Discover a more cultured way to cruise, with added interest
Off-the-beaten-track destinations and fascinating experiences await Seabourn's cultivated guests
Seabourn knows its guests are a cultivated bunch; interesting, interested people who enjoy new adventures and fresh knowledge, and enjoy sharing their enthusiasms and life stories with established and newfound friends. The art of conversation is alive and well on these elegant ships, enhanced by a coterie of accomplished luminaries invited on board to impart their expertise via lectures and workshops, but also more organically as part of the daily social scene of shared meals, adventures ashore and casual chats.
Sail with Seabourn and you may find that you're sharing a moment with a daring explorer, a skilled chef, a celebrated performer or an expert from the worlds of art, science or politics. Here's just a taste of the captivating people and the exciting new experiences on offer.
Literary inspiration
Imagine being able to pick the brains of your favourite writer, discovering their inspirations, creative process and what their next title will be. Seabourn's Authors at Sea enables you to do just that, with a host of authors sailing with the line this year, including crime writer Louise Penny, garden designer and historian Caroline Holmes and former politician turned bestselling author Jeffrey Archer.
If you loved the Vera and Shetland series, bookmark the seven-night Scotland and Iceland's North Coast voyage on Seabourn Ovation departing 30 May 2026, accompanied by the author Ann Cleeves OBE. The call at Kirkwall will be particularly fitting, as her new book is set in Orkney. Alongside two talks she'll also run a Murder Mystery Event and Crime Writing Workshop for budding authors.
Author Ann Cleeves OBE will join guests on the Scotland and Iceland North Coast voyage which calls at Kirkwall, the setting for her new novel
Credit : Cruise Image Library John Shedwick
Signature events
Seabourn's complimentary bucket list experiences will be talking points not only during your cruise but for many years to come – you'll never forget listening to a sunset classical concert in the ruins of Ephesus with drinks and canapés.
At selected ports you can spend a day with a talented member of Seabourn's kitchen team as part of the Shopping with the Chef programme, heading to a market and watching them bargain with vendors for local produce, whether it's cheese and charcuterie in Sicily, aromatic spices in Istanbul, fresh fish in Valencia or fragrant herbs in Ho Chi Minh City. You'll have the chance to try speciality street food, hear how the ingredients will be used and spot them later in your dishes at dinner.
Don't miss the free-flowing champagne at Seabourn's signature Caviar in the Surf party – or its cold-climate expedition equivalent, Caviar in the Ice. Alongside the latter the brave can also take part in the ultimate bragging rights challenge, the polar plunge.
Enjoy chilled champagne and caviar at Seabourn's surfboard bar, one of its popular signature events
Credit : Scott Martin & Aly Whitman
Mesmerising entertainment
You'll encounter a star-studded line-up of performers on your Seabourn voyage, with cabaret and comedy in the Grand Salon, acoustic performances poolside and classical concerts on deck.
Stars fresh from West End musicals grace the Seabourn stage. This year's performers include Daniel Boys, who has appeared in shows from Rent and Grease to Avenue Q and Hamilton, via a detour to film the TV talent show Any Dream Will Do. Elesha Moses has played both Whitney Houston and Tina Turner, Lauren Drew has appeared as Celine Dion and Kieran Alleyns has taken the role of Michael Jackson in Thriller Live twice, as the young Michael Jackson at 13 and the adult MJ at 23.
West End musical stars are among a varied roster of performers keeping guests entertained on board
Perfect pictures
On Seabourn's expedition cruises you can sharpen up your photography skills with the Image Masters programme, a comprehensive, hands-on course led by the ship's professional photographer that will let you do justice to the incredible wildlife and nature you'll come face to face with.
Covering composition, camera techniques, editing and retouching, this tuition will help you get that dream shot, whether it's a humpback breaching in Antarctica, a polar bear playing on an Arctic iceberg or a sweet sloth or lurking caiman in the Amazon rainforest.
Learn the art of snapping picture-perfect photographs on Seabourn's Image Masters programme
Credit : Cruise Image Library/Getty
Magic moments
If you're sailing through Central America on Seabourn Encore this April, transiting the Panama Canal won't be the only excitement. Thrilling performances from four of the world's most talented magicians will fill your evenings with wonder and amazement. Marvel at the mind-bending illusions of Britain's Got Talent star Josephine Lee; enjoy Jack Rhodes' entertaining blend of sleight of hand and sharp wit; puzzle over Mark Haslam's Houdini Mystery and gasp at the startlingly original tricks of Blake Vogt, which secured him a part in the movie Ant Man and the Wasp.
For more information call Seabourn on 0344 338 8618 or visit seabourn.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Terence Stamp: the mesmerisingly seductive dark prince of British cinema
'A stranger arrives, makes love to everyone and then leaves,' said Pier Paolo Pasolini to Terence Stamp, outlining the plot of his 1968 classic Theorem. 'That's your part.' Stamp exclaimed. 'I can play that.' It was the role that the man was born to play and would play, with subtle variations, throughout his career. From his first appearance as the eerily beautiful sailor in 1962's Billy Budd through to his last manifestation as 'the silver-haired gentleman' in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho, Stamp remained a brilliantly, mesmerisingly unknowable presence. He was the seductive dark prince of British cinema, an actor who carried an air of elegant mystery. 'As a boy I always believed I could make myself invisible,' he once said. He showed up and made magic, but he never stuck around for as long as we wanted. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Stamp's talent was timeless but he was a creature of the 60s, forged in the crucible of postwar social mobility and as much a poster boy for the era as his one-time flatmate Michael Caine. 'Terry meets Julie, Waterloo station, every Friday night,' Ray Davies sang on the Kinks's Waterloo Sunset and while he wasn't necessarily singing about Stamp and Julie Christie – at least not consciously – the actors and the song have now become intertwined, part of a collective cultural fabric, to the point where that mental image of the two of them by the Thames is almost as much a part of Stamp's showreel as his actual 60s pictures. He was born in London's East End, the son of a tugboat coalman who regarded acting with horror, and his rough-hewn swagger lent a crucial grit and danger to his refined matinee idol aesthetic. He gave a superb performance – full of seething chippy rage – in 1965's The Collector, a role that won him the best actor prize at Cannes, made an excellent dastardly lover in Far from the Madding Crowd and whipped up a storm in Federico Fellini's uproarious Toby Dammit. But he was always a more febrile movie actor than his compatriots – Caine, Sean Connery, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole – and so his career proved more fragile and never truly bedded down. 'When the 60s ended, I almost did too,' he once said, ruefully acknowledging a decade-long slump that only came to an end when he was cast as General Zod in 1978's Superman. In the subsequent years he played too many off-the-peg Brits – thuggish gangsters, evil businessmen – in subpar productions, although this only made his occasional great role feel all the more precious. Stamp was at his full-blooded best in Stephen Frears's 80s crime drama The Hit, sparked briefly as the devil in The Company of Wolves and was fabulous as Bernadette in 1994's Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. But his great later role – and arguably the ultimate Stamp performance – was in The Limey, Steven Soderbergh's 1999 revenge tale. Soderbergh casts him as Wilson, an ageing career criminal who haunts LA like a ghost. It's a film that is implicitly about Stamp's youth and age, beautifully folding the present-day drama in with scenes in Ken Loach's Poor Cow to show what happened to the golden generation of swinging 60s London – and by implication, what happens to all of us. Somewhere along the way, wending his way up the coast to Big Sur, Stamp's knackered criminal stops being a ghost and becomes a kind of living sculpture, a priceless piece of cinema history, returned for one last gig to seduce the world and set it spinning before heading off towards the sunset.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
ITV viewers gripped by 'mind-blowing' sci-fi series with 'superb acting' - and there are four seasons to sink your teeth into
ITV viewers have been gripped by a 'mind-blowing' sci-fi series with 'superb acting' - and there are four seasons to sink your teeth into. Roswell, New Mexico, based on Melinda Metz's novel Roswell High, first hit screens on US channel The CW back in 2019. The mystery drama, developed by Carina Adly Mackenzie, has aired 52 episodes across four series. IMDb's official synopsis states: 'Centres on a town where aliens with unearthly abilities live undercover among humans. 'But when a violent attack points to a greater alien presence, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose them.' It stars the likes of Jeanine Mason, Nathan Dean, Michael Vlamis, Lily Cowles, Tyler Blackburn and Heather Hemmens. ITV viewers have been gripped by a 'mind-blowing' sci-fi series with 'superb acting' - and there are four seasons to sink your teeth into Roswell, New Mexico , based on Melinda Metz's novel Roswell High, hit our screens on the US channel The CW back in 2019 The mystery drama, developed by Carina Adly Mackenzie, has aired 52 episodes across four series The show wrapped up in 2022, but if this sounds like your kind of programme, it's your lucky day because it has landed on ITVX. Roswell, New Mexico has got 77% on critic site Rotten Tomatoes and 61% on the popcornmeter. Many have taken online to share their positive thoughts about the series, with one saying: 'I put off watching it for years (although an alien buff). I thought Hollywood did Roswell to death, but this show is different. The storyline is well thought-out, and the acting is superb. My hat is off to the creators of this mind-blowing series.' Others have taken to IMDb, with one writing: 'I really enjoyed it. It was the perfect mix of nostalgia and something new. It took a bit to get used to the new cast, but I like them. As far as reboots go, this is a good one. 'No, it's not like the original. But that doesn't mean it's bad. Check it out. It's worth a watch.' 'As a massive fan of the original, I LOVED THIS. The chemistry between the characters is awesome. BIG FAN! Can't wait for more.' 'I really loved this!' 'I loved the show and will tune in each week. I give it 10 stars.' Many have rushed online to share their rare reviews on the show - with one saying 'I really loved this!' Roswell, New Mexico has got 77% on critic site Rotten Tomatoes and 61% on the popcornmeter 'LOVE THIS SHOW!!!' There is another TV show called Roswell which was on air between 1999 and 2002. 'The lives of three young alien/human hybrids with extraordinary gifts in Roswell,' IMDb's synopsis reads. Although it was a huge hit, it doesn't sound like it will be returning any time soon. Roswell, Mexico was cancelled in 2022, and that meant that the writers had to edit their scripts to make it an ending that fans would be happy with. Showrunner Chris Hollier told EW: 'This [finale] was intended to help launch us to a nice wrap-up of season five. 'More craziness would've followed.' He added: 'What does it mean when you start to find the people that you want to be with? How do you actually go and generate your own happy ever after? 'I loved where we were going to take those characters. 'We were talking about setting the ending multiple years in the future. It would've been another wrap-up with where all of our couples were.' However he did have plans to make another. He told Variety: 'I loosely had to pitch [the network] and had to get them to sign off on letting me [have Max] go away. And they're like, 'Well, when does he come back?' was the next question. 'They're our first audience. So yes, there was a plan actually, of how to round it out assuming that the fifth season would be our last. We had some time jumps built in to actually tell stories we've collapsed down into weeks. 'We wanted to actually stretch out and jump to three different times over the next couple of years for all of our characters. 'I'm very fortunate for the time we had, but you always feel like we had one more bullet in the chamber.' Watch Roswell, New Mexico, on ITVX.
The Guardian
14-08-2025
- The Guardian
Playing Gracie Darling review – derivative occult mystery series fails to cast a spell
The title of Miranda Nation's new mystery series, Playing Gracie Darling, reminded me of Donald Crombie's 1986 adaptation of Playing Beatie Bow – another Australian production that links a young woman's name with a children's game that defies the seemingly immutable laws of the universe. Where Beatie Bow was transported from the past to modern Sydney via a chant, 'playing Gracie Darling' involves youngsters communicating with the spirit world, where Darling may have been taken after a seance performed in a creaky old shack went terribly wrong. Because of course it does! It's a seance. In a shack. Just once I'd love to see a 'talk to the dead' scene involving Ouija boards and the like go swimmingly well, a bunch of spirit-communicators leaving the event with ear-to-ear smiles and newfound joie de vivre. But of course, the seance in this reasonably well-staged but very codified and derivative series involves the Ouija board catching on fire and the titular girl (Kristina Bogic) spitting out demonic-sounding dialogue, before disappearing from the face of the Earth in 1997. Jumping many years ahead, we follow Gracie's former bestie Joni (Morgana O'Reilly), who attended the seance and is now a child psychologist. In the first episode (this review encompasses the first three of six – all that was made available to the media) Joni receives a phone call, informing her that another girl has gone missing from that very same shack, where a bunch of kids were playing Gracie Darling. Ah yes, the past comes back to haunt! This moment establishes the show's very genre-ified dialogue, via lines such as 'It's happening again'. Similarly tired-sounding language is sprinkled by the writers (Nation and Anya Beyersdorf) throughout the series and delivered by the poker-faced cast. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Occult activities becoming a form of adolescent recreation thematically aligns this show with Danny and Michael Philippou's excellent horror film Talk To Me, in which teenagers pass around an embalmed severed hand and channel a cranky spirit. But the Philippou brothers did something interesting by associating occult practices with other forms of recreational risk-taking, implying that consulting spirits and taking hits from a bong are different forms of the same ancient desire: to transcend the realm of the ordinary (which is exactly what I told my mother when she caught me smoking pot as a teenager). In Playing Gracie Darling, the occult element just feels cribbed from a cobweb-covered playbook. Likewise for the correlation between a core mystery and the troubled past of the protagonist, who, in order to fix a contemporary problem, must address something unresolved inside themselves – an oldie but a goodie. Another key player is local cop Jay (Rudi Dharmalingam, from the ABC's sublime drama Wakefield), who was also part of that seance – because small town, because narratively convenient. The supporting cast also includes Dame Harriet Walter as Joni's mum, Pattie, and Celia Pacquola as Ruth Darling, whose daughter Frankie is the latest person to disappear. Another very familiar element in this show concerns a situation brewing in the background that affects the local community, which serves as a scaffold for the main plot. Recently, in Last Days of the Space Age, there was an ongoing workers dispute at a power plant, and in The Family Next Door, a controversial real estate property development. Here, it's some recently constructed wind turbines which are disrupting the flight paths of birds and – some citizens believe – triggering health issues in the local community. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Atmospherically, Playing Gracie Darling is directed assuredly by Jonathan Brough (whose recent work includes Bay of Fires, Rosehaven and The End). And it is quite well acted, with a particularly strong, grounding lead performance from Morgana O'Reilly, who had a small but memorable role as a hotel employee in The White Lotus season three. But the writing in this series comes across as very self-conscious and overall the show feels fusty and antiquated. Playing Gracie Darling is on Paramount+ now.
