Villages

At first glance, it looks like any other sleepy village in southwest England. A medieval church and manor house face a fish ’n’ chip shop and post office across the green. There’s the obligatory pub, the Farmers Arms, where log fires crackle and ale-taps gleam beneath oak-beamed ceilings. Along the narrow lanes, whitewashed cottages peter out into rolling Devonshire hills. In true UK style, the place even has an obscure tongue-twister of a name: Woolfardisworthy. Population 1,123. Look closer, however, and you’ll realize this isn’t your standard British backwater. For every pint of cider being poured in the pub, there’s a craft cocktail infused with foraged botanicals and homemade cordials — think a crabapple cider margarita or a sea buckthorn gin sour.

The new prime minister of France, Gabriel Attal, has promised to “take care” of Oradour-sur-Glane. The village, in west-central France, was the scene on June 10, 1944, of an infamous Nazi massacre of 643 men, women and children, shot or locked in the local church and burned alive. Only six villagers escaped to tell the tale; the last of them died in 2023. For years Oradour-sur-Glane has been a site where schoolchildren were taken to learn about what France endured during World War Two. Recently the abandoned village has become overgrown with vegetation, but with the eightieth anniversary this summer, the descendants of the victims are making sure they are not forgotten.