Category Archives: Culture

National Geographic Traveller – April 2024

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National Geographic Traveller Magazine (March 8, 2024): The latest issue features the Greek Islands. Plus, embark on a walking safari in Zambia, chase the midnight sun on a train trip in Norway and discover the German flavours of Cincinnati.

Also inside this issue:

Zambia: Become one with the landscape on a walking safari in South Luangwa National Park.

Norway: Black coffee and crystalline fjords on a multi-day train tour beneath the midnight sun.

Bhutan: In this tiny Himalayan nation, valleys plunge, mountains soar and traditions bind.

Philippines: Plan the ultimate island-hopping adventure to the pearl of the Western Pacific.

São Paulo: In Brazil’s most populous city, every gig and gallery reflects the diversity of its people.

Ghent: With its innovative art spaces and left-field restaurants, this city’s rebel spirit lives on.

Kosovo: Explore the Balkan nation’s deep-forested hills, gushing waterfalls and fresco-adorned monasteries.

Cincinnati: German flavours abound in the bakeries and breweries of this Ohio city.

Vienna: From jazz age revamps to culinary havens, these hotels embrace the sound and flavour of the city.

Plus,picks from the 60th Venice Biennale; tours and tastings in England’s vineyards; the flavours of Provence; the best music hotspots in Bristol; where to stay in Denver; a family getaway in Sicily; a city break in Gdansk; a coastal escape in Northumberland; the best food and travel reads; and kit for campervanning.

We talk with author Adam Alexander and the hunt for Rajasthan’s lost chilli, and Simon Reeve on his latest TV series, the beauty of the wild and more. In our Ask the Experts section, the experts give advice advice on driving from London to Lake Garda, treehouse stays for UK bluebell season and family adventures in Sri Lanka. The Info delves into Walpurgis Night, while Hot Topic explores the end of the 100ml liquid rule in UK airports and the Report asks whether the voluntourism industry can truly help those in need.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – March 8, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (March 7, 2024) – The new issue features Faint hope of return for Rohingya people. Plus: a journey through Ukraine

It was August 2017 when the world really started to take note of Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Descendants of Arab Muslims who speak a different language to most other people in Myanmar, the Rohingya had up to that point lived mainly in the northern Rakhine state, coexisting uneasily alongside the majority Buddhist population.

But the Rohingya were reviled by many as illegal immigrants and treated by the then government as stateless people. In 2017, when violence broke out in the north of the state, security forces supported by Buddhist militia launched a “clearance operation” that forced more than 1 million Rohingya people to flee their homes and the country, actions that many onlookers saw as ethnic cleansing. Most Rohingya were driven into vast refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh, where they have remained ever since.

The Guardian global development reporter Kaamil Ahmed has been covering the Rohingya crisis for almost a decade, making multiple trips to the region. For this week’s Big Story, Kaamil returned to Cox’s Bazar where, in two moving reports, he details how disease and illness are widespread in the ramshackle camps, and how the desperation to escape has resulted in rich business for people traffickers.

And, with Myanmar now controlled by a military junta and introducing a deeply unpopular conscription drive (as Rebecca Ratcliffe and Aung Naing Soe report), the prospect of any Rohingya people being able to return home to Rakhine state remains as distant as it did in 2017.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – March 6, 2024

Country Life Magazine – March 5, 2024: The latest issue features The Country Life Top 100 – Britain’s leading exponents of country-house architecture, interior design, gardens and specialist services…

The Top 100 builders, architects, interior decorators and garden designers in Britain

Welcome to the eighth edition of our guide to Britain’s leading exponents of country-house architecture, interior design, gardens and specialist services

New series: The legacy

In the first of this new series, Kate Green celebrates Dame Miriam Rothschild’s remarkable contribution to the nation as a pioneer of wildflower gardening

Reach for the Skye

Following in the slipstream of swimming cattle, Joe Gibbs enjoys safe passage to the Isle of Skye courtesy of the world’s last manual turntable ferry

Hail the conquering heroes

Jack Watkins is in the saddle for a canter through 100 years of the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival’s Blue Riband event, the Gold Cup

Arts & antiques

Works by a whole host of great artists are more accessible than you might imagine. Carla Passino talks to leading art dealers about the Old Masters you could collect

Sir Alistair Spalding’s favourite painting

The artistic director admires a religious fresco that encourages contemplation and reflection

Out of Africa

Carla Carlisle reflects on the life of Karen Blixen after visiting the author’s former home in Kenya

Renewal and recovery

The restoration of Boston Manor House in Greater London offers a fascinating insight into changing tastes, reveals Charles O’Brien

The Devil wears parsley

March can be the month of all weathers, warns Lia Leendertz

The masked singer

Jack Watkins goes in search of the elusive, enchanting woodlark

London Life

  • Cashing in with Russell Higham
  • Celebrating Claridge’s
  • Revisiting James Burton’s beat with Carla Passino
  • Jack Watkins finds change in the air at the Natural History Museum

Stancombe revisited

Marion Mako visits Stancombe Park, Gloucestershire — Waugh’s garden inspiration for Brideshead

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson harnesses the subtle depth of flavour of leeks

And so to sleep…

Hemlock is a pretty addition to riverbanks, but its charm ends there, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee

The claws are out

Simon Lester shares the thrill of an encounter with the secretive native white-clawed crayfish

The good stuff

Patterned or pastel? Hetty Lintell showcases the finest waistcoats

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – March 11, 2024

Barbie slaps Oppenheimer at the Academy Awards.
Art by Barry Blitt

The New Yorker (March 4, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Barry Blitt’s “Slappenheimer” – The artist revisits the infamous Oscars slap to riff on the tensions of this year’s ceremony.

Joe Biden’s Last Campaign

Joe Biden photographed at his desk in the Oval Office by Thea Traff.

Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection.

By Evan Osnos

Forty-Three Mexican Students Went Missing. What Really Happened to Them?

A man looks at photos of the missing students.

One night in 2014, a group of young men from a rural teachers’ college vanished. Since then, their families have fought for justice.

By Alma Guillermoprieto

CULTURE: FRANCE-AMÉRIQUE MAGAZINE – MARCH 2024

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France-Amérique Magazine – March 1, 2024 –  The new issue features ‘Francophonie Month’ – The French-Speaking Cowboys of Louisiana.

 Meet Drake LeBlanc, the French- and Creole-speaking cowboy, filmmaker, and cofounder of Télé-Louisiane; read our interview with Harvard professor Claire-Marie Brisson on the North American Francosphere; and discover why “Molière may be dead, but his language is alive and well.”

CYRIL DEWAVRIN – The American Dream of a Serial Bookseller

Founding a French neighborhood bookstore in New York City was the madcap challenge undertaken by this avid reader and busy entrepreneur. The Frenchman has just opened La Joie de Vivre near Chelsea, a space offering books in French and English, coffee, and pastries.

By Benoît Georges

Also in this issue, Albert Camus travels to America; former ambassador Gérard Araud analyzes the White House race and its potential consequences for France and Europe; and French soccer star and LGBTQ+ advocate Marinette Pichon discusses her U.S. career and her fight for equality in women’s sports.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Feb 28, 2024

Country Life - Country Life

Country Life Magazine – February 27, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Britain’s Top Dogs’ – Our favorites, decade by decade

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – March 4, 2024

A group of small children hold hands and cross a street in Manhattan.

The New Yorker (February 26, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features ‘Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “All Clear” ‘ – The artist captures New York’s smallest pedestrians as they make their way through the big city.

INSIDE NORTH KOREA’S FORCED-LABOR PROGRAM

Workers sent from the country to Chinese factories describe enduring beatings and sexual abuse, having their wages taken by the state, and being told that if they try to escape they will be “killed without a trace.”

What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet

Electricity shooting from the sun to the earth.

Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it?

By Kathryn Schulz

The New York Times Magazine – Feb 25, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 23, 2024): The new issue features ‘Enemy of the People’ – Tom Sandoval turned last year’s season of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ into the best in reality TV’s history – and ruined his life in the process..

How Tom Sandoval Became the Most Hated Man in America

Tom Sandoval looking into a mirror.
Credit…Holly Andres for The New York Times

He turned last year’s season of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ into the best in reality TV’s history — and ruined his life in the proces

Want a Better Society? Try Better Buildings.

The Egg in front of an ice rink with families skating together.

An obsession with luxury is transforming cities into bland, isolating landscapes. Architecture should be for creating community.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – February 23, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (February 22, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Ukraine’s Lonely Road’ – After two years, is there a way out of Putin’s war?…

Shaun Walker reports on this week’s big story, the fall of the strategic town of Avdiivka to Russian troops has come at a grim time for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. While the army is struggling to hold ground, war fatigue is setting in among parts of the population and disagreements among the leadership have been spilling into the open.

At the same time, the death of the jailed Russian critic Alexei Navalny last week – widely seen as another political assassination – appears to emphasise the strengthening hand of Vladimir Putin, who is expected to secure another six-year term as Russia’s president in tightly controlled elections next month. Amid a familiar wave of international outrage, our Russia affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer asks what Putin might do next.

Coupled with the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in the US elections later this year, it all makes for a deeply worrying outlook for Ukraine, reflected in the Kyiv-based illustrator Sergiy Maidukov’s haunting cover artwork for the magazine this week.

“This war is the hardest test of my life, similar to an endless ultramarathon,” writes Sergiy. “It is good to try to not think about the finish when running long distance. This is important knowledge to endure.”

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Feb 21, 2024

Country Life Magazine – February 21, 2024: The ‘The Fine Arts Issue’ – Artists who say it with flowers and the AI debate; Wig law, daffodils and how does your hedgerow grow?….

Artificial art

With the technology powering artificial intelligence advancing so rapidly, what can artists do to protect their original work?

Blooming marvellous

Michael Prodger examines how flowers have inspired artists for centuries, from the ancient Egyptians up to the present day

On a wig and a prayer

The periwigs that were a 17th-century status symbol are still a mainstay of our legal system, as Agnes Stamp discovers

Hedge of eternity

They have long been used to contain cattle or define boundaries, but hedges can be beautiful, too, argues Charles Quest-Ritson

Trumpet majors

Alan Titchmarsh takes a wander with Wordsworth as he dreams of spring daffodils ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze’

Norman Foster’s favourite painting

The architect falls under the spell of a gritty, but humorous work

All in a day’s work

Jamie Blackett is ready to man the barricades to scupper plans for an unwanted national park

Brothers in art

John Goodall applauds the restoration of Leighton House in London, which formed the hub of a 19th-century celebrity circle

Man of the world

Mary Miers follows the globe-trotting Sir John Lavery from Ireland to Africa and beyond

Follow your art

An inspiring oil painting was at the centre of a heist with a happy ending, reveals Carla Passino

Where be dragons?

A protective force in China and Wales, but a symbol of greed and evil in England: Lucien de Guise delves into dragon lore

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell celebrates the best of the Art Deco era with earrings old and new, but always modern

Is this London’s most exquisite hotel room?

The astonishing King’s Lodge suite at The Connaught is fit for a monarch, finds Rosie Paterson

Interiors

Amelia Thorpe shares the very best of London Design Week

A seed of an idea

Tilly Ware meets the wild-seed pioneer ‘nurturing the future’

A tower of thorns

Ben Lerwill finds the salt of the earth on the coast of Scotland

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson on rhubarb

Love and marriage

A real-life couple are in harmony on stage, finds Michael Billington