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Belfast Telegraph
12 hours ago
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
‘The Handmaid's Tale was instrumental in my feminist coming-of-age'
I was intrigued by the savage turns of fortune in A Little Princess as well as by the descriptions of the lavish doll's clothes. Little House on the Prairie, by contrast, was a fantasy of wilderness living utterly foreign to me as an urban child. But both books troubled me, which is why I re-read them so often, I think, as I tried to figure out the underlying histories of imperialism. Re-reading them with my own kids I realised so many things that eluded me as a kid: the subplots of diamond mines in India under British colonialism, the appalling child poverty in London of A Little Princess. The mistreatment of Native Americans in the Little House books is a recurring theme: the character of Laura as a child is always questioning her mother's attitudes towards the traditional owners of the land. Both are brilliant books for kids that are also brilliant for adults. My favourite classic read is Middlemarch every time. I came to it late but reread it about once a year: Dorothea Brooks, who doesn't accomplish anything the world acclaims but makes a difference to those around her, is a remarkable heroine. I always find new things to admire in the book: at the moment it's the scene at the start in which Dorothea admires the jewels left by her mother and thinks of keeping them near her 'to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure colour'. It's such a beautiful image of emeralds in sunlight.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
‘Italian that just works': Broadwick Soho reviewed
This column sometimes shrieks the death of central London, and this is unfair. (I think this because others are now doing it.) It is not the city we mourn but our younger selves. Even so, the current aesthetic in restaurants is awful and needs to be suppressed: beiges and leathers, fish tanks and stupid lighting, all are nauseating. But I hated Dubai. You say Atlantis, The Palm, I say enslaved maid crying for her dreams. But there is refuge, at least from the aesthetic, and it is as ever the child of imagination and nostalgia. Broadwick Soho, the newish hotel in the street where typhus was chased down to a water pump, is a rebuke to desperate minimalism. It is a bronze and brick palace decorated, I think, in homage to Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, or perhaps Citizen Kane's Xanadu, because all the treasures are here. In response, because most people do not want to feel dead when they are not dead, it has been named the best new hotel in London for decades, and it is, if you can still feel joy. It has welcomed Taylor Swift and Zoë Kravitz and many people more attractive than you and me. I forgive it that, because I have a quest of a very particular kind: one that perhaps only I care about. Do you want to know where all the flounces are, children – the flounces the Connaught threw out? They are at Broadwick Soho, courtesy of its founder Noel Hayden, the son of a Bournemouth magician, who has, in his parents' honour, made a hotel that Norma Desmond would love, because it is one long opening night. There are maximalist hotels in London, of course, principally the Savoy, but the Savoy has gone mad (if it was ever sane) and thinks it is a florist or a jeweller now. Broadwick Soho has balance. It must, because it has taken all the flounces, and its broader theme is elephants, then leopards. It has two restaurants, Dear Jackie in the basement and its diminutive Bar Jackie on the ground floor, both named after Hayden's mother, who apparently loves them (as Princess Diana loved Café Diana in Notting Hill) – and a rooftop bar called Flute, named after a local flute shop, now gone. Drinking here is like drinking inside a lushly planted garden, or a paint chart. The views are of Mary Poppins's own London, the attics of Soho, and it is fantastical in rain. I eat in Bar Jackie on a summer evening. It is slightly more restrained than the rest of Broadwick Soho, which is high-kicking into the dawn: red ceilings and red awnings; floral wallpaper for the comfort of theoretical elephants; immense, soft lamps; floral tiling on the bar. It must be hell to clean, but that is not my problem, not here. As if for contrast – I couldn't eat mezze here either – the food is plain American-style Italian, as at the lost 21 Club in New York City, and it works. We eat a very fine focaccia; soft, dense Cobble Lane salami; an extraordinary salad of trevisano and gorgonzola, walnuts and balsamic vinegar, which I will not forget; a delicate, not overlarge veal and pork ragu (there is too much stimulation to eat your feelings here – nausea will follow you); a tidy tiramisu. It is pleasing to be somewhere that cares so much about aesthetics, when there is so much carelessness around. If you are very thrifty, you can eat for £50 for two and, considering all the agony in the world, I think you must.
Buzz Feed
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Which '90s Stars Have Disappeared Today?
The '90s had plenty of breakout stars who are still booked and busy today, like Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney. However, some major players who were poised to be the "next big thing" seem to be enjoying life mostly out of the spotlight these days. For example, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, though once a teen heartthrob, decided to leave Home Improvement in 1998 so he could go to college. He never returned to the spotlight in quite the same way, but he later said that exiting the show had been a "good decision." Or Yasmeen Ghauri, the model who was scouted while working at McDonald's. She retired from the fashion world after getting married in the mid-'90s, and now she's an advocate for breast cancer research and environmental causes. Or A Little Princess star and heiress to the family who founded Hyatt hotels, Liesel Matthews. She retired from acting in 2000 and went on to co-found an impact investment organization with her husband. So, in your opinion, which '90s star once seemed destined for greatness, only to be basically "forgotten" today — whether by their own choice or not? Why do you think their careers turned out the way they did? Let us know in the comments or in the anonymous comments box below, and you may be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post!
Tatler Asia
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
Celine Song breaks down modern love in ‘Materialists'
Julianna has been interested in leading a literary life since she first read Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess at eight. Before working with Tatler , she was an archive intern at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. She is a textbook Pisces who devotes most of her spare time to her crochet projects, watching classic films, and going through her never-ending pile of unread books. She studied creative writing, global literature and art history at Sarah Lawrence College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2022. Toni Morrison, Nora Ephron, Clarice Lispector and Jia Tolentino are among her all-time favourite writers. Work Julianna writes about fashion, beauty, sustainability, and the arts. She is always keen on conducting interviews with talented women who are changing the game in their respective fields. For event invites and story leads, hit her up at
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
When single sex schools die, we will all be poorer
I didn't go to boarding school, but some small part of me feels as if I did because my inner life was vividly informed by books that supplied the requisite details: tuck boxes, luggage labels, dormitories, matrons, sanitoriums and exeats. Our family bookshelves heaved with Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series and, most blissful of all, Geoffrey Willans' Molesworth escapades and Ronald Searle's St Trinian's volumes. Even when my reading wasn't directly concerned with the single-sex boarding experience, girls and boys in children's literature were inevitably travelling home, or to stay with a guardian (the staple rule in children's books dictating that parents must be removed to make adventure possible), with initialled metal trunks, ready to let off steam. So seductive were these books that, aged 10, I idly daydreamed about being banished to a remote, cliff-top ladies' college. Or, better still, toiling as the school's maid after my father died, having lost his fortune investing in a friend's diamond mine, like Sara in Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. But I can't help wondering how the shelves of children will look in 20 years after all the upheavals in the private education sector. Surely the subject of single-sex boarding schools will be firmly relegated to the realms of fantasy, if it informs literature at all. This week The Telegraph revealed that Labour's imposition of VAT on school fees has had a particularly brutal effect on single-sex independent schools, which are closing or going co-ed at a rate of knots. Once boys public schools littered the land, including many ropey ones (think of Evelyn Waugh's Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, teaching at Llanabba Castle School). Now there are only four all-boys boarding schools left in the UK: Eton, Harrow, Radley and Tonbridge. Meanwhile, all girls establishments are racing to take boys, despite studies showing girls do best when educated separately. Not only will children's shelves be changed by the upheaval, adult literature will be transformed too. So many books I've loved unlock British history and our national temperament – in particular our stiff upper-lip and fortitude – by taking an unsentimental look at boarding school life. Jane Eyre wouldn't linger long in the imagination had she not triumphed over the hideous deprivations she endured at Lowood School. Logan Mountstuart in William Boyd's Any Human Heart has a life underpinned by the friendships and rivalries he establishes at public school. More chilling, is Sebastian Faulks' fine novel Engleby, where the working-class anti-hero is at an 'ancient university', after winning a scholarship to Chatfield, a public school for the sons of naval officers. During his schooldays he was hideously bullied and called 'Toilet Engleby' for the heinous crime of not saying 'lavatory', like his posher classmates. If you think that sounds off-putting, then I can only say that literary memoirs like Charles Spencer's A Very Private Education and Antonia White's Frost in May are darker still. But they're also beautifully-written, salutary reminders that a late 20th-century revolution in the field of child psychology served to revolutionise private education, introducing the previously alien concept of wellbeing. Not all boarding-school lit is grim. Look at James Hilton's Goodbye Mr Chips, a tear-jerking love letter to the finest teachers, while many women would kill to take refuge from modern life at Angela Brazil's St Chad's. The sad fact is these time-honoured avenues of escapism will slowly disappear, along with the schools themselves. Future generations, schooled by AI, will never know the worlds of nuance summoned by the phrase 'chizz chizz'. It will all be another country. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
