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Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The easy way to see Andalusia's beautiful, history-packed villages
On my first evening in the Alpujarran village of Mairena (population 150), I met the mayor. Rafael Marzon was herding 80 sheep down the lane and stopped to chuckle with the owner of the guesthouse where I was staying about how he had originally bought eight to 'keep his hand in' as a shepherd. He wasn't the only mayor I met on my Inntravel walking holiday, roaming between the whitewashed villages of the serrated Sierra Nevada, southeast of Granada. A phone call to request access to a little museum dedicated to the British author Gerald Brenan in the village of Yegen (population 300) resulted in Mayor José Antonio Gómez turning up to personally greet me and unlock the door. That's the way things are done in the Alpujarra, a historical region that unfurls across the famous mountain range in Andalusia, a place where a vanishing way of life still clings to the precipitous slopes. Here, close-knit communities eke out a living below the snowline, valleys are scented with wild thyme and rosemary, and until recently mules were still a preferred mode of transport. In fact these villages have long shaped our idea of romantic rural Spain, largely thanks to the generations of writers who fell in love with them. In the 1920s, recently released from the British Army after the First World War, Brenan hiked to Yegen, rented a house and lived there on and off between 1920 and 1934. He promptly invited his friends in the Bloomsbury Group to visit — Lytton Strachey wasn't such a fan but Virginia Woolf thoroughly enjoyed her stay — and eventually wrote South from Granada about village life. In the 1990s the former Genesis drummer Chris Stewart's book Driving over Lemons convinced us all that, with a little tenacity, maybe we too could buy a remote farm and a flock of sheep, and set about living a self-sufficient life. I read both books many years ago and loved the idea of ranging across the Sierra Nevada, exploring isolated villages built in the Berber style with sugar cube houses tumbling down hillsides. The Moors retreated here after the fall of Spain's last Muslim kingdom in Granada in 1492 and their influence can still be felt everywhere. Their terraced farms and acequia irrigation channels, funnelling the snow melt from higher altitudes, remain. Their crops — almonds, figs and olives — are still mainstays, as are the saffron and cumin used to flavour dishes. So blended are the layers of culture and jumbled traditions that the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca called the Alpujarra 'the land of nowhere'. • Read our full guide to Granada Inspired by Brenan but looking for rather less adventure than his days-long hikes up and down Andalusia's mountains, my boyfriend and I opted for a more sedate walking holiday. One where we would have a village base and could simply head out to follow different routes each day, ranging from morning strolls of a couple of miles to longer, full-day hikes, always with a brief stop for a tapas lunch. The walking holiday expert Inntravel found the perfect hosts to run Sierra Nevada: An Alpujarran Village Experience in the British couple David and Emma Illsley. For more than 20 years the Illsleys have lived in the village of Mairena, running Casa Las Chimeneas, which incorporates a guesthouse, a separate restaurant and even a yoga pavilion with the most meditative of valley views. They raised their sons here and fell in love with the way of life. You can feel it as soon as you check in: Casa Las Chimeneas is the kind of place that immediately folds you into Alpujarran living. Soon we were nodding buenos dias to the locals as we crossed the square for breakfast in the restaurant. As the sun set and the restaurant's log fire chased away the chill of an early spring evening, we joined fellow guests to exchange stories of favourite walks over dinner. • I've been going on walking holidays for 20 years. These are Europe's best And what dinners they were. Local produce whipped into hearty three-course meals by the villagers Conchi and Fernanda: broad beans with aged serrano ham, fried aubergine with molasses, stuffed mushrooms and red peppers. All was washed down with Alpujarran wine and followed with desserts of chocolate-dipped figs and oranges with mint and dates. So popular is the food that it has become the subject of another book eulogising the Alpujarran experience, Las Chimeneas: Recipes and Stories from an Alpujarran Village, written by the Illsleys. We had opted for a rental car through Inntravel so had the freedom to explore further afield but there was no need. A web of walking trails fans out from Mairena, following old mule tracks and linking together neighbouring villages. And Casa Las Chimeneas can always organise a taxi for adventures. Inntravel's detailed walking guide, sent before our trip, gives history lessons, tips on where to eat and detailed route information so you never get lost. Each morning we would pore over our guide, choosing our route for the day. David and Emma would chime in with their recommendations and were quick to organise additional activities, whether it was helping us to pick up the key to the Brenan museum or the chance to learn more about traditional silk weaving from Lola, a neighbour in Valor, the next village over. Late one afternoon we strolled with David to their smallholding, tasting wild asparagus, fennel and fresh oranges as we explored. Another time, we walked a mile up the road to the next village along from Mairena, Jubar, where just 14 people live full-time. • 12 of the most beautiful places in Spain Here, the church, set on a precipice overlooking the valley, is a remnant of the many cultural layers that blanket these mountains. It follows the design of a mosque and is topped with a Star of David and a cross. Inside, 16th-century frescoes have been uncovered, combining images of Catholic saints and what is believed to be a local curandera (healer), standing at the right hand of Jesus. On the way back to Mairena we popped in on neighbour Isabel, a local beekeeper who delivered a litre of pure Alpujarran honey to David for the princely sum of £7. Wherever we went, a quick phone call from David and Emma opened doors to the communities we visited. At the Brenan museum in Yegen, Mayor Gomez showed us black-and-white photos taken by Vagn Hansen, a Danish photographer affectionately called Juan el Dinamarca (Juan the Denmark) by locals as he returned over the decades to capture their way of life. Just down the hill, Isabel Muñoz and her daughter Carmen welcomed us to Casa Muñoz, their third-generation family business curing serrano ham for sale across Spain and Europe. About 20,000 jamones pass through their bodega each year; it's quite an eerie experience wandering among hundreds of silently hanging legs. After a tasting, we picked up some pre-sliced jamon and chorizo for the road and made like Brenan would have done in the 1920s, following his favourite post-prandial walk alongside the springs that feed the village. On another day, we followed a mule track down to the buzzing market town of Ugijar. The seven-mile round trip from Mairena took us via a rippling stream and past badlands landscapes of rust-red soil, all the while glimpsing views of the ever-present snow cap the Sierra Nevada wears. A rolled ankle prevented a final day of walking. The accident was the result not of a strenuous hike — I was distracted by watching the lavender sunset roll across the valley and misstepped on my way to dinner. So instead, we opted for a half-hour drive along serpentine roads to Laujar de Andarax, just across into Almeria but still part of the historic Alpujarra. It's a handsome little town where the last sultan of Granada, Boabdil, retreated after losing his kingdom. We visited the remnants of his alcazar (fortress), the 17th-century Cathedral of the Alpujarra, and joined locals enjoying a sunny spring Sunday with coffee and churros in the main square. The surrounding countryside is stitched together with vines, and when we realised that the wine we'd been enjoying at Casa Las Chimeneas came from the vineyard Bodega Fuente Victoria nearby, we popped in unannounced. The Suárez family, who own the winery, are recuperating once-lost vines here and while we only showed up to the shop to buy a bottle (from £6), they gave us an impromptu tour of their wine cellar. Just another example of that oh-so-welcoming way of life in the mountains. I had settled into the Alpujarran way of life but Inntravel offers an add-on two-night city break. After following the Moors across the Sierra Nevada, it felt apt to explore the grandeur of their final kingdom in Granada. Our destination was the Casa Morisca hotel in the city's oldest neighbourhood, the Albaicin, which was the Moorish quarter. It sits on San Cristobal Hill looking across to the Alhambra, which in spring glows pink against the last winter snow of the Sierra Nevada. To discover the opulence of the Alhambra's Nasrid Palaces, from where Boabdil reigned, you need to book tickets well in advance (from £16, It's worth it to wander among the brilliant white marble courtyards and through keyhole doorways, taking in the intricate plaster work and flamboyant, colourful ceilings. It was said that as Boabdil headed to exile in the Alpujarra, he turned to take one last look at all he'd lost and shed a tear, only to be told by his mother: 'You do well, my son, to cry like a woman for what you couldn't defend like a man.' It's the kind of story that sums up this evocative corner of Andalusia. Where tales swirl of kingdoms won and lost, and where every corner seems to whisper stories almost lost to history. No wonder it has inspired so many generations of Gordon was a guest of Inntravel, which has three nights' half-board from £470pp, including car hire, route notes, maps and some extra meals ( A two-night add-on in Granada costs from £260pp. Fly to Granada or Malaga
Indian Express
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
What writers think of Virginia Woolf's ‘Mrs Dalloway', a century later
Do men read women? Or, more precisely, do books written by women about the lives of ordinary women count as 'literature'? In the century since the publication of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, about the life of an upper-crust London woman going about her day, much has changed in how literature now mainstreams what was once niche, suggesting that the domestic, the ordinary, is anything but trivial. This shift in perspective is powerfully echoed in Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel, The Hours, where Woolf's legacy ripples through the lives of women across generations, revealing how deeply her questions still resonate. Woolf herself wondered whether a novel could be built from the ebb and flow of a single day, from flowers bought, parties planned, thoughts half-spoken. That it could — and did — is why Mrs Dalloway remains a classic. Its enduring relevance lies in how it dignifies the internal lives of women, revealing depth in what society once dismissed as minutiae. A century later, writers, poets and academics speak of the quiet, radical power of Mrs Dalloway — and how it touched their lives: 'To teach Mrs Dalloway, as I did to third-year English Honours students, is to delve into the very bones and sinews of the book. What makes it so brilliant, for all its seeming simplicity, is what we looked at in the classroom, and the more you looked at it, the more depths were revealed. To knit together London, the war, the trenches, issues of sanity and madness, youthful homo-erotic love, the ecstasy and pain of living, all filtered through the mind of one woman, required a skill that one can only marvel at. Thank you, Virginia Woolf, for being a trailblazer for so many women writers after you.' -Manju Kapur, writer 'Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, like James Joyce's Ulysses, is set in one day. But within that time frame, Woolf plays around with time using flashbacks and memories. The novel fuses history and autobiography, haunted as it is by war, trauma, insanity, unrequited love, suppressed sexuality and death. In that dark world, emerging from the shadow of 'complete annihilation'', Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party – the kind of party that Woolf and her friends of the Bloomsbury Group must have hosted. In A Room of One's Own, she wrote about the need to retrieve the lives of women who had lived 'infinitely obscure lives'' but her own life and her friends' lives were far away from that world – 'they lived in squares and loved in triangles'. There is, in this novel, above everything else, Woolf's style – loitering, insidious and sensuous. It is one of the earliest examples of stream of consciousness writing in the English language in the 20th century and carried the influence of Marcel Proust, whose writings Woolf had read with great attention. Woolf, in her time, was unique. The last line of Mrs Dalloway could very well apply to her, 'For there she was''. -Rudrangshu Mukherjee, chancellor and professor of History, Ashoka University ''Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself '. I remember the opening line from the time my younger self first read the book – published a hundred years ago now. Considered Virginia Woolf's finest novel, it follows a day in the life of Mrs Dalloway, a London society matron, as she prepares for a party. The narrative is intercepted with other stories, interrogating themes of memory, remembrance, the aftermath of war, and a changing social order. The uniquely crafted novel gave a feminine lilt to form, style and the texture of language. Woolf's voice continues to remain immediate and spontaneous and to resonate with successive generations of readers.'' -Namita Gokhale, writer 'The novel first hit me like a storm. It was around 2006. It was Bachelor's third year, if I remember correctly, and an excellent teacher, Brinda Bose, taught us the text. She was a bit of an institution in Delhi University those days, and the way the novel came alive in her teaching was exceptional. That any prose could do such wave-like motions, I did not know. That writing could bide and expand, and hurry and shorten time, I did not know. That one's thoughts could be the subject of endless unravelling, I did not know. Woolf's prose, then, in Mrs Dalloway became a point of no return. Thereon, any writing one did, was an open-ended experiment, rather than a foreclosed set of possibilities. The novel taught me that prose could go to any place of your imagining.' -Akhil Katyal, poet 'For a hundred years now, people have wondered why Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Over the last 30 years, since I first read Woolf's novel, the emphasis in the opening sentence has kept shifting for me: from 'herself', when I was a university student, to 'buy' a few years later, and then to 'flowers' for a long time. In the changing history of these emphases was not only a record of my own proclivities, but a history of humanistic attention, aesthetic and political – on and of the woman, the 'herself'; an evolving lineage of consumption, that everything could be bought ('buy'); to 'flowers', the most ignored noun in the sentence and, by extension, the planet. Much older now, I see the invisible verb in that sentence that, I believe, gives us a history of modernism – walking, how it gives narrative energy and moodiness to the novel. A woman walking – in the city, in a novel, the sentences road and alley-like, not mimetically, but an experiment in rhythm.' -Sumana Roy, writer and poet 'For an artist, love is rarely enabling except in its non-fulfilment. So is sanity. Virginia Woolf wrestled with both all her life. One hundred years since its publication, Mrs Dalloway's fame has come to surpass its plotless plot and the sheer artistry of its techniques. This is a book which juxtaposes, both with caution and liberty, sanity and insanity (or, as she menacingly puts it, the 'odd whirr of wings in the head'), love and non-love, truth and untruth, life and death, an attempt which, puzzlingly or not I cant be certain, ends in the suicide of the 'mad' Septimus Smith and the survival of the 'sane' Clarissa Dalloway. If AN Whitehead's definition of the classic as 'patience in interpretation' is true, then Mrs Dalloway, just like its superior cousin, To the Lighthouse, will keep on yielding interpretations.' -Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, writer 'I read A Room of One's Own in my first year of college. I was stunned by the prose – I had never encountered anything like it. I must have been equally entranced by the book's structure, its slow and sensuous unfolding of an argument that was so sharp and steely – a dazzling contrast only an inventor of a form could pull off – but I know that, at the time, I did not have the vocabulary to frame it this way, or to see its craft as a feminist reclamation of language itself. I didn't know that by including the personal in the telling, by showing us the maturing of the idea against the environment in which it gestated, Woolf was doing something radical. Not having this vocabulary, however, was not a bad thing. I remember, instead, being aware of a peculiar sensation under my tongue, a salty sweetness, as I read the book, a kind of muted crackling in the viscera, followed by a gentle give, all of which possibly meant the book was reconfiguring me from within. I hope the 18-year-olds in my classroom whom I introduce the text to are able to feel themselves rewritten through it too. The text is the only teacher they need.' -Devapriya Roy, writer
Glasgow Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Garden design exhibition at V&A Dundee aims to inspire ‘joyful future'
Garden Futures: Designing With Nature will be on show at the design museum from Saturday until January 25. The exhibition explores the impact of garden design, including kitchen gardens and the popularity of allotments, as well as looking at artists such as William Morris. It includes a scent trail which features the fragrances of rose, jasmine and narcissus. More than 400 objects are on display in the exhibition, which 'digs up surprising stories of gardens through time, including creating sanctuaries and empowering communities and individuals to find peace and hope in times of adversity', according to curators. Designer Andrew Flynn, pictured in front of a display as part of the Garden Futures: Designing With Nature exhibition (Jane Barlow/PA) It explores international themes, including Persian garden paradises to the sustainable Oban Seaweed Gardens in Argyll and Bute, huge vertical gardens in Milan flourishing in giant concrete apartment blocks, and a garden in China inspired by video games. The exhibition also includes Dior menswear inspired by the garden at Charleston in Sussex which was a retreat in the early 20th century for the writers and creatives known as the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, and was the home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Work by garden designer Piet Oudolf and Arabella Lennox-Boyd, who designed the landscape at Maggie's cancer centre in Dundee, is also on display. Leonie Bell, director of V&A Dundee, said: 'We are delighted to be opening Garden Futures: Designing With Nature as gardens and gardeners across Scotland are hitting their seasonal stride. Professional horticulturist Daisy the Drag Queen Gardener in front of a display which forms part of the exhibition (Jane Barlow/PA) 'Gardens are both everyday and extraordinary – they mean something different to everyone. These designed spaces reflect the times we live in and express our relationship with nature. Some are productive spaces for work, rest and play, while others represent profound spiritual, cultural and political ideas. 'This vibrant exhibition blooms with design stories of gardens from Scotland and around the world, unearthing different approaches to creating the 'perfect' garden. 'Garden Futures looks back to early earthly ideas of paradise and considers how gardening can cultivate a greener, fairer and more joyful future for humans and nature alike. 'Whether you're a seasoned gardener or you've never grown anything in your life, the exhibition offers a thought-provoking experience, providing moments of sanctuary and creative inspiration within its stunning design. 'We look forward to welcoming visitors who we hope will come away with a renewed sense of what a garden can mean, or a new-found curiosity about gardening and growing.'
North Wales Chronicle
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
Garden design exhibition at V&A Dundee aims to inspire ‘joyful future'
Garden Futures: Designing With Nature will be on show at the design museum from Saturday until January 25. The exhibition explores the impact of garden design, including kitchen gardens and the popularity of allotments, as well as looking at artists such as William Morris. It includes a scent trail which features the fragrances of rose, jasmine and narcissus. More than 400 objects are on display in the exhibition, which 'digs up surprising stories of gardens through time, including creating sanctuaries and empowering communities and individuals to find peace and hope in times of adversity', according to curators. It explores international themes, including Persian garden paradises to the sustainable Oban Seaweed Gardens in Argyll and Bute, huge vertical gardens in Milan flourishing in giant concrete apartment blocks, and a garden in China inspired by video games. The exhibition also includes Dior menswear inspired by the garden at Charleston in Sussex which was a retreat in the early 20th century for the writers and creatives known as the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, and was the home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Work by garden designer Piet Oudolf and Arabella Lennox-Boyd, who designed the landscape at Maggie's cancer centre in Dundee, is also on display. Leonie Bell, director of V&A Dundee, said: 'We are delighted to be opening Garden Futures: Designing With Nature as gardens and gardeners across Scotland are hitting their seasonal stride. 'Gardens are both everyday and extraordinary – they mean something different to everyone. These designed spaces reflect the times we live in and express our relationship with nature. Some are productive spaces for work, rest and play, while others represent profound spiritual, cultural and political ideas. 'This vibrant exhibition blooms with design stories of gardens from Scotland and around the world, unearthing different approaches to creating the 'perfect' garden. 'Garden Futures looks back to early earthly ideas of paradise and considers how gardening can cultivate a greener, fairer and more joyful future for humans and nature alike. 'Whether you're a seasoned gardener or you've never grown anything in your life, the exhibition offers a thought-provoking experience, providing moments of sanctuary and creative inspiration within its stunning design. 'We look forward to welcoming visitors who we hope will come away with a renewed sense of what a garden can mean, or a new-found curiosity about gardening and growing.'
Leader Live
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Leader Live
Garden design exhibition at V&A Dundee aims to inspire ‘joyful future'
Garden Futures: Designing With Nature will be on show at the design museum from Saturday until January 25. The exhibition explores the impact of garden design, including kitchen gardens and the popularity of allotments, as well as looking at artists such as William Morris. It includes a scent trail which features the fragrances of rose, jasmine and narcissus. More than 400 objects are on display in the exhibition, which 'digs up surprising stories of gardens through time, including creating sanctuaries and empowering communities and individuals to find peace and hope in times of adversity', according to curators. It explores international themes, including Persian garden paradises to the sustainable Oban Seaweed Gardens in Argyll and Bute, huge vertical gardens in Milan flourishing in giant concrete apartment blocks, and a garden in China inspired by video games. The exhibition also includes Dior menswear inspired by the garden at Charleston in Sussex which was a retreat in the early 20th century for the writers and creatives known as the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, and was the home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Work by garden designer Piet Oudolf and Arabella Lennox-Boyd, who designed the landscape at Maggie's cancer centre in Dundee, is also on display. Leonie Bell, director of V&A Dundee, said: 'We are delighted to be opening Garden Futures: Designing With Nature as gardens and gardeners across Scotland are hitting their seasonal stride. 'Gardens are both everyday and extraordinary – they mean something different to everyone. These designed spaces reflect the times we live in and express our relationship with nature. Some are productive spaces for work, rest and play, while others represent profound spiritual, cultural and political ideas. 'This vibrant exhibition blooms with design stories of gardens from Scotland and around the world, unearthing different approaches to creating the 'perfect' garden. 'Garden Futures looks back to early earthly ideas of paradise and considers how gardening can cultivate a greener, fairer and more joyful future for humans and nature alike. 'Whether you're a seasoned gardener or you've never grown anything in your life, the exhibition offers a thought-provoking experience, providing moments of sanctuary and creative inspiration within its stunning design. 'We look forward to welcoming visitors who we hope will come away with a renewed sense of what a garden can mean, or a new-found curiosity about gardening and growing.'
