nautical ephemera.

Despite the island’s thriving community of creatives, perhaps the greatest beauty you experience here is not manmade; it’s the view at the end of the day as the ferry takes you back to the mainland. Later, when you look back at your pictures and you see the splendour of the seascape, you’ll wonder, ‘How on earth did I get used to this?’

Tolstoy had a knack of getting to the heart of things and it’s hard to disagree with the great novelist when he wrote: ‘A cigar – it’s not so much a pleasure as the crown and hallmark of pleasure.’ These are the words of Prince Stepan ‘Stiva’ Arkadyich Oblonsky in Anna Karenina. Had ‘Stiva’ been in London in June, he would have felt right at home when a nimbus of blue smoke formed over Belgrave Square as its railed gardens became a piece of Cuban territory hosting the three-day cigar marathon known as Habanos World Days.

Habanos World Days was conceived during the pandemic as a digital event to compensate for the absence of the annual Cigar Festival that takes place in Havana in February. It was a valiant attempt, but enjoying a cigar over Zoom has its limits. In 2024, the decision was taken to hold a physical event, the first of its kind outside Cuba: think of it as a kind of Art Basel Miami-style spin-off, but for cigars; and the choice of venue reflects London’s status as the market for Havana cigars.

‘The UK has long been a natural home to Havanas, and there is huge historical significance,’ says second-generation cigar merchant Eddie Sahakian, owner of the famous Davidoff store in St James’s and the Sahakian sampling room at the Bvlgari Hotel in Knightsbridge. ‘It may not have the sunshine of Cuba, but the mild climate favours ageing cigars over long periods and the peculiarities of the UK market mean that cigar merchants are incentivised to keep and age cigars. And there is an additional level of quality in the English Market Selection quality seal, which commands a premium among collectors.’

English Market Selection has been a thing for over 100 years and denotes the superior quality of cigars designated for the British market, but was only codified in the 1990s with the introduction of the seal: a coloured label about the size of a postage stamp that carries the year of import. Hunters & Frankau, the sole importer of Cuban cigars into the UK, describes EMS as ‘the cornerstone of the UK’s long-established reputation as the world centre for the finest Havana cigars’.

Moreover, the recent spree of grande luxe hotel openings in London has resulted in some of the finest cigar shops and sampling rooms in the world: places where lovers of fine Vuelta Abajo tobacco can enjoy the best that Cuba has to offer in a comfortable and contemplative environment. Indeed, opening a smart hotel without a cigar shop these days is like dispensing with the Michelin-starred restaurant or heavily marketed cocktail lounge. (My current favourite is on the top floor of The Emory hotel; it is hard to feel too bad about life when sampling a limited-edition Partagas Series D No.1 from 2004 while looking out across the treetops of Hyde Park.)

It is this spirit that Habanos World Days has tapped into. For all the depredations the capital has suffered at the hands of our political leaders in recent years, not least Rishi Sunak’s fiddling with VAT refunds that drove tourist shoppers across the Channel, overseas visitors remain attracted to London, in part because it is still regarded as the locus classicus of a certain type of dandified luxury, of which cigars are a component. Britain neither cultivates tobacco nor rolls it into cigars, but somehow it does add value to them. From the preceding weekend, cigar enthusiasts start flying into London from around the world. Some go straight from the airport to Mayfair and begin scouring cigar shops for vintage treasures, and placing advance orders for the latest limited edition – the Trinidad Cabildos, which made its world debut at Habanos World Days in London a couple of years back.

In 2024, the three-day programme of parties, dinners, seminar and exhibition all honoured the Trinidad brand, which was celebrating its 55th birthday. Named after the Cuban city (not the Caribbean island), Trinidad was once so exclusive that for its first 29 years it was only used as a diplomatic gift, which, it is said, only Fidel Castro could bestow. It was finally released commercially in 1998 and, even then, only in one size, the slender Fundadores. In terms of prestige, it was positioned only slightly beneath the triple-fermented Cohiba. Its blend showcased the seco leaf, which accounts for the fragrant aroma and smooth character. For some years it preserved much of its mystique, even when the range expanded to include, among other gems, the Robusto Extra and the Robusto T. But, as is often the way with Cuban cigars, when something really good comes along it is soon discontinued. Sadly, this was the story with the Extra and the T, and when these were killed off in 2012 I lost interest for a while. But now the cry has gone up to Make Trinidad Great Again. As well as the Cabildos, London was favoured with the first 20 commemorative humidors packed with 55 Trinidad Fundadores Vintage 10, matured in Cuba for at least a decade. In effect, Habanos World Days is a reboot for Trinidad, which is now to be positioned as a luxury brand – not just a luxury cigar brand, but a luxury brand, full stop.

Habanos S.A., the body that makes and markets the cigars, is half owned by the Cuban state and half owned by a Hong Kong-based consortium that bought out Imperial Brands, the previous shareholder, for a sum rumoured to be over a billion dollars. The Asian investors have raised the perception (and prices) of Cuban cigars by seeing them not as a means of delivering nicotine into the body – a Trinidad or Cohiba has as much in common with cigarettes as a bottle of Petrus does with a bottle of plonk – but as a luxury product with its own world of quality, tradition and craftsmanship similar in stature to haute couture. After all, the torcedors who manipulate the aromatic leaf into instruments of pleasure are as skilled in their own way as les petites mains who create a Chanel suit or Dior gown.

In short, the unique character and culture of the Cuban cigar warrants a sophisticated level of connoisseurship and appreciation – and, at Habanos World Days in London, it receives it.

Where to stay for the Venice Biennale: Hotel Cipriani

With a cast of legendary guests – Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Brad Pitt and Yves Saint Laurent amongst – who have all supped up the swell vibes of the Hotel Cipriani one wonders if by osmosis a certain starriness seeps through to mere mortals. Does the legacy lead to a subtle form of behaviour modification? It’s sweet to ponder as I lap up and down the fabulously generous outdoor swimming pool with 270 panoramic views over the Venetian Lagoon. Taking an outdoor shower in a jasmine covered niche, watching the pool staff deliver peachy pink swim towels to vacant loungers, maybe the hotel’s soignee air becomes me.

There’s a baffling choice of over twenty natural honeys, plus a slab of honeycomb, at breakfast from which I conclude the art of pique-ing curiosity is a central tenant of contemporary luxury. Hotel Cipriani, located on Giudecca island opened in 1958 when the visionary Giuseppe Cipriani realised the potential of this quiet residential strip of land with its views towards St Marks. Having started out as a bartender, turning into an acclaimed chef, Cipriani senior distilled his wisdom and experience into a sybarite’s paradise. His son, ninety something, Arrigo Cipriani, looking pucker in blue seersucker, can be spotted at lunch outpost, Harry’s Dolci – now this must be a man with a cornucopia of tales to tell. Yet decades of potentially salacious goings on are treated with utter discretion.

Owned and run by Belmond, originally operating as Orient Express Hotels since 1976, the myth and legacy are carefully plumped like feather pillows. Interior architect Peter Marino, chairman of Venetian Heritage Foundation, was charged with the ongoing rejuvenation of the hotel's interiors that got their first reveal in 2025. “The world's great artists, actors, singers and society all mingled at this very special place and my goal is to rekindle that magic,” says Marino. There’s a gorgeous sweet and salty gorgeousness to Marino’s schemes where Dolce Vita era vintage furniture colludes with Grand Venetian rococo, peppered with huge abstract expressionist artworks, mahogany panelling and mirrors everywhere.

Where to eat at the Venice Biennale: Oro

The Michelin starred Oro restaurant is an ode to the shimmery beauty of Venice with its giant windows that deliver a Canaletto vista from every angle, glimmering hand cast Murano glass walls and Marino designed furniture and frolicsome Murano made chandeliers. The menu conceived by head chef Vania Ghedini (who broke off her maternity leave to take up the role offered by Oro’s culinary creative director, Massimo Botturo) is interlaced with Venetian stories that give the dishes a rich educational dimension. Star of the show is a beef carpaccio that pays tribute to the dish created by Giuseppe Cipriani in 1950 in honour of the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio. On the plate, tender meat is veiled by an edible portrait of the artist himself. Cut into the neck and with macabre beauty, the red flesh pops out. Rice, one of the first crops cultivated by Venetians in the 15th century, is championed in a risotto with seaweed broth and horseradish while pan fried sturgeon receives a dousing in caviar, anchovies and garlic. Ghedini delivers an operatic ending in the shape of reductionist tiramisu with gold leaf covered patisserie. Ghedini spends the off season travelling and researching new menus – culinary artistry, like painting, needs the luxury of time. Alongside the signature Carpaccio, Cipriani also delivered the Bellini (that heady concoction of Prosecco and peach puree) at Harry’s Bar in 1948, to sync with a grand retrospective of the Italian master. Now that level of cultural/social capital is world beating. The dreamy hue is dispersed throughout the hotel from the staff uniforms to the striped glass cloths that were delivered to my room at turndown. I can definitely see the splendours of Venice more clearly and appreciate gibigiana – my new favourite word which translates as the dance of light on water.

What to see at the 2026 Venice Biennale 'In Minor Keys'

The National Pavilions in the Giardini offer up a multitude of interpretations of the umbrella theme with artists exploring the vernacular, the role of memory, community and hope. It’s a pleasure to meander but with limited time head to France for Yto Barrada’s delicately hued textile works; to Austria for Florentina Holzinger’s performance installation that investigates ecological destruction and human autonomy; to Egypt for Armen Agop’s sonic, olfactory and sculptural scapes that beckon the cosmos and to Brazil where Diane Lima curates a beguiling display of figurative art and ceramics by Adriana Varejão and Rosana Paulino. Behind the neoclassical façade of Great Britain’s pavilion find Lubainia Himid’s zingy but disquieting portrayals that examine black British migrant life.

labiennale.org/en

Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy at Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia.

The solo show, heralding the artist’s 80th year, bridges five centuries of art placing Abramović's ground-breaking performances (including Rhythm 0, Imponderabilia, and Balkan Baroque) directly alongside Renaissance masterpieces.

gallerieaccademia.it

Lorna Simpson: Third Person at Pinault Collection Punta della Dogana.

The American artist delivers paintings collages and installations made in the last ten years into the serene space to explore the erosion of memory, identity and the blurring of truth and fiction.

pinaultcollection.com

Dries Van Noten Foundation: The Only True Protest is Beauty

The palazzo Pisani Moretta, located on the Grand Canal, in all its rococo splendour offers up a resplendent environment for Van Noten’s new art foundation that he founded with partner Patrick Vangheluwe on purchasing the palazzo from the Sammartini family in 2025. The debut show opened in April champions craft with a brilliant curation of fashion (Comme des Garcons and Christian Lacroix), ceramics, glass, sculpture, photography and furniture that examines the art of making. Don’t miss the gift shop where Van Noten’s perfumes mingle with books and limited edition pieces.

fondazionedriesvannoten.org

Convent Garden of Redentore

For a ruminative walk head to this secret Convent Garden on Giudecca. After restoration and replanting by the Venice Gardens Foundation, the secluded spot features over 1200 plants and views of the lagoon plus there’s a poetic show of Sarah Moon’s photography of Venice.

venicegardensfoundation.org

There exists a direct, 101-year-old correlation between the tradition of the summer blockbuster movie and air conditioning technology – if the two hadn’t collided, Hollywood’s July-August season would be a hot, empty mess and ambient temperatures would make a visit to the cinema feel like two hours in a sauna.

Reel back to 1925, and New York industrialist Willis Carrier had a plan to counter the deleterious effect of high summer on moviegoing, installing a newfangled ‘refrigerating plant’ powering a ‘centrifugal chiller’ in Times Square’s Rivoli Theatre. Carrier had invented the cooling machine in 1902, forming the Carrier Air Conditioner Company of America in 1908. ‘We have invested over $100,000 ($1.8 million in today’s money) in a refrigeration plant to keep you cool and comfortable when the world is sweltering,’ announced the Rivoli’s proud management on its Memorial Day debut. By 1930, more than 300 US picture houses could advertise their buildings as ‘cooled by refrigeration’, offering a respite from stifling conditions outside. Better still, the air conditioning helped keep hot projection equipment from overheating also.

A decade later, the proliferation of holiday air-con begat a new genre for what had traditionally been the slow season for the movie industry: the summer ‘blockbuster’ was named after a particularly lethal brand of World War II bomb capable of taking out a whole block when dropped from aircraft. Hollywood first borrowed the term to describe the 1943 war drama Bombardier. ‘The block-buster of all action-thrill service shows!’ screamed the ads.

In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws became the first bona fide summer blockbuster of the modern era, with punters literally queuing around the block to see the sun, sea and shark spectacle (sometimes two or three times in a single day) and the film busting all records by becoming the first to take $100 million at the box office (adjusting for inflation, that’s around $584 million today).

Over five decades on, many of the original summer blockbusters – Alien, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Batman, Jurassic Park, Star Wars – continue to thrive as highly profitable movie franchises, and continue to owe part of their success to aircon. How cool is that?

Masterpiece incoming… Six long – but very much not idle – years after her second album, the accidentally Covid-timely Punisher, the singer-songwriter from Pasadena, California releases her third. And it’s an expansive, 16-track wonder, its treasures gloriously trailed by lead single ‘Lost Boys’.

With trumpets and strings and a melody to die for, here be a shimmering blast of baroque-pop in the vein of Sufjan Stevens, the sound rounded out by contributions from a studio crew including Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus (her bandmates in power-trio side-hustle Boygenius), plus Alex G, Jack Antonoff and Nate Walcott from Bright Eyes. Its childlike wonder was driven brilliantly home by Bridgers’ debut TV performance of the song: appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she was backed by a band made up of rockin’ out kids. Their glee was only matched by hers.

If the full bloom of the artistry of Bridgers – 32 next week – is on display in that lead track, the lead-in was equally vivid. She toured for two years solo, and put in a shift opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras run. Boygenius won three Grammys for their 2023 debut the record. And, on a night of a thousand stars, Bridgers was the most honoured artist, winning a fourth for ‘Ghost in the Machine’. Around and about all that were guest spots on songs from Muna, Bright Eyes, Lorde, Andrew Bird, The National, Arlo Parks and Paul McCartney.

All of which creative tributaries lead to Lost Weekend, an album of dislocation (wrought by success) and dissolution (of relationships) which opens with, in ‘The Outside’, the image of Bridgers having an out-of-body experience while, it seems, crowd-surfing.

‘Kill Me’ is as forceful as the title, a deep, plunging drone-rock power-lament that has, buried in the jagged walls of guitars and electronics and vocals, the mysterious “Son-John Johnson”, aka, most likely, Geese’s Cameron Winter. His distinctively reedy voice pops up, again uncredited, duetting on ‘I Can’t Wait’, an unabashed epic of orchestral indie-rock.

‘Bobby’, with mandolin, pounding drums and crashing guitars, evokes R.E.M. around the time of their grunge-era masterpiece Monster. ‘Haunted’ is vivid Americana, all violins, mandolins and acoustic guitar, with a powerhouse vocal and a melody that’s giving folk-song standard.

Bridgers the poet of the everyday drops pearls on the hymnal, organ-led (“I turned down the music to parallel park”), her hushed vocals sitting snug in the listener’s cochlear. Then the song explodes, just past the halfway mark, into a chiaroscuro of glitches, panting, trumpet blasts and skittering synths – one of the best realisations of the vibrant sonic palette of this record.

Bridgers the cineaste and budding actor (she’s in upcoming crime thriller Primetime with Robert Pattinson) makes her lyrical presence felt on lines such as “you were shaking like a Final Girl”, a horror trope-referencing lyric on the spacious, staring-at-the-ceiling piano ballad ‘Other Plans’ – a lament for a relationship that took an unexpected turn (“our love, honey, had other plans for us”).

That love of the screen is there, too, in “hiding in the bathroom like Shelley Duval”, a reference to The Shining that vividly sets the scene on the ghostly, opalescent ‘The Governor’s Waltz’. Some are interpreting it as a post-mortem on Bridgers’ relationship with Paul Mescal and on the actor’s new girlfriend, Gracie Abrams, the allegedly telling lines being “and she can pretend to be me / Since she took my place in my bed on that stage / I have not lost any sleep”. This less-than-chronically-online reviewer is less convinced.

The wrenching emotion, though, forever runs deep and rich, and is never more potent when she references the father with whom she had a complicated relationship (and whose death she announced in early in 2023). ‘Still Standing’ is hollow-eyed confessional of grief and numbness and unresolved feelings, unabashed in its presentation of complex memories about her parents (who divorced in her teens): “I found her bleeding over the sink / but when you said sorry you were looking at me”. Then, on the close of ‘Never Going Back!’, we hear a sweet voicemail: “Hey Phoebe, it’s your dad. I know you’re busy. Being a rock star takes up a lot of your time I imagine!”

Given what that commitment has produced here, we should all be grateful.

Through the past darkly with Primal Scream as the (mostly) Scottish band revisit three albums they recorded between the (as they saw it) dingy fag-end of the swingin’ Nineties and the grave new world of an allegedly fresh millennium. The Bunker Trilogy is the title they’re now giving to Vanishing Point (1997), XTRMNTR (2000) and Evil Heat (2002), named after the nickname they gave their North London studio and now grouped together in a set of expanded reissues being released between now and October.

First up, this week, Vanishing Point. Its predecessors were 1991’s Screamadelica, the epochal rock/rave/dub crossover album on which DJ/producer/remixer Andrew Weatherall helped them reinvent what rock music – and Primal Scream – could be. Then came 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up, the sound of a gang of pasty, leather-clad Brits who were in thrall to the rock’n’roll dream, immersing themselves in American blues, country, gospel and clobber previously inhabited by The Rolling Stones.

Then, after another three-year gestation, another seismic shift. The Scream let fans know that everything we knew was (again) wrong when they released as Vanishing Point’s lead track ‘Kowalski’, a song co-written with new member Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, former bass player with The Stone Roses. Titled after Barry Newman’s single-monikered anti-hero from nihilist 1971 road-movie Vanishing Point, this was a mantric, dubby, grubby, Can-sampling, twisted electro-rock track that was lite on tune and even more lite on chorus. Despite a video featuring supermodels Kate Moss and Devon Aoki (and scripted by Irvine Welsh), it was also no one’s idea of a lead single. Which was exactly, presumably, the point.

The album opener drove that point home, too. ‘Burning Wheel’ was an unstintingly low-slung seven minutes, an extended blues jam with space-rock atmospherics. Ploughing a similar groove was the dubby ‘Star’, albeit this time with a remarkably pretty melody and an unusually affecting vocal from Gillespie, a singer not normally known for his, well, sweetness. Case in point: their pounding synths’n’riffs cover of ‘Motorhead’ by Motorhead, which Gillespie allegedly part-sang through a Darth Vader mask before going full sneer.

The connection with author Welsh, very much part of the dissolute Scream team back then, was further underlined in the track ‘Trainspotting’. Unlike Danny Boyle’s film, on the soundtrack of which it had originally appeared 18 months previously, the instrumental is far from propulsive. Rather it’s a stoned groove pitched somewhere between blissed out and zonked out.

The album tracks, then, are the sound of a band not so much choosing life as choosing to opt out of everything around them in that heady/headless era of Cool Britannia.

As for the extra tracks on this reissue: ‘Kowalski’ b-side ’96 Tears’ is a hammering, Suicide-influenced cover of the ? [Question Mark] and the Mysterians 1966 garage-rock anti-classic. ‘Star’ b-side ‘Jesus’ is a Velvet Underground-esque narco-ballad. Second ‘Star’ b-side ‘How Does It Feel to Belong’ is another Velvets-coded streak of ennui. Third 'Star' b-side ‘Rebel Dub’ is a remix of ‘Star’ that does what it says on the tin (with extra bongos). And ‘Hammond Connection’, the b-side to ‘Burning Wheel’, is a further triumph of nominative determinism, a contrarily energetic bit of Hammond organ-powered R&B.

All of which sounds like what Primal Scream fully intended: disruptive music made in the dark, in the shadows, as frequently claustrophobic as a bunker. As contrarian-in-chief Gillespie puts it now: “The albums constituting The Bunker Trilogy were the complete antithesis of everything that was going on in UK music in the 1990s. We were making uncompromising, aggressive, experimental pop and rock music with lyrics about psychic dislocation, addiction, alienation, depression, questioning our very existence and documenting the dark, sleazy underbelly of UK youth culture…”

While that is mostly true, Vanishing Point the album is perhaps best summed up by the tag-line on the poster of Vanishing Point the movie: “Tighten your seatbelt. You never had a trip like this before.” Certainly in the context of a band who, five years previously, had won the inaugural Mercury Music Prize for Screamadelica and refashioned British “indie” in their own image, their fifth album was indeed a wild detour.

Pint-sized powerhouse Ariana Grande is never – usually – knowingly understated. With a four-octave vocal range barely contained by a five-foot (and change) frame, the Florida native’s ability to scale the giddy pop-culture heights is (almost literally) unparalleled. Over the last decade and a half, a brace of songs comfortably in the billion streams club – ‘we can’t be friends (wait for your love)’, ‘Into You’, ‘Love Me Harder’, ‘One Last Time’, ‘7 Rings’, ‘Side to Side’, ‘Dangerous Woman’, ‘thank u, next’ – have powered her coolly, comfortably, emphatically far, far beyond her child actor origins on Nickelodeon.

And that’s pop-culture, not just pop. Nineteen years on from making her Broadway debut in the musical 13, 33-year-old Grande is a true triple-threat: she can sing, and then some. She can act, most recently in the two, $1.2 billion-grossing Wicked movies and, next up, in November’s hotly anticipated, um, “quad-quel” Focker-in-Law, her name already #icon enough for the movie poster to simply say “De Niro. Stiller. Grande”. And she can do, on Saturday Night Live or whatever chatshow, hilarious, tone-perfect impersonations of any other diva you throw her way, from Britney to Maria to Celine to the diva-est diva, Jennifer (Coolidge).

Grande, then, punches way above her height. Which is why the feeling of underwhelm on this eighth album hits harder. On petal, Grande’s ongoing and dedicated preference for lower-case titles is matched by equally committed lower-key energy. The overall mood is mid-tempo and middling, the sound burbling synthpop that rarely breaks a sweat. On an allegedly angry break-up album she's advertised as “a little feral”, its protagonist sounds unfocused and underpowered. Oh for some sonic rage.

At moments, certainly, there are Grande achievements. ‘hate that i made you love me’, co-written with Scandi hit-machine Max Martin, is a bittersweet kiss-off sung by a woman who was until recently dating actor Ethan Slater, the Wicked co-star who filed for divorce from his ex-wife during production on the first film. The glacially chilly title track – another Martin co-write – hits equally hard, its synth-goth keyboard stabs plunging as forcefully as the lyrics: “tryna feel something real / to cry again / they say the artist needs tears / to write again / all my favourite stories / end in some kind of catastrophe / but i don’t need someone to save me / cause this music and I will never die / it's such a fucked situation”.

There’s more lyrical punch where that came from. ‘big feelings’ is a biting clapback, but if only the no-holds-barred sentiments (“pussy so sweet a tear fell from his eye”) were matched by no-punches-pulled songcraft on a lacklustre, R&B-lite dirge. On the minimal electro of ‘like i do’ there is, again, a yawning gap between the screw-you sentiment (“no one fucks you like i do”) and the will-this-do? absence of melodic hooks.

There are the occasional uptempo moments. ‘oh well’ has a skippy, drum’n’bass beat, but not much in the way of chorus or vocal excitement. It takes the penultimate ‘bad thing (bunny hop)’, a zooming, Eighties synth-rock bop of the kind perfected by The Weeknd, to offer a flash of Grande the arena-filling, pop-bossing, Boca Raton bottle-rocket.

But overall, the feeling is of a woman all in her feels, but muffled in them. Or, in the words of a friend who’s a seasoned Ari-watcher and keeper-of-the-flame: “It feels like someone has been holding her at gunpoint in the studio, banning her from belting.”

As she sings on the opening ‘kiss me’, “Gimme something to love, gimme something overwhelming”. To which the only response after listening to these 12 tracks is: same, babes.

A roughly one-hour car drive from Rome airport, the 102-key Palazzo Fiuggi is set within a private park, framed by hills, forests and the resort town for which it’s named. Since 2021, and following extensive refurbishment and restoration, the property has been operating as a luxury wellness resort, replete with a 64,000-square-feet spa, and a team of practitioners that includes doctors, personal trainers and physiotherapists. It’s a new era for the art nouveau-style edifice, and one that befits its illustrious history: opened in 1913 as the Grand Hotel Palazzo della Fonte, it was the first hotel in continental Europe equipped with a swimming pool. Its list of guests too stands out; among the names are King Vittorio Emanuele III and Pablo Picasso. Later, the stars of Cinecittà and Hollywood cinema stayed here, including Sophia Loren and Ingrid Bergman.

The retreat is part of a spa town built on Fiuggi water, a low-mineral water that is rich in fulvic and humic acids, calcium and magnesium. Fiuggi water is known to soften kidney stones and to be a natural diuretic, meaning it can be used to flush out metabolic waste, acids and heavy metals. Its use as a therapy can be dated back to the Renaissance, as reported by Michelangelo.

Cups of Fiuggi water are still drunk at Palazzo Fiuggi today; a daily ritual in between hikes up and across the surrounding mountains, exercise classes in a gym furnished with Technogym equipment and hand-blown Murano glass chandeliers, and other, mostly one-on-one, treatments from a menu of options that includes both holistic therapies and medical advancements, such as plasma light therapy, prescribed to invigorate skin.

Deep Detox, Regenerate, and Longevity are the names of some of the programmes to check in for, most of which require a commitment of at least seven nights. Wellness Break is slightly shorter – a three-night option exists – and its itinerary includes expert consultations, deep-tissue massage, a Kobido lifting facial massage, a hammam ritual and thalassotherapy. Three-step hydrotherapy appointments are a guest favourite: a Dead Sea mineral mud body wrap follows warm hydrotherapy bathing, with a massaging shower being the final phase. Each programme is dotted with dishes made from organic, locally sourced ingredients, and created by three-star Michelin chef Heinz Beck, who also trained in natural bioenergies and naturopathy.

‘At Palazzo Fiuggi, our goal is not simply to help guests feel better, it is to help them discover what feeling truly well can be. We want them to leave with renewed energy, mental clarity and a deeper understanding of their own health,’ says Dr Fabrizio Di Salvio, the property’s head doctor and co-creator of the Palazzo Fiuggi method, a special blend of nutrition, medical consultations, treatments and the famous natural spring water. ‘Most importantly, we want them to feel empowered, equipped with the knowledge, habits and motivation to continue investing in their wellbeing long after they have left our doors.’

palazzofiuggi.com

“I think the dancefloor is dead (it’s totally dead) / So now we’re making r-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-c-k music” – album eight, track one: ‘Rock Music’

And so, with a stuttering, raised-fist, blank-eyed manifesto, Charli xcx proclaims that she’s bringing the curtain down on an everything-everywhere-all-at-once era. Starting two intense years ago, the world of Brat – the Cambridge-born artist’s sixth album – gifted us a brace of club-igniting, world-wowing, electro-pop anthems (‘Von Dutch’, ‘360’, ‘Apple’). A “new”, 31-year-old pop star. A triple-Grammy-winning record that became a cultural juggernaut. One-woman-and-her-microphone festival headline slots. A fresh kind of rockumentary (this year’s underappreciated satire The Moment). A Wuthering Heights soundtrack collab that became a very different kind of moment. A handful of forgettable acting gigs. And a whole new colourway for cool.

Now, though, it’s time to move on from those Olympian triumphs. We’re leaving the club for the moshpit, woot! Having bossed one genre, we’re hopping onto and reinventing another. We’re gonna wash that slime-green right out of our hair.

Well, kinda. Music, Fashion, Film might attempt to proclaim its genre-trashing, lane-switching, game-changing credentials with cover art featuring John Cale, Martin Scorsese and Marc Jacobs, not to mention a closing track that features David Cronenberg. But over its short 11 songs and concise 30 minutes, while it still brings the fun, it's a good bit less revelational than Charli would have us believe.

Rather than evoking the disparate, kaleidoscopic worlds of its title, Music, Fashion, Film cycles through eras of indie, indie, indie, notably in its five-song middle section. ‘Card Declined’ is the pale-faced New Wave of The Passions’ 1981 one-hit-wonder ‘I’m in Love with a German Film Star’, as filtered through the sludgy grunge of Dinosaur Jr. ‘Camera’ is a conflicted post-mortem on the face-eating mask of acting (“when the camera’s on… I can finally be totally honest… it’s like I’m looking down the barrel of a gun… fucking shoot me”). Evoking the bright, sparkling guitars and keyboards of Orange Juice, Aztec Camera or one of their peers on ground-zero Eighties Glasgow label Postcard, it thereby manages to yoke The Sound of Young Scotland to The Angst of Millennial East London.

With its jittery guitars, stabbing synths and burnt-out ennui, ‘2007’ could be a Franz Ferdinand b-side from the Difficult Third Album sessions they were embarking on in that very year. ‘I’m Afraid’ – breathy and breathless vocals over sawing, squalling guitars – is a My Bloody Valentine c-side, which is still a great thing. ‘Yeah’ is Klaxons on a particularly harsh comedown.

In that middle chunk, in careering from New Wave to New Rave and all indie points in between, Charli xcx is less making r-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-c-k music than spinning around, self-referentially tweaking the nose of her own success. Elsewhere, though, she’s more on-brand/on-marketing. ‘Rock Music’ has a raw, buzzsaw-riff swagger that means it pretty much does what it says on the tin. Glorious sad banger ‘SS26’ is Fleetwood Mac’s California rock for the doom generation (“spring/summer ’26 / when the world is gonna end no hope for anything / we’re walking on a runway that goes straight to hell / nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film”).

‘Wink Wink’ offers up the thrilling sound of a synthpop Strokes fronted by sulky and knowingly hilarious woman-child pop star cancelling-not-cancelling her two-year Brat omniscience: “I used to say scream if you wanna faster but then I sold my Porsche / my friend Rostam told me I dress like a slut / so now I shop at APC / I don’t know why you don’t believe me”.

‘Persona’ is equally exciting, its discordant keyboards and buzzsaw riffs so old-school, gnarly and basic they sound like they took 50p and five minutes to record – but, brilliantly, they’re topped with a gorgeous melody. ‘Magic Metal Montana’ is, again, The Strokes at their most skinny-tied and amphetamined, with Charli proclaiming her autotuned love for her friend and collaborator, the producer/songwriter AG Cook.

Finally, as is very well known by an artist who only became a Proper International Success after six albums, comes a meditation on the fact that nothing in pop, in art, is a given. So, on the glitchy electro of the closing ‘No One Lasts Forever’, she pre-empts her own demise, albeit blessed with the heft of being able to use a speech from Cronenberg – a soliloquy on the film director’s near-death experience – to drive home the message. “They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever,” the Canadian auteur intones, repeatedly, to fade, the sound of Charli xcx having her obsolescence and eating it.

Brat summer is dead, long live Brat summer.

Talking to me earlier this year, Tricky explained the thinking behind the title of his new album.

“I was doing a photo shoot for Acne, the Swedish clothing company,” he began. “And when we were doing photos, everybody was talking. There was about 10 people in the room. I was smoking a spliff and that, and they were totally cool with me.

“Then we had to film. So everybody had to be quiet. And the atmosphere just changed. And I just said: ‘Oh, it's different when it's silent.’ My late manager, Nigel Templeman, was there. And I said: ‘You know what? That's a great name for an album.’ And Nigel wrote it down in his phone. That's why the album is called that.”

It is, then, a nod to his late manager and their work together, “because he was there and he was enthusiastic. It was a moment.”

There are moments like that – powerful, moving, devastating, uplifting – all over this record, and it’s all the more brilliant and impactful for it. His 15^th album overall, it’s the first Tricky has released under his own name in six years, the last being Fall to Pieces. Since then, the artist born Adrian Thaws has purposefully avoided leading with his name, releasing music as Lonely Guest, Theis Thaws and in collaboration with Polish singer Marta Złakowska, who goes by Marta and is signed to his label False Idols.

The reason for that blurring, that avoiding of having to front a project, was the sudden death in 2019 of his daughter. He managed to make Fall to Pieces, “but I was in pieces when I made that album. I had to get that out of me.” Now, though, he’s stepping into the light, alchemising the darkest of feelings into a sense of life continuing, with purpose and passion, against the odds. The result: his best album since his groundbreaking debut album, 1995’s Maxinquaye.

Here are songs of love and loss and hope. The aching, sparse blues of the opening ‘I Still See Me There’, Tricky whispering in the shadows (“don’t leave me here”) while Mitch Sanders, the young fellow Bristolian who appears on many of these tracks, sings in a keening falsetto. The jagged riffs and jagged anger of ‘I’m Yours’. ‘Be Still in the Pain’, all sinuous hip hop-soul, Sanders’ remarkable, swooping voice weaving in and out of bassy raps from another Bristolian associate, Run Red Rambo. ‘I Tried’, a tight, concise, two minutes-and-15 seconds that evokes the masterclass in production that was Maxinquaye and its fellow mid-Nineties exemplars of “the Bristol sound”.

Touring Different When It’s Silent in spring, Tricky and Sanders performed on barely lit stages, a (lack of) lighting choice in keeping with the heavier themes and intensity of emotion of Tricky’s new songs. But on the album that doesn’t come off as claustrophobic. And that’s testament to the songcraft and melodicism on display here, both Tricky’s and Sanders’.

A 27-year-old singer-songwriter signed to Island, he’s clearly a fantastic foil and creative sparring partner for Tricky. Having worked with myriad female vocalists over the years, this is “the first time I've ever done a full album with a male singer,” Tricky pointed out to me. It’s a great hook-up, with Sanders supplying, as well as multiple killer vocal performances, ‘Paris Maybe’, an unashamed pop song, albeit filtered through Tricky’s ice-cool, Joy Division-go-electronic production.

It isn’t quite a full album featuring entirely male vocals. Marta appears on the closing 'Out of Place', a punky, hammering song of release in which co-vocalist Tricky tells it like it is: “I sing for my daughter”. A testament of everlasting love, helping spark to life an album that’s a true, defiant triumph.

There are many aspects of hotels that can be labelled as offering added value, or, as they are more commonly known, ‘experiences’ – beehives, boat trips, Augustinus Bader facials, to name just a few. But when you need something that completely transports you, nothing can compete with a vintage-car collection as a truly immersive experience.

At Hotel Al Moudira in Luxor, it’s as if the Beatles song Drive My Car has come to life. Indeed, it’s a great song to blast as you cruise along in its 1968 stretch Mercedes 200, the wind blowing in your hair. A beautiful place, sprawling and lost in a time warp, Al Moudira is a haven of antiques, thanks to its owner, Florian Amereller, a keen collector of museum-worthy pieces salvaged from various palaces in Alexandria. His collection of treasures extends to the garage, which are filled with a svelte line-up of retro automobiles that includes two 1980s Land Rover Defenders and a 1960 VW Karmann Ghia, along with the aforementioned Merc – surely the most memorable airport pick-up imaginable.

While all the great and most celebrated hotels offer that glorious, dreamy feeling that you are somehow starring in your own personal movie, at Belmond’s Villa San Michele, just outside Florence, that feeling comes to life as you drive up to the sun-baked, collonaded entrance in an ice-blue 1965 Porsche. Here, a vintage-car moment allows you to really feel the cobbled landscape of this Renaissance city in the most wonderfully nostalgic way. The concierge, Adriano Pecoraro, is amazing at piecing together the most storied vintage rides, such as 1980s Ferraris and the classic Ape Calessino, not to mention the best addresses to seek out, from the nearby ruined temple dedicated to Minerva, to the statuary wonders of the Villa Bardini.

Meanwhile, not far away in Volterra, in the Tuscan countryside, lies Borgo Pignano, a divine eco retreat that houses a museum-quality collection of cars and Vespa scooters that celebrates the golden age of Italian design: included is a 1957 Fiat 500, alongside 1930s Gloria Garibaldina bicycles and a 1954 Ducati. You can’t take any out for excursions, but just to see them in such surroundings is enough (although you can explore the estate on horseback should you wish).

And while it’s a wrench to leave its loungers, the hairpin roads that surround the Maybourne Riviera in the South of France are made for a Jaguar 1969 E-Type or 1978 Rolls Royce Corniche, both of which can be magicked up by its concierge, working closely with Sunset Ride, suppliers of the most immaculate and lauded cars on the Côte d’Azur. Yes, the roads here still manage to conjure up scenes straight from Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief perfectly — especially when revving up to the hotel’s La Môme Riviera beach club, right down by the water’s edge in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

GOOD TO KNOW

Another landscape made for epic road trips has to be Ireland and the Wild Atlantic Way, especially when you’re sitting in a 1936 Buick Roadmaster Convertible, the star attraction at Sheen Falls Lodge, a Relais & Châteaux wonder in Kenmare, Ireland, which has been part of the collection since 1992.

Sir Mick Jagger, who turns 83 this month, has collaborated with old friend Keith Richards, who reaches the same age at the end of the year, and “new boy” Ronnie Wood, who doesn’t hit 80 for another 11 months, on the (checks notes) 25^th studio album by The Rolling Stones. And by any metric – by their own peerless catalogue, by the work of any other extant octogenarian artists in any field (Martin Scorsese? Anthony Hopkins? The recently departed David Hockney?), by the energy of a band a quarter their age – it’s a triumph that is both all-ages and age-defying.

Foreign Tongues is a riotously good rock’n’roll record of the type they really don’t make any more. Unless “they” are the Stones. It opens with ‘Rough and Twisted’, a low-slung boogie propelled by a slide-guitar blues riff from Richards that’s so instantly classic you might find be compelled to reacquaint yourself with Exile on Main St., just to make sure Keef isn’t ripping himself off. See also: the alley-cat harmonica from Jagger that will take the roof off whatever stadium they next perform in (no mean feat in a stadium).

‘In the Stars’ is similarly (yes) skyscraping, powered by a killer chorus, organ from the maestro Benmont Tench and unashamedly POP backing vocals from wunderkind producer Andrew Watt, the 35-year-old oldie-whisperer who’s worked similar wonders with Paul McCartney and Ozzy Osbourne.

Even leaner, even faster, even raunchier are the breakneck ‘Hit Me in the End’ (rhythm courtesy of late drummer Charlie Watts, involved in initial recordings prior to his death five years ago) and ‘Divine Intervention’, the latter featuring Jagger breaking out his still-mighty falsetto and The Cure’s Robert Smith on guitar. He switches up his voice again on ‘Ringing Hollow’, finding invigorating fresh corners in the sleazy country-rock template they minted with producer Jimmy Miller as they oozed from the ’60s to the ’70s, while also offering a wearied if glancing takedown on Trump’s America in the lines “there’s always a scoundrel trying to whip up the crowd” and “Lady Liberty don’t look so good when there’s a tear in her gown”.

They do soul, too, in both the Curtis Mayfield-channelling ‘Jealous Lover’, replete with more falsetto and Fender Rhodes piano from Steve Winwood, and in a tribute to an equally iconoclastic talent: the Stones’ take on Amy Winehouse’s 'You Know I’m No Good' manages to shackle the Deep South to the Near North, i.e. Camden. It shouldn’t work; it does, fantastically.

Equally revelatory is ‘Some of Us’ (“are on our knees”), sung with the timbre of ancient timbers by Richards, a rootsy ballad of both acceptance and defiance by an arthritic great-grandpa who can still command a “room” of 70,000, the capacity of the band’s last UK show, at BST Hyde Park in London, four years ago this week.

The only time the Stones sound their age – in a mostly good way – is on the penultimate 'Back in Your Life’. It’s a stoned, sprawling, six-minute elegy in which a torn and frayed Jagger surveys the span of his magisterial life and wonders “what would it take to get back in your life / I hate that I’m losing a friend / I’ve tried making you laugh / I’ve tried making you cry / is this how our story will end?”. With indefatigable energy like this, one suspects not.

Still, as he sings on the life-affirming elixir of 'Mr Charm' – a head-banging, maracas-blurring rocker in the vein of ‘Gimme Shelter’, complete with belting backing vocals worthy of that song’s vocal powerhouse Merry Clayton – “life’s too short, nothing lasts forever”. But on the strength of Foreign Tongues, the Stones just might.

It works like this – on your FYP (For You Page), an image of an archive interior or artfully shot sculptural vase catches your eye. You tap through to the Instagram post and, before you know it, you’re shopping. This modern approach to ‘window dressing’ is now an established part of how a new group of antique dealers get the attention of passing trade. Sharpened design instincts and the element of surprise key to social media success have helped this new breed of entrepreneur build successful dealerships, some with online stores, others with appointment-only showrooms, their digital presences rendered IRL. These new-school sellers represent something fresh in a traditional trade, something recognised by the vanguards of the industry: BADA (The British Antique Dealers’ Association) reported a jump in new members aged in their 20s and 30s last year. And although there has been an obvious sea change in how antiques are sold on our streets, the china shop crammed full of chipped Chelsea is a rare sight nowadays. Rising rents, reduced footfall – it’s all the usual reasons cited for the closure of bricks-and-mortar stores. It doesn’t mean that enthusiasm for beautiful objects with provenance has passed, however: furniture, fabrics or objet d’arts - there is a dealer for every niche. Here are three of The Blend’s favourites.

Altar

‘Devotional, curious, artful; they are words that connect my objects,’ says Steph Wilson, founder of Altar. This figures; each of her pieces has the air of a sacred object, the brand’s moniker coming from ‘a shrine to showcase things that are both material and spiritual’ the dealer-cum-artist says. Working across multiple mediums, including painting, Wilson is known for her photography, the idiosyncratic qualities of her subjects mirroring the one-off pieces she offers under Altar. Nothing is alike. ‘I look for pieces of which there is only one: the handmade, the studio prototypes. Uncategorisable things with unusual proportions or something that is hard to place in time,’ Wilson explains. Thus the flowing lines of 1930s cabinetry sit alongside unexpected Victorian woodwork, and art deco and art nouveau designs, a love of Wilson’s. Currently in stock is a monastic Tage Andersen stained-glass cabinet and Edo-period Japanese Jingsa hats, hybridised into lamps. ‘If an object sings with narrative, I need to picture it in a space where it can continue to do that,’ Wilson says of her sourcing process. And what of her digital-first practice? ‘So much of social media’s success leans on “vibe”, doesn’t it? But beneath the surface, it’s about stirring feelings. The benefit of being online is that it opens the door to Altar in a non-confronting way. Come to the Brixton showroom, be introduced to the pieces – they can be loved in person without any pressure.’

@altar.london

Beau-Traps

Lifted from a book of Georgian-era slang, the name describes a loose paving stone, which, when stood on, sprays you with the water beneath. So something unexpected. ‘I look for the hard-to-find, those things rarely seen elsewhere, something that feels and looks misunderstood,’ says Maxime Fisher on what makes a Beau-Traps piece. His Instagram is an assemblage of beguiling throwbacks and oddly poignant stills from Bravo TV’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a tone-setting exercise that fits together perfectly. ‘It allows the objects to be more playful, nostalgic and hopeful in a direction that feels authentic,’ Fisher explains. ‘They are emotional and genre-less.’

Some of his collection is drawn from recent history, other objects from much further back. Yet all have the same refined surreal quality, as if pulled from multiverse timelines. At once, human and alien: a 16th-century beribboned marble bowl, a curving chip-carved 1940s chair, a linear metal plant stand, so lightweight that it looks like a 2D doodle. ‘I couldn’t help how natural it felt to begin Beau-Traps, there’s nothing more to it than that,’ Fisher says of how it all began. This extends to a collection of Alexandre Noll woodworked pieces featured on his website. ‘They were sourced from my friend. The work feels childlike and effortlessly straightforward but they weren’t carved for no reason. I find understanding in how material is shaped and formed, it speaks to the longevity of time.’ A backstory is not always required though: ‘I think there’s something magical in the unknown,’ Fisher says.

@beau_traps

Old Old Woods

‘Bringing wood furniture back to life, I saw how forgiving it could be after neglect, making desirable something once unwanted. It mirrors the human mind for me,’ explains Tola Adefioye on the beginnings of OOW. ‘With the right care, one’s mental state can be improved, a once-lost person found.’ Initiated as an escape from his other vocation as a lab scientist, in 2016 he elevated furniture restoration from pastime to creative calling. Adefioye began rejuvenating mid-century pieces – broken tables, chairs and forgotten treasures. Global in scope, he often lands on Scandinavian and Italian handiwork, placing it alongside African art and textiles.

While not strictly searching for big-name designers, an interesting find does sometimes end up being by the hand of a famed maker. ‘It’s very instinctive, though, I don’t know what I’m looking for; I respond to pieces based on feeling, proportion, materiality and character,’ Adefioye says. ‘But it has changed the way I look at objects. Not just through their function, but as things that carry history and human touch. It shapes the way I source,’ Adefioye observes of his offering, which includes a pair of folding Trieste chairs by Aldo Jacober, a brutalist Sedes Armchair by Wim Mulder and matching flower-like Mario Bellini for Artemide table and pendant lights, all currently in his Leytonstone workshop. And what makes good design for Adefioye? ‘Connection,’ he concludes.

@oldoldwoods

The Album to Buy: Confessions II

Wherever you’re dancing, and whatever you’re wearing, Madonna’s 15th album Confessions II could be part of the soundtrack to your summer. Teased by a track with Sabrina Carpenter and a six-song internet-stopping promo, in a world of collective ADHD, she certainly got our attention... Now about that biopic…

The Exhibition to See: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting

Pay homage to David Hockney with his first-ever Serpentine show. Running till 23 August, A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting has posthumously become a moving celebration of his magic. It's free to enter and you can book, or join a short queue on the day to see some of his iPad works and a select few paintings in dialogue with the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens. Even in the city, it’s a bucolic scene with which, as much as LA swimming pools, Hockney has become joyfully synonymous.

The Film to See: The Odyssey

After the summer of Barbenheimer led to his Oscars sweep, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sails into in to cinemas. The cast is epic (Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya) and the best place to appreciate the technical intricacies is the Imax. A BFI fellow and filmmaking God to many, Nolan’s new work has already broken their records for advance bookings. Soak it up and celebrate cinema from 17 July.

The Theatre to See: Oh Mary

Toast America 250 with irreverent presidential history at the Trafalgar Theatre in Whitehall. Oh Mary is the untold story of Abraham Lincoln’s misunderstood spouse Mary Todd Lincoln. Catherine Tate stars in the title role until 18 July. After that, the play’s creator and original Broadway star Cole Escola takes over for a four-week run, giving London audiences a great chance to see the show in its Tony winning form.

The Theatre to Book: Abigail’s Party

‘I like olives, Beverly, and I’m twenty five percent of the assembled company…’ See you there, for a brilliant revival of the Mike Leigh house party horror Abigail’s Party. After rave reviews on tour for Tamzin Outhwaite and Kevin Bishop, suburban meltdown shimmies into the West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre running from 12 August-19 September. This is new life for a cult classic and a guaranteed summer treat.

The Books to Read: The Correspondent & Frenzy

The Women’s Prize winner this year rewards the pleasure principle, celebrating the kind of compulsive literary novel not out of place in a beach bag, and that is a compliment. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a celebration of the written word, telling a life through its letters. Evans has struck a nerve with readers hankering for a world where news travelled slowly. Alternatively, short stories are made for time poor readers. Reach for Joyce Carol Oates' new collection Frenzy, in which each short story is as psychologically diverting as a novel.

The Collaboration to Look Out For: The Burberry Beach Club at Hotel Belles Rives

Hotel Belles Rives on the water in Juan Les Pins, once the villa where F Scott Fitzgerald wrote, is flawless in my opinion, but Burberry have styled the beach club of this still sleepy spot for the summer season. As a connoisseur of great shirts (and indeed an astute observer of the art of shopping) would Fitzgerald approve of the best of British style taking over? Think about it on your lounger or over a glass of rosé on the beautiful terrace.

The TV Show to Stream: Westies & Lucky

The World Cup all the way but also some stellar performances for TV too. JK Simmons is reason alone to watch The Westies (from 12 July MGM+) which draws on real Irish mob power play in 80s New York. Alternatively, from the creator of Your Friends and Neighbours, Jonathan Tropper, Lucky stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Annette Bening and Timothy Olyphant (from 15 July, Apple) It’s a high-style, high-octane heist drama set and filmed in contemporary LA.

If the mountains can’t go to the musicians, why don’t the musicians come to the mountains? So wondered a young Claude Nobs, just starting out in his career in local tourism, after he was charged with driving more US business to the lakeside city of Montreux, at the foot of the Swiss Alps. Combining his love of jazz with corporate America’s taste for international junketing proved a smart move: 60 years after Nobs staged the first three-day event, the Montreux Jazz Festival has grown to become a weeks-long linchpin of the international live circuit, its bill today less jazz-centric than in earlier years, but still aimed at audiences galvanised by artists of a more improvisational and/or searching bent.

Its continuing attraction to US musicians, however, remains unabated – beautifully documented in the many informal portraits captured by Tehran-born, Swiss-based photographer Anoush Abrar, the festival’s official photographer since 2018. Taking full advantage of the introduction of an outdoor stage built directly over the Montreux waterfront, Abrar follows in the footsteps of the festival’s founder in diligently documenting the artists who pass through (Nobs, who died in 2013, instigated a unique audio/visual record of festival performances maintained to this day).

Along the way, Abrar shares his stories of meeting many of the giants of 20th-century music; perhaps the most gigantic of all was Quincy Jones, the festival’s music director from 1991 to 1993, who returned each summer thereafter until shortly before his death in 2024. In 2019, the groundbreaking composer/arranger/producer was honoured with a gala evening on the festival’s closing night. This was his final appearance at the festival and one Abrar witnessed backstage, where he pictured Jones, trumpet in hand, surrounded by a cohort of musicians to whom he was effectively handing on the baton. This plus hundreds more images captured both on and off-stage reveal similar interactions between performers young and old, established and emerging, the presence of whom continues to underline the festival’s unique place in the global cultural calendar.

Since 2019 Audemars Piguet has served as Global Partner of the Montreux Jazz Festival, building on a relationship started in 2010 when the Swiss watchmaker supported the development of the Montreux Jazz Digital Project, focused on digitising, restoring and preserving the festival’s entire sound archives, recognised by UNESCO as part of its ‘memory of the world’.

The Elegance of Time is available at montreuxjazzshop.com

The South of France has spent a long time defined by its light and its coastline; this season, these openings suggest the region's cultural life can be found just as easily inland, on a river quay or a few minutes offshore, and none of it requires a gallery booking.

Five addresses, scattered between the Luberon, the Var coast, the Rhône, the heights above Cannes and a seven-hectare island off Bandol, make for a pleasingly varied cultural season. Paintings meet stained glass in a Romanesque priory; design takes over a Saint-Tropez house older than the resort town's reputation. Wicker returns to a Rhône village once sustained by willow. Ceramics inhabit a Couëlle landscape-house above Cannes and Bendor reawakens with a welcome residue of parties, ateliers and glass workshops beneath the hotel polish.

Les Davids, Haute-Provence

Les Davids sits high above the Luberon at 600 metres. The estate has been a working vineyard for some time, and earlier this year it opened a 2.5km promenade designed by Bas Smets, the Brussels-based landscape architect responsible for the Luma gardens in Arles and the surroundings of Notre-Dame de Paris. The route moves through eight distinct atmospheres, from oak forest and garrigue to lavender, olive grove and vineyard rows. Smets began with the territory already in front of him, drawing the path from the estate’s working ground, where vineyard rows give way to scrub and tree cover.

Newly installed works by Tomás Saraceno, David Nash, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Lionel Sabatté now punctuate the walk, giving this phase of the estate the feel of a collection dispersed through planting, agriculture and woodland. At its centre is the Théâtre de Verdure, a natural amphitheatre inaugurated in 2024 and used for Les Estivales du Haut Calavon, the summer programme of concerts and readings.

Yves Zurstrassen keeps a studio on the estate, and nine kilometres south, at the Musée de Salagon in Mane, his Variations rouges is installed until 14 December 2026. The Belgian painter made the series in dialogue with Salagon’s Romanesque church and Aurélie Nemours’s stained-glass windows, completed in 1998; his vertical reds meet stone, glass and southern light at close range.

lesdavids.fr

Une Maison à Saint-Tropez, Saint-Tropez

For a fourth edition of Une Maison à Saint-Tropez, Isabelle Castanier returns to her family house at 17 avenue Foch, on Place des Lices. The building dates to 1789, its front door opening straight onto the square. From 6 June to 31 July, the house becomes the setting for Souvenirs d’enfance, an exhibition shaped around four childhood scenes: the cabin, the afternoon snack, bath time and the bedtime story.

Axel Chay anchors the goûter with a low cast-aluminium table inlaid with semi-precious stones, a new development in his work that reads as precious and playful at once. Around it, Sarah Espeute's textiles, glassware by Nienke Sikkema and Bernard Heesen, and Lucie Sotty's ceramics fill out the table. Marianna Ladreyt, who transforms discarded beach inflatables into objects using leather-craft techniques, made the parasol for the outdoor cabin scene. Jorge Suárez Kilzi presents a flower-shaped bar with petals that open like a corolla, drawn from the chouchous-beignets carts that once worked the Saint-Tropez beaches.

It sounds playful because it is, though Castanier's touch keeps the sentiment in check. Objects sit close to daily life, rooms remain recognisably rooms, and Saint-Tropez appears through the rituals of a family summer. The exhibition is open daily from 10am to 1pm and 4pm to 8pm, with late openings on Thursdays until 10pm.

isabellecastanier.com

La Maison Vime, Vallabrègues

Vallabrègues is a good place to remember that wicker once had an economy of its own. In the 18th century, the Rhône-side village counted hundreds of wicker workers among its inhabitants, with willow from the river feeding a busy local trade. Atelier Vime now occupies the Hôtel Drujon, built in 1730 and later home to a workshop installed in 1878, complete with a courtyard and soaking ponds for fresh wicker.

On 23 May, Anthony Watson and Benoît Rauzy reopened La Maison Vime for the summer season. The shop runs until 12 September at 24 Quai du Rhône, with furniture, lighting, editions, vintage pieces, glassware and ceramics arranged through the house. It first appeared in 2022 as the atelier’s summer address, dedicated to the Vime world and its particular art de vivre; by now, its return has become part of the village calendar. Go for rattan, table linen, lamps, older pieces and the pleasure of seeing craft history still attached to an address.

ateliervime.com

Dragon Hill, Mouans-Sartoux

In the heights above Cannes, on Chemin de Castellaras in Mouans-Sartoux, Dragon Hill is the work of Jacques Couëlle, the French architect-sculptor who worked in clay and plaster maquettes, producing curved, cavernous interiors with no straight lines to speak of. His landscape-houses on the Côte d'Azur, and the resorts he designed for the Aga Khan on the Costa Smeralda in the 1960s, remain among the more singular pieces of 20th-century domestic architecture. The estate now operates as a residency and sculpture park, with permanent works by Antony Gormley, Tony Cragg, Claudia Comte, Thomas Houseago and Alicja Kwade, curated by Maxime Combot.

From 13 May to November 2026, the house hosts Inhabiting the Landscape House, a site-specific exhibition by ceramicist Olivia Cognet, open by appointment. From Nice and now based in Vallauris, where she has taken over Roger Capron's former studio, Cognet works across ceramic, lava, stone and metal at scale, from tables and lamps to monumental bas-reliefs. For Dragon Hill, she has made works for the cavities and curves of the Couëlle interior: a sculptural tapestry sofa produced with Lyon upholsterer Atelier Dégut for one of the living rooms, and an outdoor garden lounge of monolithic stone chairs and tables set among the planting. Brancusi, Noguchi and Gio Ponti are her stated reference points; Couëlle, this season, is the room she is in.

instagram.com/dragonhillresidence

Zannier Île de Bendor, Bandol

A few minutes by boat from Bandol, Île de Bendor reopened after a five-year transformation by Zannier. Paul Ricard bought the seven-hectare island in 1950 and treated it as a miniature Mediterranean republic, complete with theatre, gallery, diving centre, wine museum, sculpture garden and glassmaking workshop. Dalí came, as did Joséphine Baker, Fernandel, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Mireille Darc and Youri Gagarine; the old photographs are reason alone to visit.

The property reopens as a 93-key hotel, arts destination and wellness retreat, with Delos, Soukana and Madrague Houses forming separate addresses within the same small territory. The spa covers 1,200 sq m; the Rēsonance programme offers bioresonance, movement, vitality and beauty; restaurants and children’s programming make it open to all. In June, Bendor hosted a Fête de la Musique celebration, with boats running back to Bandol until 11.30pm. Bendor still has the charm of a place imagined in miniature: close enough to Bandol for an easy crossing, to witness the island returning to itself.

zannierhotels.com

Madge is back and – as you may have heard unless you’ve been sequestered on the International Space Station on the dark side of the moon – back on the dancefloor.

This she has made plain via a BPM-blaring promotional blitz artfully finessing the interface between everything and nothing. Hang-outs and performative fag-breaks with reigning club queen and new bestie Charli xcx at the Saint Lauren Men’s Spring-Summer 2027 show in Paris. A Gen Z-fluffing appearance with other new bestie Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella to sing their album collab ‘Bring Your Love’. A touchdown at North London super-venue KOKO (scene of her first UK club appearance, in 1983) with Madge-hag Graham Norton for a BBC fawn-off I mean interview, with Kylie on snacks. A much-socialled launch event and listening party, Club Confessions: London, with the 67-year-old bopping near – if not quite on – the decks with producer Stuart Price and daughter Lourdes Leon. And nothing very much in the way of Proper Interviews.

How very Madonna.

But hey, she’s letting the music do the talking! And, thankfully, for the first time in forever, the music is talking sense. Deliriously and exuberantly so on a 15^th album that’s an unashamedly on-the-nose sequel to 2005’s Price-produced Confessions on a Dance Floor, aka The One with ‘Hung Up’, aka The One That was Pretty Much a Cover of ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’.

On Confessions II there is, obvs, nothing as instant-earworm-gold as that ABBA-channelling forever-banger. But enough of these songs come deliciously close. Starting with throbbing five-minute opener ‘I Feel So Free’, Madonna and Price hitting the ground dancing and don’t let up – literally, with the tracks sequenced to have no gap in between.

On this wall-of-sound rave-up, ‘Everything’ and ‘Love Sensation’ are HUGE house stormers with choruses that will stay with you after you’ve staggered, shattered and drenched, back to your Balearic banquette. ‘Bizarre’, a hook-up with Martin Garrix, is an EDM-coded flaming sambuca that’ll light up many a Euro holiday resort this summer. In its favouring of an aerobics video-friendly synth-bop groove over, well, songwriting, the aforesaid ‘Bring Your Love’ isn’t quite the pop perfection this summit between two generational talents, 40 years apart, should have produced. But it’s close.

Best of all is ‘Danceteria’. It’s a distillation of both Madonna’s biggest dance tunes (notably ‘Vogue’) and of the New York that formed her, a giddy scene starring Basquiat and Byrne (David), Lou (Reed) and Nile (Rodgers). Madonna’s hymn to the Eighties New York nitespot where she did her 10,000 hours of pre-MTV practice – and that helped secure her record deal – is a brilliant, back-to-the-future evocation of time and place: “Get on the elevator / I run into Debi Mazar / take us to the third floor / walk us to the dance floor / then I see Mark Kamins is the DJ / He’s the DJ, hide the cocaine/ he played my tape ‘Everybody’ / this is how we start the party.”

But methinks she doth reset too much: there are 16 tracks here. Even for the staunchest Madge stan, or most athletic disco-jockey, that’s too much. The appearance of Lourdes on the trip-hop fluffery of ‘The Test’ can’t assuage the feeling that this penultimate tune – like a handful of others – would have been best kept for an extended edition of Confessions II.

To be fair, though, that could be me feeling my age. Thank God that, on this thrilling disco-Proustian rollercoaster, Madonna isn’t acting hers.

It feels appropriate that Lisa der Weduwe is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “TIME IS NONLINEAR”. As Archive Projects Manager at Camden’s newly opened Museum of Youth Culture, the 33-year-old is partly responsible for ensuring that this monument to youthful innovation is anything but a staid walkthrough where one historical event dutifully follows another. Instead, the colourful museum is vibrant and alive, with intermixed eras, cultures and formats all jostling for attention.

“One of our big arguments,” explains Lisa der Weduwe, holding court in the café on the museum’s ground floor just a few days after its grand opening, “is that the creativity and ingenuity of young people are what drives society forwards. That isn’t acknowledged, but I think it’s really important. Young people are so often at the forefront of social justice movements. Look at Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter: young people have really been pushing them forward, changing things and opening up new conversations.

“It’s a potent mix where you have a sense of independence, but you don’t have the responsibilities of being an adult. You’re looking at the world with new eyes because you’re trying to set yourself aside from the generation that’s gone before you. Because of your brain development, you’re also more likely to take risks and go into things head-first. That has led to so much positive change and creativity, and we should be celebrating that.”

Der Weduwe and the team have certainly risen to this brief – not least because their cultural hub has no permanent exhibition; rather, three temporary displays pay tribute to adolescent rebellion. Like youth culture itself, the museum has many guises. To ensure its accessibility, you’re invited to choose a price for entry. It’s capped at £10, but if your price happens to be ‘free’, so be it.

The world’s first youth culture museum dates back to 1997, when London-based photographer and Sleazenation magazine co-founder Jon Swinstead launched the Photographic Youth Music and Culture Archive (PYMCA), a library of images from youth culture that he collected and maintained in his garden shed. From 2015, with the help of curator Jamie Brett, it became a public digital archive consisting of more than 100,000 items. After a brief period at the sadly shuttered Printworks in south London, the latest site is the museum’s first permanent physical home.

Ahead of the move to Camden, der Weduwe and the team were in two minds about using the ‘M’ word at all. “We were discussing whether to be a ‘museum’ of youth culture or something else,” she says. “Young people don’t go to museums. They’re the least likely group of society to [do so] because museums don’t do a very good job of catering to young people – they’re very good at catering to children and families.”

With a laugh, she admits: “We’ve done ourselves a disservice by calling ourselves a museum when it comes to bringing young people through the door – but we needed to do that for the gravitas. It says, ‘This is such an important story.’”

Located on St Pancras Way, a short walk from the punks and goths who still congregate on Camden High Street, the new venue heralds itself with a multicoloured mural that boasts “100 YEARS OF YOUTH CULTURE UNDER ONE ROOF”. Inside the industrial-looking building, you’ll find the aforementioned café and possibly the world’s coolest museum gift shop, courtesy of Rough Trade. You’ll also find an exhibition space that’s currently displaying ‘Dancing Down The High Street: Club Culture in Camden 1988–2000’, a collection of photos and rave flyers that evoke the last pre-digital party days that shook the streets right outside the door.

In addition to this, there’s a small library of books that reflect the museum’s mission statement, including Emma Warren’s Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History. As I’m chatting to der Weduwe, a group of teenagers wander over to the bean bags scattered about the library and each take a seat, chatting and mucking about, confidently making the space their own. According to joint research by the YMCA and the trade union Unison, more than 760 youth centres closed in England and Wales between 2010 and 2020. If you’re a young person in the UK, this kind of ‘third space’ – somewhere that isn’t your home, workplace or place of education – is in short supply.

“Post-austerity, with the closing of all the youth clubs and [the decline of] youth provisions,” says der Weduwe, speaking over Klaxons’ Day-Glo nu-rave cover of ‘Not Over Yet’ as it pulses from the museum’s speakers, “in the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of discussion of: ‘How can we better support young people?’ We want this to feel like a place where you can hang out. We encourage people to sit and have a read, and we have a foosball table.” Plans are afoot for the museum to host an actual youth club and various workshops, too.

Downstairs, the hangar-like main room is currently occupied by ‘Subculture Street Party’, a vast photography exhibition that depicts teenagers stepping out in parent-baiting outfits throughout the ages. From a cardboard cut-out of a 1920s flapper astride a motorbike to a young woman scoffing a burger and chips after a night out at Deptford Northern Soul Club, the whole story is right here. “We wanted it to be joyful,” explains der Weduwe. “We want to start with a really positive message about how young people come together, curate and shape things.”

A second downstairs space contains the venue’s most interactive and perhaps most fascinating exhibition, ‘Things I lied to my parents about’. This oral history was devised and produced by the museum’s youth collective of participants aged between 16 and 23, who’ve gathered visitors’ handwritten testimonies of fabulous – and sometimes poignant – fibs. One, signed by “Phil”, reads: “Bracknell, 1980: At 15, I told my parents I was dating a family friend’s cousin, Dawn. It was actually a family friend’s cousin, Steve.”

The exhibition is based around a recreation of a teenager’s bedroom, replete with a bed you can sit on as you take it all in; this isn’t the kind of museum to have a finger-wagging sign telling you to keep off. All in all, it sums up a mischievous enterprise with a healthy disregard for doing what you’re told.

Before I head back out to the streets of Camden, I get chatting to a group of teenagers gathered in the library on the ground floor. It turns out they’re students visiting the UK on a class trip. “We’re from East Germany,” explains 19-year-old Marlene, who notes that self-expression was “forbidden” in the repressive climate of the German Democratic Republic before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “It’s important to know what other countries’ youth cultures could do,” she says.

Sitting beside her, 18-year-old Eleni adds: “Youth culture is changing all the time. It’s a fight against rules, politics and the government.”

The Museum of Youth Culture reflects the kineticism and vitality of Eleni’s observation. Contrary to what the name might suggest, it’s not an exercise in nostalgia. This is a place where everything is always happening all at once – where 100 years of history, rebellion and youthful innovation dances towards the future, right before your eyes.

JJerome87 is the nomme de groove of Joe Newman, frontman with alt-J. Having got together while they were students at Leeds University, the brainiac band (then a quartet, now a trio) won the 2012 Mercury Music Prize for their debut album An Awesome Wave. Over succeeding albums – This Is All Yours (2014), Relaxer (2017), The Dream (2022) – this big-thinking outfit both refined and loosened their music. Art-electro, math-folk, hymnal-rock, alt-pop, call it what you will – none of it’s wholly wrong, all of it’s someway right.

On 2014’s ‘Hunger of the Pine’ they sampled their own remix for Miley Cyrus. On Relaxer, they covered ‘House of the Rising Sun’, but in a wholly alt-J way, stripping the varnish from The Animals’ take and finding the woody grain in Woody Guthrie’s version of the lyrics. Then, the following year, they released Reduxer: every track on the album redone, with inspired wing-people ranging from Little Simz to Pusha T to Rejjie Snow.

Now, two decades since their formation, Newman is going (hopefully temporarily) solo. And, wonky artist name notwithstanding, The Canyon is a top-to-bottom masterpiece of songcraft, production and accompanying visuals. Lead single ‘Brush Me Like a Horse’ is a magisterial, country-choral, spaghetti-western epic, with a chorus as breathtaking as Monument Valley. The accompanying video is appropriately widescreen, cinematic and surreal, the bastard offspring of John Ford and David Lynch.

The sprinting indie-guitar pop of second single ‘Track and Field’ is a celebration of athletics, specifically female competitors, with the inspiring video a feast of decades-spinning archive footage of warm-ups, races and sporting contests. Melody-wise, it could be a PB for Newman, which is saying something.

The Canyon opens with ‘Mr. Alligator’, a sun-baked blues that showcases both his remarkable singing range and this album’s masterful deployment of multiple (female) vocals. In the lyrical picture painted, it’s up there with the ripe Southern Gothic swirl of Nick Cave’s wondrous debut novel And the Ass Saw the Angel: “I'm a creature / Nice to meet yuh / I cooked quiche yeah / For the congregation / But I'm not to be trusted”.

‘Green Velvet’ is a feat of psych-pop engineering, interlayering glockenspiel, swinging organ, twanging guitar and another star-scraping chorus. In a nod to the city where the record was recorded, ‘Quaaludes’ evokes a soulful, wee hours drive across Los Angeles, albeit not while under the influence of the titular disco biscuits.

Aware that all that, only three tracks in, could be A Bit Much (but gloriously so), Newman serves up a pretty, 37-second piano palate-cleanser titled, yes, ‘Interlude’. Then it’s on with the show. The sleazy, shoulder-rolling ‘Juicy’ feels like either a frazzled day on a Californian beach or a fried night at an East London afters. Opening with the snorts and pounding of horses, ‘Walkaway Music’ is galloping surf-rock.

Then, coming immediately after the mighty ‘Brush Me Like a Horse’ on this boldly, brilliantly sequenced album, is ‘Two Hearts’. It is, in a wholly lovely way, cardiac arresting. A sweeping, strings-lifted ballad, it begins with the sound of Newman’s pregnant partner receiving an ultrasound scan and the sonographer saying, with an audible smile: “The lovely heart beating in the chest there… We’re dancing…” That baby, born in 2021, appears on the cover art (painted by Sally Dunne, also responsible for the artist-at-work visualiser for ‘Mr. Alligator’), standing at her daddy’s shoulder. It’s an image as moving as this wonderful ode to motherhood and parenthood.

It ends with ‘Pennine’, a swirling, jazzy, kaleidoscopic, brass-and-strings-and-kitchen-sink road-trip through Newman’s memories: “Slow motion heartache / compliments that landscape / on the train north to Leeds / painted over black night / slow motion landslide / street lights in towns I'll never see in day”.

A bittersweet, psychogeographic symphony? It’s the only way to close a truly exceptional album that manages to go out there while simultaneously hitting you in here.

When, for one of his first interviews, I talked to Myles Smith in early 2024, he was “just” a singer-songwriter whose viral TikTok covers (Amber Run’s ‘I Found’, Sweater Weather by ‘The Neighbourhood’) had recently landed him a major label record deal. The release of ‘Stargazing’, the global smash that would earn him the BRIT Rising Star Award a year later, was still four months away. But he explained to me the musical roots that had grown a songwriting skillset that had encouraged Sony to beat off 20 competing labels.

“I grew up as a young black boy in Luton, so I guess I wasn't an out and proud Coldplay fan!” he admitted with a laugh. “I definitely wasn't embarrassed about it. I just think that it wouldn't be the thing I'd mention first. But it would be the thing that I probably play first on my iPhone.”

Acknowledging the deep influence, too, of both Ed Sheeran and Labrinth, he added that he “was a fan of songs that connect to me. I was a huge Green Day fan growing up. That's a punk band from West Coast America and I'm in Luton screaming out 'American Idiot!' It was all about the music that moved me and spoke to me the most. And it wasn't always lyrical content. Sometimes it was just how it made me feel. Was it the guitars or the tones?"

Now, finally, after that huge success of ‘Stargazing’ and, also in '24, 'Nice to Meet You’ – both included here – comes his debut album. Kudos to Smith for taking his time. It’s certainly full of guitars and tones that will move his already staunch fanbase. And that, in his upfront discussions of his mental health challenges (see: 'Sertraline (Where Am I Now)’), will speak to them, too.

The rub with that is that the sad-boy-with-guitar confessional already feels overwhelmed – by the female power-pop of Rodrigo, Carpenter, Roan et al – and overdone. Overdone but not over, clearly: Lewis Capaldi is still packing them in, and Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide had blockbuster sales upon its release in April. But for all the undoubted accomplishment of Smith’s songwriting in My Mess, My Heart, My Life., it's hard to escape the feeling that this is a dated sound. Yes, already.

Again, to be clear, the songcraft is on point. The confessional ‘My Mess’ is a huge, emphatic opener, based around notes from his therapy sessions, that will surely raise the curtains on the 28-year-old’s increasingly large concerts. You can’t argue with ‘Stargazing’, nor the billion streams it achieved within 18 months. ‘Hold Me in the Dark’, Smith’s rich and resonant vocals buoyed by fleets of backing vocalists, has a chorus to balance your pints on. ‘Stay (If You Wanna Dance)’ hits the sweet spot between Coldplay and Kahan – and that is, for sure, commercially speaking, still hugely sweet. ‘Grandma’s Place’ is a lovely, hymnal blues that honours his childhood, familial safe place.

But elsewhere, overfamiliarity breeds meh. The boyband dance-lite of ‘Mary’s Song’ is less blues than Blue. ‘Drive Safe’, which features Niall Horan, and ‘Nice to Meet You’ are firmly in the tradition of the 2010s’ “Stomp Clap Hey” era, as Vice recently witheringly described it, those neo-folk singalongs embodied by Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men etc. Altogether now: “woooaahhhh…”

The banjo-and-syncopated beats of the closing ‘Gold’ can’t escape that dread hand either. Worst of all, ‘Dublin Lights’ out-Sheerans Sheeran in its craven-ness, and is what happens when you instruct ChatGPT, “fiddly-diddly Guinness drinking song, but make it even more cringe”.

Say it again: great songwriting and great vocals make for a decent candidate for album of the year. But that year is 2024. Which, in these fleet-footed musical times, is an aeon ago.

According to my niece – staying for the weekend and alarmed by my constant playing of this ultra-emoshe album – I seem pretty much like a heartbroken teen/twentysomething girl. From global chart-topping smash ‘drop dead’ (“one night I was bored in bed / and stalked you on the internet”) to ‘what’s wrong with me’ (“say I’m in love, so it’s hard to admit / I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I think you’re what’s wrong with me”) via ‘honeybee’ (“baby boy, honeybee / God, I love the way you look at me”), this album is lower-case lyricism with higher-stakes, dizzying highs and end-of-the-world lows. I’m not crying, you’re crying!

If there’s an equation that sums up the third album by this graduate of the school of High School Musical, it’s: relationship arc + Gen Z indie nostalgia + big pop songwriting = Taylor Swift for (mildly) alternative kids. Or, more concisely, it’s the fifth track, which is titled ‘u + me = <3’. This is all the feels, and then some more of the feels – quite possibly built from the wreckage of her last relationship, with British actor Louis Partridge – and brilliant for it.

Over 13 songs and 51 minutes, Rodrigo doubles down on the musical passions that made 2021 single ‘Good For U’ such a modern rock anthem – but also made it so indebted to Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’ that she had to belatedly add that band’s singer Hayley Williams and ex-guitarist Josh Farro to the writing credits.

The love of this 23-year-old Californian who grew up in the Disney dream factory for wintry British post-punk and indie is apparent not just in The Cure references (“you know all the words to 'Just Like Heaven' / and I know why he wrote them”) in ‘drop dead’ – a glorious opener and the lead single which, incidentally, has had almost a quarter-of-a-billion plays on Spotify in only two months. It’s there in the Joy Division bassline of ‘maggots for brains’.

It’s there, too, obviously, on the ‘the cure’, a near-five-minute epic that starts as strummy goth-pop and builds to a strings-drenched tornado of defiance and going-solo empowerment. And even more obviously on ‘what’s wrong with me’, a winsome duet with Robert Smith that’s giving tear-smeared make-up and dog-eared copies of NME from 1983.

It’s not just four-decades-old Anglophilia. ‘u + me = <3’ represents Eighties and Nineties indie’s American wing, evoking the 4AD-friendly sound of Throwing Muses and Belly. A slightly earlier era is channelled in the New Wave synth-rock of ‘my way’ is a hammering yowl of frustration and wholly thrilling – unless, ofc, you’re the dufus ex- who “never get[s] the message”.

Rodrigo’s Disney-princess vocals are also given their space to shine. They’re front and centre on ‘begged’, a pretty, finger-picked, folky lament. They’re jazz standard-worthy on piano ballad ‘less’, another blast of nostalgia, this time all the way back to the Fifties.

By the time we’ve been through all the stages of this life-changing/heart-bruising relationship and get to the closing ‘cigarette smoke’, Rodrigo is leaning into the existential woe of a clothes-rending romantic poet, singing of how “it’s bone dry / bitter and hollow / you will never know my sorrow”. Over more building guitars and more swirling strings and more howling vocals, here are five minutes and 40 seconds that – after all the love-and-loss-and-loathing rollercoastering that has gone before – could be, well, a bit much.

But such is the strength of the songwriting, the conviction of Rodrigo’s delivery and the relatability of the romantic drama – even for those of us who seem pretty unlike a heartbroken teen/twentysomething girl – that you’re fully invested, fully moved and fully smitten.

To re-cap: in November 2024 Jaguar was facing an uncertain future. Production on its existing fleet – great cars such as the F-Type, F-Pace and i-Pace – was coming to an end but without a clear path forward for this iconic British brand. Unable to compete in a marketplace increasingly dominated by German brands with much greater economies of scale, Jaguar had become an unprofitable part of JLR and this was not sustainable. The uncomfortable choice was to close down or to re-invent the brand. A transformation into an electric-only brand was needed, and the following month, at an event held during Miami Design Week a prototype EV model was duly unveiled to the world… occasioning a great deal of coughing and spluttering.

The concept launch generated headlines around the world and a staggering amount of publicity for the brand, but not necessarily of the right kind. There was uncertainty about whether this project would ever actually happen. Since then, there has been upheaval at JLR – not least the departure of Gerry McGovern, the design supremo and Chief Creative Officer who led JLR to extraordinary success over 20 years – while a great deal has also changed in both the industry and the world.

So where is Jaguar now? There is an actual car – the Type 01. Over the last few weeks, production prototypes have been shown to select journalists, culminating in a ‘launch’ in Monaco with almost-complete camouflaged cars driving on public roads in and around the principality. More importantly, the new Jaguar brand is itself coming into sharper focus. Back in Miami the message was all forward-looking with no references to the past. But that has been revisited and for the Monaco event, Jaguar’s best-of-the-best – an XK120 from the 1950s, an E-Type from the 60s and an XJS from the 70s - were celebrated as inspiration. That is quite a philosophical reversal and once again founder Sir William Lyons’ ‘Grace, space and pace’ is back on the agenda, or as MD Rawdon Glover put it, “First and foremost a Jaguar should be really desirable, really distinctive and provoke an emotional response both in how it looks and how it feels.”

So how did it look? Rather extraordinary. Jaguar has said the Type 01 is the first of three models, and as a four-door coupé, it is not small. Although the original concept was a two-door version, the camouflage could not hide the fact that much of the muscular original proportions are still there. Seeing a prototype on the street, as opposed to the studio, really brings a car to life, and The Type 01 is much more subtle than the original concept images suggested. Furthermore, the cars were in constant use over a couple of days, much of it at (very) high speed around the closed Monaco Grand Prix circuit (the event coincided with the Formula E series in which Jaguar is a leading competitor) and they just looked… cool.

Run-of-the-mill electric cars are a depressingly soulless bunch - apart from looking faceless, they often deliver power in the on/off manner and handling tends to be non-existent. That is absolutely not the case with the Type 01. Evidently, a huge amount of effort has gone into capturing the essence of Jaguar in a vehicle that is – as they say – ‘drivetrain agnostic’. The V12 XJ, XJC and XJS are all cited as inspiration and with the Type 01 you could imagine you had a super-silent V12 under the long bonnet in front of you. Which begs the question: does it in fact matter whether it is powered by a V12 or a brilliant electric powerpack if the effect is the same? The car is astonishingly quiet to the point of it being described by some testers as second only to a Rolls-Royce Ghost. Praise indeed.

Speaking of other brands… a couple of very significant things have happened in the last few weeks that are highly relevant to the Jaguar story. Firstly, Mercedes-AMG unveiled its GT 4-door EV coupé. This is not an attractive vehicle, exaggerating design themes from the already aesthetically-challenged EQS range. But worse, it creates artificial petrol-engine noise and a simulated gear-change feel. This lack of authenticity has been met with widespread derision. But second and even more curious, is the new all-electric Ferrari Luce, designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson, which has had the Ferraristi united in uproar. It is a 5-seat SUV that looks – ironically – rather like an enlarged Jaguar i-Pace. Inside, you are deep in Apple world – indeed possibly the Apple car that never was? As you’d expect, the interior is beautifully functional, but it is the exterior that is so challenging. The Ferrari brand has always been about Italian style, beauty and desire, but those qualities are extremely hard to find here. This car could just as easily have a mass-market badge on it. Oh, and did I mention it costs over half a million Euros?

Both approaches underline just what an existential crisis premium automotive brands are facing in the world and times we are in. Drastic times call for drastic measures and Mercedes, Ferrari and Jaguar have each chosen a different route. Cards on the table – I want Jaguar to succeed. Very much. It has an extraordinary heritage and is one of Britain’s great automotive stories. A few weeks ago, before seeing Type 01, I was hopeful but – I have to admit - concerned. Having now experienced it and, perhaps more importantly, having seen how not to do it, I am convinced Jaguar is roaring back.

Twenty years after the launch of its celebrated City Guides, Wallpaper* returns with a new series uniquely positioned to introduce design lovers to vibrant cities, cool escapes and emerging, design-focused destinations. Fully revised with one-of-a-kind intel for today’s global explorer, the series launches with guides to four of the world’s most stylish, culturally active and exciting hubs: Milan, Paris, New York City, London.

Each of these beautifully produced pocket-sized books has been curated by a Wallpaper* writer intimately familiar with their destination’s most exciting neighbourhoods, hotels, cafes, restaurants, bars, retail and wellness experiences – as well as ideas for culture-rich weekend excursions. And we are just getting started. Future Travel Guides will not only visit landmark cities, but also cultural capitals, island idylls and creative hotspots across the globe.

Available to buy on Amazon and online at wallpaper.com/wallpaper-travel-guides

“I hope it makes you happy, to hurt somebody else / and when you lose it all, I hope you find yourself… / And that you get what you deserve… / so here’s a toast to the ones that hurt me most…”

On ‘Toast’, the opening song on her fifth album, Lizzo comes out fighting, albeit in a Great American Song-style piano ballad. It’s a magnificent flex, one that demonstrates her way with a jazz-angel vocal, her mastery of genres and that revenge is a dish best-served ice-cool and classy. The haters might come for her, but that’s no sweat – for Lizzo, this is “just a day in the life of an aspirational bad bitch…”.

The reclaiming of “bitch”, from the album title onwards and across the lyrics of these 12 tracks, definitely gets a little wearing. But Lizzo, certainly, has some anger to burn.

Late last year the quadruple-Grammy-winner prevailed in a court case against three of her former dancers. In a 2023 lawsuit they had accused her of fat-shaming. But as Lizzo clapped back in a victory video on social media: "There was no evidence that I fired them because they gained weight. They were fired for taking a private recording of me without my consent and sending it off to ex-employees." Still outstanding and ongoing, though, are claims from the dancers that they were subject to sexual harassment, claims that Lizzo denies and has vowed to keep fighting.

And fight she does on this album. As this musical powerhouse – who, in her long slog to success, endured a period where her home was a mobile one – sings on the minimal funk of the title track, which samples ‘Bitch’, the 1997 hit by Meredith Brooks: “‘She’s a bitch’… uh, you mean boss / you been through what I been through, you know the cost / if lost some followers it ain’t a loss / ’cause I ain’t lost sleep since I slept in my car”.

Whether it’s the litigants who are wholly the subject of her ire at “the ones that hurt me most” isn’t clear. Certainly they’re not always – the beginning of ‘Like a Crime’ paints the memorable picture of “me and my period fighting to the death, she just might win if I don’t take another breath”.

But indubitably and unavoidably on Bitch, Lizzo is fired up and darkly funny. Her impulse for finding the humour in her clapbacks is evident up front and centre, in an album sleeve in which the middle finger she joyfully serves is in the form of her own body, rising womanfully from her own, giant manicured hand. The doo wop-style ‘Whose Hair Is This’ is another retro sashay, a full-blooded, take-no-prisoners accusation against a partner after she finds an incriminating hair in their bed. Lizzo goes for the jugular before abruptly remembering, “Oh shit, I did have red hair last week”.

Revenge is also a dish best served as a banger. ‘That Grrrl’ (“say you don’t like a big bitch… I know you want my body”) is a techno-disco empowerment anthem that, with a strategic remix, could become an Ibizan summer staple. ‘Don’t Make Me Love U’ twins flashes of body positivity (“I’m a big fine woman, don’t lose your place in line”) to a ‘Billie Jean’ beat and a gloriously soaring, ’80s synth-pop keyboard line evocative of 'The Best' by Tina Turner.

She switches lanes again on the brassy, sassy wee-hours jazz of ‘Too Nice’, before ending, somewhat anticlimactically, with the blandly bopping ‘Good Morning’. It’s all a bit scattershot. But whether she’s processing her recent public spats or other, private, personal challenges, kudos to Lizzo for doing so less with bitchy bitterness than with winking pizzazz.

Long before The White Lotus transformed Taormina into television's most coveted address, the town attracted a different kind of pilgrim. Artists, aristocrats and writers made their way to this sun-drenched corner of Sicily in search of beauty, inspiration and, occasionally, escape. Among them was Oscar Wilde, who arrived in 1898 after leaving England and found solace beneath the Sicilian sun. More than a century later, the allure remains much the same.

Dramatically positioned on a rocky terrace between the Ionian Sea and the slopes of Mount Etna, Taormina is a place of extraordinary contrasts. Ancient Greek ruins overlook designer boutiques. Baroque churches sit moments from glamorous beach clubs. Narrow medieval lanes spill into piazzas framed by bougainvillaea, and the sea views are so arresting they appear almost theatrical.

Yet Taormina's enduring appeal lies in more than its undeniable beauty. There is an effortless sophistication to the town. Mornings begin with granita and espresso on sunlit terraces; afternoons drift between hidden coves, historic palaces and elegant hotels; evenings are devoted to long dinners, local wines and golden-hour views across the bay.

Whether you're visiting for a romantic weekend, a grand Sicilian tour or because you watched that show, Taormina offers a compelling blend of history, culture, gastronomy and glamour. This is your guide to where to stay, eat, drink and explore in Sicily's most captivating coastal town.

Where to stay

By the sea: Belmond Villa Saint Andrea

Villa Saint Andrea has lived many lives. First built as a private home for an English family in 1919, it then opened as a glamorous boutique hotel in the 50s. In 2010, it was acquired by Belmond and transformed into a luxury hotel right on Taormina’s shoreline. The design is midcentury modern – a nod to its past – in pastel blues, pinks and olive greens. Pack a good book to enjoy in the bar’s cosy reading nooks or poolside, with expansive views. The rooms boast balconies overlooking the Ionian and in the summer months, you can dine right on the water’s edge – just one of three restaurants on site, serving Sicilian fare, fresh seafood and Etna wines. Be sure to pop by the bar for a paloma made with smoky, pineapple-infused Mezcal. Shuttles run into town on the hour or take the cable car.

In the town: San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel

Perched on a rocky promontory, San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel is arguably Sicily's most renowned address. Originally a 14th-century Dominican monastery, the property seamlessly blends centuries of history with contemporary luxury, its cloisters, terraced gardens and elegant suites all oriented towards breathtaking views of Mount Etna and the coastline below. While its starring role in The White Lotus introduced it to a new generation of travellers, the hotel's appeal runs far deeper than television fame. Impeccable service, exceptional dining and an unrivalled setting just moments from Taormina's historic centre make it the ultimate base from which to experience the town's timeless glamour.

Where to shop

Feliciotto

Taormina has no shortage of luxury stores along Corso Umberto but Feliciotto is a unique offering. The concept store is split across two sites for men and women, on opposite sides of the street, and boasts a great selection of sneakers, vinyl, fragrance and clothing. Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please collection sits alongside Margiela tabis, Bottega Veneta shades and Carhartt jackets. The store even produces its own zine.

Where to eat

Granduca

Hidden behind an unassuming entrance in the centre of town, Granduca occupies a beautifully restored 15th-century villa that opens onto one of the most spectacular dining terraces in Taormina. Set across a series of gardens and sea-facing terraces, the restaurant commands sweeping views over the Ionian coastline, the Bay of Naxos and the ancient Greek Theatre. The menu celebrates classic Sicilian cooking, with fresh seafood, local pasta dishes and wood-fired pizzas sitting alongside regional specialities, but the setting is undoubtedly the main attraction. Arrive before sunset and linger over dinner as the sky turns pink above Mount Etna – few restaurants in Taormina capture the town's blend of history, romance and old-world grandeur quite so effortlessly.

The film to see…

The close friendship between Lucian Freud and Kate Moss is fascinating. Moss & Freud, it’s story on film, is written and directed by James Lucas and executive produced by Moss herself, after the director approached her in the script’s early days. Her commitment is testament to how much the relationship between the two of them meant, even if neither she nor Freud much cared for the resulting painting. Freud is played by Sir Derek Jacobi and

Ellie Bamber gets Moss’s mannerisms perfectly after spending time with her. As the nineties endures as a moment for vintage inspiration, it’s startling too to see early noughties Notting Hill (where Freud lived and worked) put on screen as a moment in very recent history. In cinemas from 29 May.

The exhibition to see

At Tate Modern Frida: The Making of an Icon runs from 25 June to 3 January. As well as gathering a huge once-in-a-lifetime collection of her own work, the show will include many works by artists she inspired. If you have the stamina it will also make for a fascinating double viewing with Dame Tracey Emin’s A Second Life which you can see concurrently until 31 August. And if it’s your own walls you’re thinking about, it’s time for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition (16 June to 23 August). Members' preview days in early June give you the best chance to add a red dot and take something home. This year’s theme is Interconnectedness.

The theatre to see… 

Carrie Cracknell’s Old Vic production of Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece Arcadia moves to the West End with the Duke of York’s theatre being newly renovated into the round for this production, which runs for 12 weeks from 20 June. It’s a great way to toast a beloved intellectual giant of our time.

Meanwhile in Waterloo, The Old Vic’s winning streak continues with Glengarry Glen Ross reimagining David Mamet’s fast-paced real estate masterpiece for a snappy all-female cast, including Indira Varma. Directed by Patrick Marber, from 4 June to 18 July.

The collaboration to look out for…

After the thrill of sculpting a Kardashian, bringing a moment of true pop art mastery to the Met circus, closer to home see more work from the legendary British artist Allen Jones at Camden Arts Projects this summer (5 June to 30 August). Curated by his artist admirer Philip Colbert, this celebration of new and recent work is staged in collaboration with Almine Rech.

The event to attend…

Dalkey Literary Festival (18-21 June) overlooking Dublin Bay has speakers including local heroes Roddy Doyle, John Banville and Anne Enright alongside Sir Salman Rushdie and Charlie Mackesy. To do it in luxurious style, book into The Westbury, or at the very least head to the award-winning The Sidecar cocktail bar.

The album to buy …

What happens when you set out to write an album about being in love and then break up halfway through? Well, if you're Olivia Rodrigo you turn it into a concept album, starting with a first date and ending somewhere quite different. For third LP, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, last year's Glastonbury headliner explores the complex spectrum of emotions that comes with being in and out of a relationship. Much of this album was written here and she promises a big dose of her own “London vibes".

The TV to watch...

Cape Fear takes inspiration from a classic 1991 Scorsese/De Niro collaboration (1991) and is retold for long-form TV, starring Javier Bardem in the De Niro role over ten episodes. The remake comes with Scorsese’s blessing – along with Steven Spielberg, he is an executive producer on the series. The stellar cast also includes Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson. Get yourself hooked, as a compulsive psychological thriller is a great heat wave aid for any British summer nights too hot to sleep. On Apple TV from June 5.

The book to read…

As the centenary of Marilyn Monroe is celebrated this month all over the world, with highlights including the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery ​(4 June to 6 September) and the BFI’s season, settle in with Andrew Wilson’s biography which is finally a life to do her justice at a 100. After decades of sensational – or at best variable – lives, I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe A Life In 100 takes (Simon & Schuster) is a superb cinematic guide, told through a series of cumulatively revealing snapshots. A great companion to this is Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe by Gail Crowther (Corsair) which goes to Marilyn’s rich inner life through close attention to her library... Happy birthday Marilyn and here’s to these new, far more subtle appreciations of her unique place in the canon of 20th-century artists.

Beatles archaeology, hagiography and lore: we, obviously, can’t get enough of it. From Sam Mendes’ in-production quadrilogy of interconnected Fab Four biopics, to the BBC’s also-in-production series Hamburg Days, about the band’s foundational, speed-fuelled, 10,000 hours in the rackety German port, via endless repackages and re-releases of their music, John, Paul, George and Ringo’s past is forever present. From next year, it will even be with us in bricks and mortar: their former Apple HQ at 3 Savile Row will become seven floors of “ticketed experience”.

No one knows that better than Paul McCartney. In 2013, I accompanied him to Japan, a leg of a huge and ongoing, arena-scale world tour that evidenced a fandom as staunch as ever. When I asked him to explain that ceaseless drive to perform, and perform heavily, still, he replied: “It’s something to do with the sort-of-legend being a kind of avalanche coming behind me. I’m running down the hill from this avalanche of fame.”

Well, now, for his 18^th solo album, Paul McCartney has decided to turn and face the strange; to let the avalanche wash over him and dig into the formative, rubble-strewn landscape it had covered and concealed.

So, on The Boys of Dungeon Lane he takes us back to Liverpool L24, to the post-war cityscape that formed him and his bandmates, to the terraced houses and birdwatching spots, to the memories of his three closest pals, to the “smoky bars and cheap guitars”.

He sings of the latter on ‘Days We Left Behind’, a simple, beautifully sketched elegy with a glorious melody that, boldly and brilliantly, lets us hear the years – and strains – in McCartney’s voice. There’s similar honest nakedness – of wear’n’tear, and of emotion – in ‘We Two’, a tale of partnership/kinship recorded on a four-track Studer tape machine McCartney rescued from Abbey Road. It revels in the memories, and in the creaky majesty of the basic tech – this is the gear with which they somehow made Sgt. Pepper’s – that The Beatles used to conjure magic: it ends with the squiggly sound of tape being rewound.

Magnificently, McCartney’s facility for the three-minute pop song is undimmed. These 14 songs – produced with hotshot 35-year-old American musician/writer/producer Andrew Watt (Miley Cyrus, Ozzy Osbourne, Lady Gaga) – run to 47 minutes, meaning few of them crest that totemic mark. And when they do, as on the near-five-minute “epic” opener ‘As You Lie There’, he stretches out into a rock’n’roll symphony that plays to the strengths of his own multi-instrumentalist musicianship – he’s listed as playing 22 instruments, although that does include "hand claps".

Yet even those short songs are crammed with detail (of course they are). The skiffley ‘Down South’ is a travelogue recalling he and George Harrison’s fondness for hitchhiking (“it was a good way to get to know you, a fine way to work it out… before we learned to twist and shout”). The stomping ‘Home to Us’, a collaboration with Ringo Starr (with backing vocals by Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri), recalls a city scarred by war and poverty: “the world around us wasn’t safe, the place was falling down”. The mournful mariachi of ‘Salesman Saint’ is a tender tribute to hard-grafting parents in the Liverpool suburbs who, with their wartime baby, “couldn’t take any more, but they had to carry on”.

Here, for once, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. The Boys of Dungeon Lane is a candid, emotional, forensically detailed reflection on McCartney's – and The Beatles’ – roots that makes for a vital record for here and now.

Will we still need him, will we still heed him, when he’s 84, the age he turns this month? Yes, indubitably, remarkably, gratefully, we will.

Amid the homogeneity of the modern airport, there is always one thing that cuts through – that person with the aluminium case. One can’t help but notice it – those bevelled edges, the riveted silveriness of it, those eerily quiet wheels. In a universe of tired plastic luggage, the aluminium case is a beautiful alien, one that is as coveted by short-haul business warriors as much as dedicated fashionistas, and that’s because neatly packed into its chiselled contours is status – and everybody wants it.

In 1938, oil man and serial entrepreneur Erle P. Halliburton had grown so fed up with his leather and canvas bags disintegrating in the Texas oilfields that he commissioned aircraft engineers to fashion cases from lightweight, corrosion-resistant aluminium – necessity, as always, the mother of ingenuity. Little did he know the result would become a style statement.

Almost 90 years later, Zero Halliburton is still going strong. Besides looking good, aluminium’s advantages are self-evident: feather-light (sub 5kg for most carry-ons) yet tough as they come, while hermetically sealing your belongings. In short, not just a pretty face. On these pages, the finest iterations that money can buy.

Leading into the release of his second solo album, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien has been upfront about the darkness that prefigured the light.

After Radiohead’s last world tour (that is, not counting last autumn’s 20 shows in five European cities), in 2016/18, he felt done – burned out and bummed out with the life of the rock star member of a big band. As part-corrective he released, under the name EOB, solo debut Earth – a record inspired by him and his family’s time living in Brazil – in early 2020, right as the Covid pandemic hit. Then, during the lockdowns, at his home in Wales, he started falling. Emotionally, mentally, helplessly.

But in the Welsh countryside he eventually found healing, in nature and in music. It was a time of rebirth and ritual, a process documented in a lovely short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, directed by Kit Monteith.

“The midlife crisis, or whatever you wanna call it…” O’Brien, 58, began, searching for the words, as he launched the film at North London’s Screen on the Green cinema in March. “We as a society call it mental health… But mental health doesn’t feel like an adequate description. It’s something way fucking deeper than that. It really is. It’s a crisis in your soul.”

But he was one of the lucky ones.

“I’m very blessed, [with] my day-job. [In] the mothership, Radiohead, I don’t have a boss. I don’t have to go to work. So I don’t have to medicate to get through it. So I was able to really be in it. Then it’s like alchemy – as musicians or creators, we take this stuff, this darkness. And there’s a beauty in darkness.”

That beauty is now here in the seven songs that make up Blue Morpho. Named, as all we lepidopterists know, after the magnificent butterfly found in Central and South America, it’s 38 minutes of incantatory, rhythmic soul-seeking. A truth-chasing odyssey around the sun of O’Brien’s psyche, weaving a beguiling path between psych rock and prog rock, with the route plotted by producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence and the Machine) – the perfect space cowboy companion for O’Brien given the sky-high/soul-deep explorations of his own 2020 solo album Voyager.

It starts, appropriately enough, with ‘Incantations’, a seven-minute-plus indie-shamanic groove. The title track opens with birdsong, and with glorious strings and a winding, entwining melody that would hold their own on Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left. On ‘Sweet Spot’ O’Brien’s voice, reliably in-the-pocket supplying harmonies stage-right with Thom Yorke, is a breathed, murmured, considered delight.

Then, with the hypnotic funk of ‘Teachers’, O’Brien circles back to how we, eventually, got here. “Midway through life I just lost my way, lost my way,” he intones, before the band – featuring fabulously limber guitarist Dave Okumu (Jessie Ware, Anna Calvi) – let rip with a cosmic, shape-throwing breakdown (the good kind). O’Brien may have lost himself but here, at least, he finds himself on the dancefloor.

O’Brien pushes out even further on the final ‘Obrigado’, a near-10-minute stretch of healing that suggests tropicália remixed by DJ Shadow. In an album that artfully mixes exquisite vibes, songwriting production and “feels”, this final epic is primus inter pares: a Floydian broadcast from the dark side of the moon that heralds a man coming back down to earth – back to himself – with a life-giving bump.

A beach club is the place to lose hours in the most gloriously barefoot manner possible. Call it a more alluring version of the quicksand effect; whether it’s down to Sancerre or Sangria, or just plenty of sea time, before you know it, sunset hits in the blink of an eye. From Amalfi to Antiparos, these fabled places offer plenty of restorative and indulgent fun, with generously spread-out sunbeds, not to mention platters of crudo and grilled seafood, best enjoyed after that first swim of the season.

After 60 years, Da Adolfo on the Amalfi Coast remains one of the most intensely rapturous (and languorous) daytime beach restaurants in the world. On the storybook, shingled Laurito Beach, a few coves around the coast from Positano, Sergio Bella and his wife Miriam maintain the properly egalitarian magic his parents created in the summer of 1966, and it remains as much a place for fishermen as it is for film stars and finance bros. It is like one long letter to a rarefied world of carefree joy, with the sonic haze of cicadas and a ’70s Rino Gaetano song playing in the background. Getting here is half the adventure, whether by water taxi or the restaurant’s cute wooden boat (crowned with Da Adolfo’s charming red fish logo) that chugs backwards and forwards to Positano every hour. The holiday merch is also divine, and you will want to take home the T-shirts emblazoned with that famous fish design, which also appears on the cutlery packets that adorn the ramshackle trestle tables.

And then there is the food and drink that is excellent and plentiful; order jugs of chilled Marisa Cuomo wine with white peaches, mozzarella grilled in lemon leaves, followed by the best zuppa di cozze (mussel soup). Yes, six decades on, the restaurant still serves food that tastes properly of summer – and the sea.

Just wait until you try the vongole at the new Le Sirenuse Mare beach club that recently opened further down the coast in Nerano. It’s the new hotspot from the bewitching hotelier family, the Sersales, who execute the perfect iteration of a modern-day dolce vita homage, with 1950s aquamarine-striped parasols and sunbeds, multi-layered terraces with chestnut wood pergolas jutting overhead and a statement Giuseppe Ducrot fountain that sits at the heart of the main restaurant, framed by fragrant Aleppo pines. Then there is the Dolce Far Niente Bar, which excels in imaginative spritzes, not to mention Rose’s Bar, named in honour of the British artist Rose Wylie. It’s as chic as it is romantic, cocooning you in a style that Ripley’s Dickie Greenleaf and Marge Sherwood would have appreciated.

For something that miraculously manages to be both bling and bohemian, Maçakizi in Bodrum is on another level. Sitting on a secluded bay, with a ley line of happiness seemingly running through this beach-club-with-rooms, you will relish eating bowlfuls of cherries on ice or stuffed vine leaves and lahmacun, the most addictive Turkish pizza. Our advice is to get the front-row beds on the far left to maximise tanning time. New this season is Maçakizi’s private yacht, Sentimental, designed by the hotel’s owner (and cigar connoisseur) Sahir Erozan, a man who certainly knows how to throw a good party.

For something a little more sedate, the beach restaurant La Table de la Plage at Domaine de Murtoli in Corsica is the holy grail. As well as being aesthetically pleasing, with its immaculate, purple linen-dressed tables overlooking a vast swathe of golden sand, the food is unparalleled. It’s a menu you could truly eat on repeat: lobster pasta, salt-baked sea bass and delicious yogurt and blueberry ice cream.

And if Odysseus was looking to return to the best beach club in Greece, he would forgo Ithaca in favour of Antiparos, seeking out The Beach House, a dream Greek island idyll of whitewashed walls and powder-blue shutters. Here, hotelier Athanasia Comninos has cranked up its mythical beauty that is both refined and imaginative. It’s also a summer-taste odyssey, the food whipped up by an outpost of the Athenian restaurant Cookoovaya, renowned for its grilled octopus – the best to be had in all of the Cyclades. Better still, dinner here is served early – the kitchens close at 10pm sharp – so you have the whole beach to yourself to watch the moon rise before slipping into bed. ■

One of the surrealist art movement’s most compelling figures, British-born Mexican artist Leonora Carrington is best known for her painterly dreamscapes, featuring fantastical quasi-human forms, both cosmic and horrific. Her latest exhibition, Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal, at the Freud Museum marks the first time her paintings have been displayed in London for 35 years.

Told through Carrington’s sketchbook drawings and letters from 1938 to 1941, the exhibition traces her escape from Nazi-occupied France, following the arrest of her lover, the German surrealist Max Ernst, to her hospitalisation in Peña Castillo sanatorium in Santander, Spain. During this time, she suffered a mental breakdown that sent her spiralling into severe psychosis, prompting doctors to subject Carrington – then 23 years old – to brutal Cardiazol shock therapy, while encouraging her to draw her experiences obsessively. Several of her works, most notably the seminal painting Down Below (1940), reflect on her psychic disintegration, also chronicled in her memoir of the same name: ‘I didn’t know where I was going. This seems to be a recurring thing in my life. I think it’s death practice.’

Giving form to her experience through alchemical and underworldly symbolism, the works see Carrington imagine herself as a cadaver, transforming the hospital into the world of the dead, with a lavish and masked cast of non-human characters drawn from myth, folklore, religious rituals and the occult. The exhibition is accompanied by extracts from Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, which greatly influenced Carrington’s work. Juxtaposed alongside the works are antiquities from Freud’s personal collection, such as an ancient Egyptian statue of Anubis – the half-human, half-dog deity of the afterlife – and several horse statuettes, an acknowledgement of Carrington’s horse alter ego and both individuals’ shared interest in the transformative properties of death and the unconscious realms of experience.

A deeply personal portrait of transformation, Carrington’s Santander sketchbooks depict her profound journey through the subterranean world of her psyche, culminating in her reincarnation as a hybrid and quixotic being: ‘an androgyne, the Moon, the Holy Ghost, a gypsy, an acrobat, Leonora Carrington, and a woman,’ as she writes in Down Below. Through this interconnected lens, themes of death and rebirth are reimagined as sites of potential, where the metaphysical dimensions of experience present an intimate understanding of otherness in all its shapeshifting forms. B

Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal is showing until 28 June 2026 at the Freud Museum London

Maisie Peters was on BBC One’s The One Show when the boss called in to tell the nation what was good about her and why he’d signed her to his record label.

“[I] started off as a fan and then I met her and she’s a very, very fun girl. Very personable. But her songwriting ability was the first thing that was really striking to me, and how she portrays her emotions. She kind of reminds me a lot of myself at that age in what she writes about. I’m thrilled to be working with her.”

When the boss is Ed Sheeran, those words matter. As the singer-songwriter from smalltown Sussex, 21 at the time of the call, pithily pointed out, Sheeran – as well as running his own label, Gingerbread Man Records – is “obviously king of the radio and of England”.

Five years on from that chatshow moment, Peters recently announced her third record with another hefty co-sign: the Amelia Dimoldenberg-directed “album trailer” for Florescence. It features the musician scurrying around dressed as a daisy, tangling with a hen party and with a woman dressed as an olive. Naturally.

Florescence, as all we horticulturalists know, is “the process of flowering; the process of developing richly and fully”. Which is what Peters, now 25, has been doing for the past year. It’s a (re)growth that began after a whirlwind few years’ performing and touring – and supporting Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Noah Kahan – that washed her up, at the end of 2024, physically and mentally frazzled.

Cue reset, and cue trip to Nashville to work again with longtime collaborator and co-producer Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton). Cue, too, luckily, the blossoming of a new relationship with her high school sweetheart. As she sings on the impossibly pretty, Paul Simon-esque ‘Audrey Hepburn’, “my heart was a hellhound, now my heart sits on your lap”.

Peters’ love dividend is all over this articulate, honest-sounding, refreshingly downhome album. For all her heavy-hitter backers, in an era of “pop girlies” going hell-for-leather-hotpants (no judgement), Peters is going full Sussex. Not so much try-hard as try-easy, Florescence is 15 tracks of sweetly sung, deftly played, country-tinged, lightly beats-flecked acoustica.

With that confidence and contentment comes a disarming candour. As she sings on the whispered, simple, stark opener ‘Mary Janes’: “My body’s not a temple, more a bachelorette pad… my teeth aren’t straight, my jeans are as cool as my music taste… I’m not the coolest or the greatest in the club, it doesn’t matter… who gives a fuck, when I’m in love…” Which is the kind of confessional that is, of course, cool AF.

‘Kingmaker’, a collaboration with American songwriter and singer Julia Michaels (co-writer no less of Justin Bieber’s unapologetically brilliant ‘Sorry’), floats on gentle upward draughts of synths and is a low-key banger. ‘Vampire Time’ is an earworm pop-folk anthem, complete with fiddles and flurries of harmonies, that will undoubtedly incite Peters’ rabidly engaged fanbase, as will ‘My Regards’, a Swiftian (Taylor, not Jonathan) masterclass in electronica-lite exuberance.

As for the Nashville influence: that’s most directly evidenced in the wondrous, woodsy ‘If You Let Me’, a collaboration with, er, Wimbledon-raised Marcus Mumford, where the blend of his grainy tones and her bell-clear country vibes is truly transporting.

By the time we get, eventually, to the final, 15^th song, the enraptured, Chris Martin-swaying-at-the-piano ballad ‘Nothing Like Being in Love’, we’ve fully felt Maisie Peters’ reinvigoration. Slightly overlong growing season aside, Florescence is bloomin’ marvellous.