The loveliest blush pink paint colours.
A deliciously colourful house in Chelsea
A new Pride and Prejudice starring Olivia Coleman and directed by Dolly Alderton. Yes, please!
Traveling the world without getting on a plane.
14 little things people stopped worrying about.
The mental health benefits of a social media detox. Particularly beneficial for the holiday season.
Just watched: Stonehouse The outlandishly true story of rising Labour MP, John Stonehouse, who in 1974, found himself in a spot of financial and espionage bother. He is blackmailed—via a honeytrap—into spying for the Czechs, but also paid handsomely with large sums of money which he uses to splash out on a big house, fancy car and expensive private schools. Unfortunately for the Czechs, he turns out to be a horrible spy and can do no better than giving them information already broadcast on the television. When the gig dries up and the money stops flowing, John’s solution is to fake his own death by drowning on the shores of Miami Beach and then flee to Australia with the stolen identity of one of his recently deceased constituents. I have no idea what Stonehouse was like in real life, but here he is played to buffoonish perfection by Matthew McFadyen. Real life wife, Keeley Hawes, plays his fictional wife in a woefully underutilized role, in which she is fabulous anyway. This is three episodes of gloriously campy, tongue-in-cheek-fun, elevated by its exquisite ’70’s setting.
Just Read: People Of The Book Geraldine Brooks In the Spring of 1996 Hanna Heath, an Australian rare book expert, finds herself in Sarajevo tasked with inspecting the famed Sarajevo Haggadah which has turned up suddenly, four years after disappearing during the Bosnian War. It was saved, during intense shelling, by the Muslim head of the museum library where the book was kept, at extreme risk to his own life. As Hanna dives into the examination of the Jewish text, she discovers a butterfly wing in the binding and in the subsequent chapter, we are whisked back to the Sarajevo of 1940 to learn its provenance. The mystery of beautiful clasps which are unattached, is solved by a story set in 1894 Vienna and a perplexing wine stain is explained by a trip to 1609 Venice. As the story unfurls, we go further and further back in time to understand exactly how the Haggadah came into being, coming to appreciate that the Muslim museum library head is not the first Muslim who has risked his neck for this famously rare, lavishly illuminated, Hebrew manuscript. The past is alternated with the present day storyline of Hanna as she tries to piece together the books mysteries while dealing with a few life issues of her own. A beautifully written book which wraps a uniquely fascinating fictional story around a true one.