MOST of us, despite discomforting events in the news and the determined efforts of ill-intentioned governments, maintain a gut feeling that things are improving and that human behaviour is getting better.
DOWN the slip with a rattle of chains rolled the queen of the seas as 30,000 spectators cheered. Fifty years ago yesterday, Queen Elizabeth launched the QE2 from John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank. While the monarch modestly named the vessel “Queen Elizabeth the Second”, the ship became known as the QE2 (the numerical 2 rather than royal II said by some to have assuaged sensibilities in the nation that built her – where the reigning monarch is, as it were, QE1).
This week's bookcase includes reviews of New Boy by Tracy Chevalier, Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami, and Jane Austen At Home by Lucy Worsley.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can have a hugely beneficial effect on unpleasant menopause symptoms, reducing hot flushes, night sweats and mood swings, and improving quality of life for many of the one million UK women who take it.
Atul Kochhar is reminiscing about the day he became the first Indian chef to be awarded the gold standard for culinary expertise – a Michelin star – as head chef at Tamarind in 2001.
He has designed the most ambitious award-winning gardens and is a pioneer of natural landscapes and landforms, a wild flower expert and a seasoned plantsman and columnist.
This week's bookcase includes reviews of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, The Ice by Lalline Paul, These Dividing Walls by Fran Cooper and The Book Smugglers Of Timbuktu by Charlie English.
This week's bookcase includes reviews of How To Be A Grown-up by Daisy Buchanan; The Thirst by Jo Nesbo, and Hamlet, Globe To Globe: Taking Shakespeare To Every Country In The World by Dominic Dromgoole.
This week's bookcase includes reviews of debut short story collection Swimmer Among The Stars by Kanishk Tharoor, Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor and gardening columnist Alys Fowler's Hidden Nature
William Sitwell is adamant: "British food culture is the greatest food culture in the world."
