Hard Truths film review: Mike Leigh deserves Bafta nominations for this incredible return January 30, 2025 Hard Truths review and star rating: ★★★★ In Hard Truths Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s greatest living directors, reunites with actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste nearly thirty years after her cast her in the exceptional Secrets & Lies for a new hard-hitting drama. Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a wife and mother whose short temper barely covers deep-set depression [...]
Saturday Night review: Inside the mad origin story of Saturday Night Live January 30, 2025 Behind-the-scenes movies offering a glimpse behind famous moments in cultural history are having something of a moment. Some are great, like Mank’s dramatisation of the making of Citizen Kane in, and some are awful, like when Nicole Kidman donned horrifying prosthetics to play Lucille Ball in Being The Ricardos. This week, Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason [...]
The Gift review: A (literal) sh*tshow that offers needed respite January 30, 2025 The Gift opens with a simple premise: Colin, our leading man, has received a poo in the post. And he doesn’t know who from.
7 incredible places for food and wine in South Africa January 30, 2025 A culinary cruise around South Africa, with our restaurant columnist Martin Williams As a restaurateur, January is the perfect time of year to take a holiday; exhausted from the efforts put in to maximise Christmas business. As an entrepreneur with M, and whilst leading Gaucho, it’s a period when, after setting objectives for the months [...]
Netflix actor Chrissy Metz: Country music rejects bigger white women January 29, 2025 This Is US actor Chrissy Metz is crying out for a comedy gig – and while we’re at it, she’d like one of her country songs to top the charts. As she takes on her latest role in Netflix’s Bank of Dave 2, she tells Adam Bloodworth why that’s proving much harder than success in [...]
Libby’s Naked Diary: How I created a limited edition wine with amazing artist Nigel Stefani January 29, 2025 MY FRIEND, Nigel Stefani, is the least likely looking ‘Nigel’ you could meet. A muscular, tattooed, shaven-headed chap, invariably dressed in all-black with smoky black eyeliner and a dusky melodic voice. I picked him up at The Bike Shed, a biker bar in Shoreditch, one New Year’s Eve. Platonically that is, though my opening line [...]
The real White Lotus hotel: San Domenico Palace, Sicily January 28, 2025 In the world of luxury and super-luxury hotels, a new category has emerged, one that’s so exclusive it has only been bestowed upon two resorts in the entire world: the White Lotus Hotel. The White Lotus is, of course, the fictional hotel chain from the eponymous HBO drama, a place where the world’s wealthiest families [...]
A ski holiday in Val d’Isere is the hippest way to do the French Alps January 28, 2025 Val d’Isere has always felt hip, but a new design hotel is upping the stakes, finds Adam Bloodworth Think of a ski holiday in the Alps and a certain image springs to mind. That of impossible wealth, of royals and oligarchs resplendent in furs, of Hooray Henrys from the King’s Road necking jeroboams of rosé, [...]
What you should be pouring in time for the Six Nations January 28, 2025 IT SEEMS like every retired Rugby player has a keen interest in wine. Former England player Andrew Sheridan achieved a wine Diploma and filmed a series with me in the Rhone; Brian Moore became a wine writer and critic; Mike Tindall launched The Rugby Wine Club; and Joe Marler had me on his podcast, Things [...]
Founder of UK’s favourite alcohol free beer: ‘I’m mindful of talking about alcoholism and addiction’ January 27, 2025 Lucky Saint is Britain’s favourite alcohol free beer. Its founder on how they became a success, the future of flavour in low-and-no and why he’s mindful of talking about addiction Look at it from the outside and the Lucky Saint pub in Fitzrovia looks like any other boozer, with its traditional facade and its name [...]