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Eight UK thatched cottages that define ‘cosycore’

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Alamy(Credit: Alamy)Blackhouse thatched cottage in the Hebrides, ScotlandMany thatched cottages in the Hebrides are simple, single-storey structures called blackhouses or taigh-dubh (their name in Gaelic). The term blackhouse probably derives from the fact that these cottages originally had no windows. This type of cottage has 3ft-to-6ft (1m-to-2m) stone walls to help it withstand severe Atlantic storms. Wood here is in short supply and only used for roof timbers. The buildings' rooves normally have a turf base covered with thatch. These layers are traditionally stripped off in June and used as manure to cover local crops.Peter Landers Photography(Credit: Peter Landers Photography)Thatched…

Victoria Beckham review – meticulously constructed … but extremely boring | Television

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An intimate portrait of Victoria Beckham is what we were promised by the lavish publicity surrounding the release of the three-part documentary – entitled Victoria Beckham – about the female half of the enduring power couple, and an intimate portrait of the singer turned mogul is what was not delivered. It is about as intimate as a Pret sandwich, and if anyone thought for a moment it was going to be otherwise, well, let me introduce you to With Love, Meghan, whose searing insights into life as a duchess in Montecito are going to blow your mind.Victoria Beckham the documentary…

Mary Page Marlowe review – Susan Sarandon shines in slippery study of a life in pieces | Theatre

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If there is something familiar about a play comprising disparate scenes from a single woman’s life, performed by five different actors, that is because it was the central conceit of Annie Ernaux’s The Years, searingly adapted for the stage last year.Mary Page Marlowe premiered before that, in 2016, at the Steppenwolf theatre in Chicago, and takes similar shape. There are 11 scenes, non-chronological, that travel 70 years around the life of Mary Page Marlowe, an accountant, wife to three husbands, mother to two children and daughter of an alcoholic, who becomes perilously dependent on drink herself. She too is portrayed…

Katy Perry review – like being high on Haribo while trapped in a theme park | Katy Perry

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Katy Perry’s Lifetimes world tour arrives in Glasgow with a lot of baggage: somewhat scathing takes from its US run, backed up with lukewarm feelings about both her recent sojourn into space, and last year’s 143, an EDM-influenced album controversially co-produced by Dr Luke. Despite this, Perry is still a much-loved star in many camps, with her own brand of kooky iconography adopted by her fans tonight – like J-Lo at the 2019 Met Gala, I also run into a woman dressed up as a burger in the venue toilets. The tour is not the disaster that some have reported,…

‘Their chemistry made one of their deaths inevitable’: how a billionaire couple’s life in paradise turned deadly | Podcasts

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The death of John Bender mystified the world. A handsome American millionaire, Bender moved to Costa Rica with his wife, Ann, two years after they married, and set about building a 2,000-hectare nature reserve, centred on a mountaintop mansion that had neither walls nor windows. But despite moving to this vision of paradise, the couple’s mental health fell into sharp decline and in January 2010, Bender died of a gunshot wound to the head.Thanks to an unscientific forensic investigation by the Costa Rican authorities, the perpetrator remains unknown. Suicide is one option – John had written emails about wanting to…

Cyrano de Bergerac review – Adrian Lester brings sublime soul to roistering romance | Theatre

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Jamie Lloyd’s rap-battling version of Edmond Rostand’s romance showed us just what a modern-day adaptation could be with its sleekly devastating originality. Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson do not try to emulate the radical genius of that show in their adaptation. The genius here is in honouring the old rather than radical reinvention.Their modern-language script distils the spirit of Rostand’s drama, set in the French golden age, albeit in the midst of war. The heart and poetry is all here, and the sincerity too, which sometimes spills into schmaltz (for example, a silently smiling child Cyrano roams through the production…

Demand the Impossible review – powerful punk rage at injustices of police violence and spycops scandal | Stage

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Performances that dramatise protest can feel a little futile, presenting activism as an aesthetic experience while the real world rumbles on outside. Not so for Common/Wealth’s Demand the Impossible. Described as part-performance, part-punk gig and part-sensory experience, this is a striking work.Structured around Taylor Edmond’s text of short episodic monologues, it resists an easy poeticism, instead focusing on the objectively descriptive. This is of the everyday, where injustice occurs around the peeling of apples, the making of sandwiches and the eating of crisps. Threading together the narratives of a Black Lives Matter activist, a blacklisted construction worker and an environmental…

‘A sparkle that extends beyond fiction’: readers on what Jilly Cooper meant to them | Jilly Cooper

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‘An absolute delight’I was the manager of Books Etc in Oxford Street, where Jilly Cooper’s novel Polo was launched in 1991, with polo-dressed senior publishers posing in the window. Jilly visited our shop several times for signings and she was our favourite author visitor. She always spoke to all the staff, brought a gift for staff with her and always wrote us a note of thanks afterwards. Lovely with customers and just an absolute delight. Judith Denwood, retired bookseller, Hastings ‘A week later, a gorgeous wooden postcard arrived’Jilly Cooper’s postcard to Kitty. Photograph: Guardian CommunityI read Riders in the summer…

The Life of a Showgirl is a massive hit – and massively divisive. What should Taylor Swift do next? | Taylor Swift

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Laura Snapes Taylor Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl (TLOAS), has been a smash statistical success. She’s broken records that she previously set, and in the US has now beaten Adele for the most sales in a single week. The cinematic release party this weekend grossed $34m in the US and an additional $13m worldwide. But it’s second only to her 20-year-old debut – written in her teens – as the worst reviewed album of her catalogue, with a 70% approval average on Metacritic. What are the successes and failures of this record?Alexis Petridis The success part is…

A drag queen stands at a site of violence: Lee-Ann Olwage’s best photograph | Photography

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I have always been interested in gender and identity stories. In South Africa, we have a strong liberal constitution on paper for queer rights, but the reality on the streets – the hate crimes, the animosity in the workplace and in social settings – is very different. I was curious about where people could go not only to feel safe but to feel celebrated for who they are, and feel truly embraced. That led me to the drag pageant scene.I would go to photograph pageants every weekend, and every Monday I would get messages from the people I’d photographed asking…