The 12 best crackers and condiments for cheese
1. Foraged quince preserve, £4.95, paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk
Made with English fruit harvested from hedgerows last autumn.
2. Particularly British piccalilli, £4.15, tracklements.co.uk
This punchy, crunchy condiment is the perfect partner to cheese and cold cuts.
3. Birch sap and tomato relish, £6.50, farmshop.co.uk
If you like strong cheeses then you need a jar of this fruity relish.
4. Daylesford ploughman's chutney, £7.50, ocado.com
This tomato and apple chutney is made to be spread in the ultimate cheese sandwich.
5. Damson and black pepper jam, £6.50, londonboroughofjam.com
A jar of sharp, tart purple plums that have been given a peppery kick.
6. Somerset cheese pickle, £5.95, shop.thenewtinsomerset.com
Bring out this ale-enriched pickle with full-flavoured Somerset cheeses.
• Read more restaurant reviews and recipes from our food experts
7. Extra virgin olive oil crackers, £3.20, finecheese.co.uk
Subtly flavoured with oil and sea salt, these are best enjoyed with hard cheese.
8. Perelló crackers, £3.50, brindisa.com
Made with flaked sea salt, sesame and olive oil, these Andalucian crackers are satisfyingly crunchy.
9. Nairn's seeded oatcakes, £1.60, sainsburys.co.uk
These wholegrain oatcakes taste great on their own or with a hunk of cheese.
10. Crosta & Mollica Bolli Italian crackers, £2.15, ocado.com
Named after postage stamps, these are delicious with creamy, light cheeses.
11. Carr's table water biscuits, £1.70, sainsburys.co.uk
A must on any board, these simple crackers go with all cheeses and toppings.
12. Peter's Yard sourdough crackers, £2.50, ocado.com
Crispy biscuits made for nibbling on with smelly cheeses and charcuterie.
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Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Myleene Klass flashes a huge smile as she shakes off being branded a 'vindictive bully' by ex Graham Quinn's friends following her shock claims he 'cheated with a celebrity'
Myleene Klass flashed a huge smile as she arrived for work at Smooth Radio in London on Saturday, following ex Graham Quinn's friends branding her a 'vindictive bully'. The Radio presenter, 47, has found herself in the headlines after accusing her former husband of cheating on her with another celebrity, who she has refused to name, shortly before their 2011 wedding. Graham's pals have hit back at the shock claims and told Daily Mail's Grant Tucker that the former Hear'Say bodyguard, who shares daughters daughters Ava, 17, and Hero, 13, with Myleene was 'not going to dignify these fantasies with a response'. They also believe it was especially 'vindictive and calculated' of the singer to launch the bombshell on what she would have known was the week of Graham's 51st birthday. Despite the drama, Myleene appeared in high spirts as she strutted her stuff through Leicester Square with a huge bouquet of flowers. The stunner looked effortlessly stylish in a strapless cream top which she teamed with wide-legged jeans and a Burberry scarf wrapped around her tiny waist. Slipping her feet into comfy sandals, Myleene completed the look with a pair of stylish shades and toted her essentials in a £5,000 quilted Chanel handbag. It comes after Myleene hinted at more revelations as she issued cryptic warning to those that 'have reason to' be afraid, after she made her explosive claims about her ex-husband. After opening up about the scandal in an interview for Paul Brunson's We Need To Talk podcast, Myleene took to Instagram Stories to state she has 'receipts,' and 'won't keep her mouth shut.' The post also included a snap of her MBE, after receiving the honour for her services to women's health, miscarriage awareness and charity last month. While Myleene used the post to reflect on her recent acheivements, she also declared she's 'finally found her voice' after opening up about her cheating ordeal. She wrote: 'Wow. What a week it's been! Firstly, thank you. I have quite literally tens of thousands of messages of love and support for me and my family. I took a long time to learn there's strength in vulnerability. 'In a varied week where my interview with @paulcbrunson and @needtotalk went viral and reached the people who needed to hear it, where I was part of the incredible @stjohn_ambulance team who helped to save a persons life and where my children and I somehow managed to rescue our passports from the bottom of the Adriatic, it's been a mixed bag! 'All this to say, at 47, I've finally found my voice and it's clear, unapologetic and brutally honest. Despite the drama, Myleene appeared in high spirts as she strutted her stuff through Leicester Square with a huge bouquet of flowers The stunner looked effortlessly stylish in a strapless cream top which she teamed with wide-legged jeans and a Burberry scarf wrapped around her tiny waist 'To those that fear its truth, you probably have reason to, I have receipts, to those that need to hear it, I've got you and I fully intend to continue using it to change the laws and legislation that neglect women and children in this country and around the world.' Myleene then ended her post with a Bible quote, that said: 'And the truth will set you free' John 8.32,' before adding her own words: 'And then some.' The former One Show presenter left fans reeling when she dropped the explosive claim her that ex-husband cheated on her with a female celebrity in a very honest chat with Paul C Brunson. Myleene said she walked in on the moment ex Graham Quinn and the woman were taking each other's clothes off on the balcony of her home. Refusing to name the woman, Myleene hinted that the person in question has built a career off a 'family brand' and clarified that it was before they had got married. As mystery continues to swirl around the celebrity in question, Myleene declared she doesn't regret her honesty in the interview. She wrote on Instagram: ''You should do it, it would be good for you, but be honest, everyone knows when people aren't honest'. 'My manager before 'We need to talk podcast'. 'Errrrr s*** Leens, I didn't think you were going to be THAT honest'. My manager AFTER 'We need to talk podcast'. 'I flew back from abroad to do this podcast. I'd heard a lot about @paulcbrunson and had seen the @needtotalk headlines. As I've gotten older, more comfortable with being vulnerable, I'm drawn to things that stretch and challenge me. 'I wasn't prepared for how disarming Paul is and how he looks into your soul and pulls out the very core of what makes you tick. 'I didn't think he'd be able to do it. From the outside, what do we have in common? Maybe that was the challenge, to see what he had on me. Turns out, a lot. The former One Show presenter left fans reeling when she dropped the explosive claim that ex-husband cheated on her with a female celebrity in a very honest chat with Paul C Brunson 'We ran into the night, five hours of recording, (subsequently multiple lawyers on both sides listened back and reached for their fire blankets) and we actually REALLY got on. 'The two of us in a room brought out raucous laughter, the kind where you throw your head back and ugly cackle, abject sorrow, shock and everything else in between. 'My life has been played out in public for 26 years. I've lost relationships, been turned over (by men, not all men, but always men) and had to rebuild on more than one occasion. 'I've also won. I won my jungle crown, my MBE, my family, my place and my peace. 'I don't care if people like me anymore, I'm not the terrified 20 year old girl from Hear'say being pelted with chow mein on stage for trying to sing a few songs. 'I'm no longer the girl who watched her life go up in smoke, fighting for everything I'd built from people who'd meticulously planned how to take it. 'I've been torn down by those who were meant to love me, I think I'll be ok. In fact, I know I will. A mixed race girl, a neek from Norfolk, no one expected much (my school report proves this). 'I learned to hustle, stand up for myself and leave the betrayals behind. Who knew being a Mum would be the making of me, as failing meant my children failing (including the ones I never got to hold) and that was never going to happen.' Myleene first started going out with her Irish bodyguard in 2001 and they were together for 12 years until they announced their split in 2013. The mother-of-two explained: 'I walked in on him with a famous person on my birthday on a balcony.' According to the TV presenter, the pair tried to claim that it wasn't what it looked like and she continued: 'I'm in my house, it's my party. They weren't having sex, but they were unzipping each other. 'It's not what you think'. But I'm like, 'It is what I think'. 'It's the first thing they both said. I kicked everyone out of the party, including his mum and dad. They went back to Ireland and his dad said: 'He doesn't get it from me'. 'I remember thinking that was quite a weird thing to say,' she told the love expert. Graham tried to blame the incident on being drunk and she admitted the whole ordeal was a 'pretty big red flag' but still went through with their wedding in October 2011. Turning her thoughts towards the other woman, Myleene said: 'I've made peace with that situation now, but for a long time, it was very difficult to see their life. 'My life literally just broke apart very, very publicly and their life, they've managed to continue building a family brand on it. I have to take some accountability 'Look, you know, first and foremost to my children. My children have asked enough questions and it's never been a case of laying out my stall now. 'It's got to be as and when. But here's the funny thing - school mums, people who just want to gossip, will go to your children before anybody else.'
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
I was fuming my husband hadn't put the bins out – then realised he had VERY good reason, reveals host of our new podcast
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I made it back to my seat and managed to give my baby a bottle of milk, then hid all the empty sachets in the seat in front of me. 7 7 7 Needless to say, there were lots of people without milk for their hot drinks. Sometimes, I'll press the 'post' button on Insta or TikTok and think: 'Am I the only one?' Then the comments come rolling in, saying: 'I went through that today, too.' When I started to realise I wasn't alone in struggling, that made my confidence come back a bit – knowing I'm on the right track and actually, I'm doing a great job!' 'There isn't a manual to tell you how to be a mother' 'When you go on to any social media platform, all you see is the perfect parent and how everyone's got it together. Everything is drenched in mocha, their nurseries look amazing and the kids have got clean clothes. That's not my life – that's not the reality for me as a mum to Bradley, nine, Logan, seven, and Annabelle, two. 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BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
The complex question of what it is to be culturally Irish in 2025
He sang wistfully of the English town that shaped his life. "Found my heart and broke it here. Made friends and lost them through the years. And I've not seen the roaring fields in so long, I know I've grown. But I can't wait to go home."Ed Sheeran grew up in Framlingham in Suffolk and its rolling hills and magnificent castle inspired his hit single, Castle on the Hill. It was the homeplace he pined when he recently described himself as "culturally Irish," the singer faced social media criticism on both sides of the Irish replied that he had two paternal Irish grandparents, an Irish parent, an Irish passport, and a childhood filled with Irish summer holidays. Ireland was the place where his musical taste was formed, he said. "I can be allowed to feel a connection to a place half my family is from."Yet he was accused of being Irish "when it suits him" by one poster. Another wrote on X: "I've seen B*Witched live and have watched a couple of Gaelic football games, which I think gives me an even more legitimate claim to be culturally Irish than Ed Sheeran." The mainstream press expressed perplexity at his embrace of an Irish cultural identity "despite being born and raised in England".Not everyone agrees. To Ros Scanlon, programmer for the Irish Cultural Centre in London, it shouldn't surprise or offend anyone. It reflects her own experience as a second-generation Irish person in the UK. "He's owning his Irish heritage, saying he is proud of his cultural background," says Ros. "That doesn't mean to say he doesn't like or love being British, that is part of him too."Certainly it is much easier to speak of an Irish identity in Britain now that there is peace in Northern the Belfast South MP, Claire Hanna, who is now leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, told parliament during a St Patrick's Day debate in 2022: "Many are moving on from the traditional binaries of the past and embracing the 'or both' part of the Good Friday agreement, not feeling that they have to decide between being British and Irish if they do not wish to do so."Sheeran's declaration raises this point once again, and prompts the deeper question of what cultural "Irishness" really is today. Identity versus citizenship Professor Linda Connolly, director of sociology at Maynooth University in County Kildare, argues that Ed Sheeran's statement is about an idea of identity that is bigger than where you were born or what you write on a census form."Ed Sheeran is stating quite clearly that culturally he is Irish in Britain, and not just British and Irish in terms of citizenship alone," she argues. "This applies to many second-generation Irish living in Britain."In Northern Ireland, Irishness can mean many things, not least because it is fraught with so much painful history. For many unionists, staunch political loyalty to Britain and the Monarchy, sits alongside a deep attachment to the land they have lived on for hundreds of years. Symbols like the Celtic harp and the Shamrock are seen by many as belonging to both traditions. There are unionists who cheer for an Irish rugby team but would never dream of singing the anthem of the Republic - a new song, Ireland's Call, was written for the 1995 World is a complex and evolving set of choices, with frequent arguments. Promotion of the Irish language is bitterly opposed by a vocal section of Unionism. For most Catholics their Irish identity was historically something to be defended in a Unionist dominated state. It was an identity that helped bind them to their co-religionists on the rest of the island, particularly in the fields of Gaelic sport and culture. But as politics has changed there is less preoccupation with religious background, a greater sense of belonging to an international this is without even beginning to speak of an identity that is demonstrably northern Irish with its shared dry humour. Cultural Irishness: from Sally Rooney to The Beatles Everyone has their own menu of what being "culturally Irish" means - for me, it's about humour, about a love of words and music, and a refusal to take ourselves, or anybody else, too can also mean a sense of a particular landscape, either one you loved, or were glad to escape - or for second or third - generation Irish, a landscape of brief immersion on summer holidays from England. That was the world of "the streams, the rolling hills/Where his brown eyes were waiting" evoked by Shane McGowan of the there are as many definitions of "culturally Irish" as there are Irish people, or people who want to be Irish. It runs a wide spectrum of styles, influences, opinions and genres - from Oasis (born in Manchester to Irish parents), the rappers Kneecap, novelist Sally Rooney, the Irish actress of Nigerian descent Demi Isaac Oviawe, the London-born playwright Martin McDonagh of The Banshees of Inisherin fame. The core members of The Beatles all had Irish grandparents or great grandparents, prompting John Lennon to tell a concert in Dublin: "We're all Irish." That was in 1963 – some 62 years before Ed Sheeran's are many voices too from the Irish Protestant tradition in Ulster – the singer Van Morrison and the novelist Jan Carson, who has written about growing up in an evangelical Christian home, and says she now feels "much more ease and comfort with an Irish identity than a British one". Ed Sheeran is himself a product of blended traditions. His grandfather was a Belfast Protestant who married a Catholic from the Republic of Ireland at a time of sectarian it is undoubtedly easier these days for a big mainstream star like Sheeran to embrace an Irish cultural identity in Britain than it would have been several decades ago. I think of the powerful song Nothing But the Same Old Story by Paul Brady, about an Irishman in Britain during the 1970s, amid the ongoing IRA campaign: "In their eyes, we're nothing but a bunch of murderers." Cross-fertilisation of cultures Ros Scanlon credits Irish cultural figures for much of the changed atmosphere, including legendary BBC presenter Terry Wogan and musicians such as U2, Thin Lizzy, Sinead O'Connor, the Pogues "and now Ed Sheeran!"Yet all of these icons are building on the foundations laid by the unacknowledged millions who came to Britain over many generation of Ed Sheeran's parents and grandparents were the Irish people who built Britain's roads and housing estates, the railways above and below ground. The famous ballad 'McAlpine's Fusiliers' remembers how they "sweated blood and they washed down mud with pints and quarts of beer". Irish nurses were fundamental to the staffing of the those days, most Irish immigrants found expression of their culture in the ballrooms of places like Kilburn in northwest London, or the Astoria in Manchester, or the Irish pubs which often catered to clientele from a specific county. Bouts of hostility encouraged newcomers to stick the extraordinary cross-fertilisation of the two cultures goes much further back – how could it not, given the colonial history and the proximity of both islands?For two millennia there are records of the Irish trading, settling, and inter-marrying in Britain; they shared a common language with western Scotland and the Isle of Man, and a Druidic culture with the rest of Britain. Monks from Ireland helped spread and then restore Christianity during the so-called Dark Ages. Sometimes it worked the other way: Ireland's patron saint, Saint Patrick, was a Brit. One of the bestselling songwriters of early 19th century Britain was Irishman Thomas Moore. His story typifies the often complex nature of cultural relationships: he was a champion of Irish liberty, but his great song "The Minstrel Boy" – written for rebels fighting Britain – is played by the band of the Irish Guards at the Cenotaph on Remembrance for second or third generation people, the country of their ancestors has never been more reachable. Cheap airfares have changed the nature of how Irish culture in Britain has evolved, says Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, Professor of Irish history at the University of Sheffield. "The physical distance between Ireland and Britain has diminished in the Ryanair era… It seems to me also that Irish migration to Britain is now more likely to be temporary - people may come for a few years, then go home - whereas previously it was a more permanent departure." 'I'm an Irishman, and a Londoner - and much else too' I should declare an interest. I am Irish. Living in Britain. I was born here while my father was a real-life cultural import, acting in the West End in J.M. Synge's landmark drama, The Playboy of the Western World, a story from the west of Ireland, which won rave reviews from London went home after the play ended and I was brought up in Ireland. But I returned to work for the BBC. I have spent more than three decades as a correspondent for the BBC, and I have lived outside Ireland for longer than I did in the does that make me? My identity is made of many parts. I am Irish. I am a Londoner. I am also a Cork, Kerry and Waterford person. The Irish language and music is an essential part of my cultural makeup. But I also cherish how that music is connected to the music of Scotland and North America, and I reckon one of the greatest songs of Irish exile was written by Englishman, Ralph McTell: "And the only time I feel alright is when I'm into drinking/ It sort of eases the pain of it and levels out my thinking… It's a long way from Clare to here."My attachment to South Africa has shaped me in enduring and indelible ways too. Identity is also a story of deep and loving relationships, whether in Ireland, London, the African continent or France, to name but three important feelings about identity are also inextricably linked to my experiences as a war reporter. I spent too many years witnessing ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity often carried out because of hatred of a different identity. The great writer, James Joyce, rejected any identity built around "nationality, language, religion" and defiantly vowed to "fly by those nets". He was writing about a different, much narrower Ireland of the early 20 century. But the policing of identity – who you are allowed to be - is disturbingly present in many societies, and many if somebody asks me to narrow my identity to a single label, I refuse, because it is mine, not to be explained or justified. And if it shifts tomorrow, that is my business. 'The old battle of identities is far from finished' The nature of identity is evolving - in Ireland it is absorbing the influences of other cultures, but also influencing those Nic Dháibhéid hopes the prominence of Irish cultural identities in Britain will prompt a greater interest in the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland, particularly among the under-25s who, as she sees it, "will have no memory of the Troubles, and so there is an even greater need to ensure that there is good mutual understanding between the people on our two islands."The big British audiences for Kneecap, to take an example, didn't happen because young people had a sudden awakening about the problems of life in nationalist west Belfast. Kneecap connected with a much wider youth disillusionment: they are rapping in the Irish language but it's the challenge to the establishment that resonates with some among the young. It is important to recognise that the cultural influence can be polarising. Kneecap's public statements and political stances have divided people. One member of the band, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has been charged with a terror offence after allegedly displaying a flag in support of proscribed organisation Hezbollah at a London gig."The Kneecap phenomenon is real, as is the Derry Girls one," says Professor Nic Dhábhéid, also referencing the show inspired by the screenwriter Lisa McGee's upbringing in the city in the Nic Dhábhéid is one of the historians chosen by the UK government to oversee the writing of a "public" history of the Troubles. She cautions that despite the progress made, the old battle of identities is far from finished, citing the tensions caused by Brexit."A decade ago, the narrative was one of reconciliation… I'm not convinced that we're in the reconciliation space right now," she makes Ed Sheeran's honest expression of identity all the more was not one of aggressive cultural nationalism: he wasn't talking about what my identity should be, or yours. It was a statement of what he feels.I am the father of two children who grew up in Britain. I watch them navigate the challenges and opportunities of different and overlapping identities, encouraging them to follow James Joyce's advice and fly past any barriers others put in their for me, is the way to a future without bitterness. BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
