Spectator Life

There are few finer pleasures than sitting by a river or canal in summer – cold drink in hand. With the bitter winter weather on its way out and pub gardens given the green light to reopen from April 12, a balmy few months of al fresco drinking and dining are now upon us. Here are the seven best pub gardens around the UK to book now. The Sun Inn, Essex With bunting strung up and marquees and deck chairs spilling across the lawn, the garden at The Sun Inn has the charming feel of a village fete. The pub sits in Dedham, in the heart of Constable Country on the Essex Suffolk border. A village church spire peeps over the garden hedge. The outdoor bar is open for drinks Friday to Sunday from April 16, 12pm until 6pm.

The plot of Academy Award nominated Promising Young Woman (finally available to watch on Sky Cinema and NOW TV) centres on Cassie who adopts a novel approach to avenging the rape of her friend. Revenge has featured as a key theme in literature and drama virtually since writing began, from Euripides (Medea) and Seneca (Thyestes) to Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus), Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo) and more recently Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl). The Jacobean era (1603-25) saw an intense interest in retribution as the subject matter for plays, with a fair few still performed to this day, works such as The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster), 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (John Ford) and The Malcontent (John Marston).

Cinnamon rolls never used to grace my breakfast table. First of all, they struck me as the sweetness equivalent of drinking a triple espresso first thing: it might seem like a good idea at the time, but the crash that accompanies it is surely inevitable. And secondly, I was certain that to be the sort of person who can put cinnamon rolls on the table at breakfast time, you must be immensely practical, organised and competent – and tied to the kitchen. And that’s simply not me. Happily, neither of these things are true. While cinnamon rolls are sweet – if you don’t have at least a little bit of a sweet tooth, I’d probably stick to marmite on toast – they’re not the one-note sweetness I had assumed they were.

After long months of social distancing, the scramble is on to book those all-important first meals out. You can almost taste it, can’t you. Someone else’s cooking, served on someone else’s plates. It’s a universal truth that the best tips on where to eat come from within the industry. Here, some of Britain’s best chefs share the spots they’re heading to as soon as the lockdown lifts. James Cochran After stints at the Ledbury, the Harwood arms, various pop ups, James Cochran opened 12:51 in Islington. After the restaurant industry was brought to a standstill last year he pivoted to making his signature fried chicken available under the name Around the Cluck.

There is no greater tabula rasa in the public imagination than grief.  Prince Philip’s four children - no strangers to the glare of public interest - now find themselves the target not of global ire, but rather unusually, of collective sympathy. For public figures, the warm light of communal compassion imbues recognition and significance on the lives of lost loved ones; their grief is one that is shared, which must be a consolation. But in today's 24/7 news cycle public grief of this kind comes with its own pressures and expectations. In the annals of Royal public relations, this should be a relatively straightforward chapter. Approval for the Royal family soars amid a public outpouring of hagiography, and all is well.

Last summer, when Covid forced the cancellation of our holiday, my husband and I had a staycation. We read books, played games, drank Pimm’s on our patio and invented ever more imaginative ways to avoid our DIY to-do list. Each morning brought the usual bills and junk mail to our door rather than a hotel breakfast tray, and there was no one else to do the washing up or freshen up the bathroom towels. As of this week, apparently, millions of other people are doing the same thing. The Sunday Times heralded ‘the return of the staycation’ as ‘the great unlocking begins in earnest and we are allowed to stay away from home overnight’, while the Daily Mail declared ‘It’s staycation mania!

Over the recent long months of lockdown, many may feel that they are stuck in their own personal Groundhog Day. With working from home and the few opportunities for travel or socialising, life, for some, has become a matter of dull routine. It's somewhat of a surprise, then, that the well-worn genre of the time loop movie, where protagonists are doomed to live one single day time after time, is striking a chord. Recent comedy Palm Springs has had plenty of attention from critics, perhaps because it resonates so strongly with our lockdown experience. On the face of it, this genre is a recipe for monotonous viewing, but it is to the credit of filmmakers that many have played out the concept in ingenious ways.

The National Theatre’s made-for-screen production of Romeo and Juliet (currently available on Sky Arts) has been delighting theatre-starved Shakespeare fans over the past week. Starring Josh O'Connor and Jessie Buckley this intimately shot film version of the Shakespeare play makes for perfect viewing for an audience starved of both social contact and theatre.  If you’re in the mood for more of the Bard, and can’t wait until theatres reopen, here’s our pick of the best film adaptations. A Midsummer’s Night Dream (2016), BritBox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb8Ku8-MBRA With a judicious trim of the text, the ever-wonderful Russell T Davies turns Shakespere’s classic comedy into the perfect prime time romp.

When did music start? It’s an idle question, and in 1866 the Société de linguistique de Paris got so fed up with empty speculations about the origin of language and music that they banned the subject. There are a series of exhibits, though, which can help us answer the question. The first is the ‘Seikolos song’, the world’s oldest surviving piece of music, discovered inscribed on a second-century grave stele in present-day Turkey. The second is ‘Hurrian Hymn No. 6’, written on clay tablets, excavated from the Royal Palace of Ugarit, and dated 1400 BC.

If you’ve heard a story about puttanesca it is likely that it translates as whore’s spaghetti – that it was born in the brothels of Naples’ Spanish quarters, a favourite of the prostitutes who worked there, for its quick, cheap and easy nature. But – ah, isn’t it always the way? – the truth is perhaps a little more prosaic. The word puttanesca is indeed derived from the Italian for prostitute (‘puttana’), but the same word is also used as a catch-all profanity, an Italian ‘crap’. In this vein, the dish would come to mean ‘any old crap’ pasta. This makes sense, because puttanesca is a true store-cupboard dish, made almost entirely from tins and jars and dried pasta (entirely if you forgo the parsley).