Reader's Digest UK Mar 2018

Mother’s Day: 5 Ways Mum Shaped You

Princess Michael Of Kent: Cheetahs and Childhood

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Contents

FEATURES

14 IT’S A MANN’S WORLD

Olly Mann contemplates the reality of life in another era

Entertainment

24 PRINCESS MICHAEL OF KENT INTERVIEW

Her Royal Highness opens up about her adolescence

32 “I REMEMBER”: BOB HARRIS

The radio legend talks about his life on the airwaves

Health

42 BACK FROM THE DEAD

How the strange new science of suspended animation will save lives

Inspire

60 BACK TO THE FUTURE

Meet the architects using revolutionary technology to preserve the world’s most ancient monuments

72 BEST OF BRITISH: BRUTALIST BRITAIN

82 THE SECRETS OF SHIPWRECKS

Modern-day detectives are unearthing the secrets of forgotten shipwrecks

Travel & Adventure

90 NIGHT OF FIRE AND FUN

Every spring a spectacular ritual electrifies residents of Valencia

102 WILD BEAUTY OF THE DESERT

We discover the unexpected beauty of these bulky buildings

Incredible photos of an ageold nomad culture in Mongolia

EDITOR’S LETTER

POSTERITY HAS been much on my mind in editing this, my first issue of Reader’s Digest. I’m immensely proud to join the long line of stewards of this cultural icon stretching back to the 1920s—and those twin themes of continuity and preservation run strong throughout the issue.

On p60, we discover the work being carried out by Yves Ubelmann, and his company Iconem, which uses cuttingedge photogrammetry technology to preserve ancient monuments through 3D digital models. On p72, we explore that divisive architectural style, brutalism. The often controversial concrete edifices it has produced are being reappraised and some, such as the colossal Preston Bus Station, are to be saved. On p82 we explore the work of the “shipwreck detectives” who recover artefacts from some of the world’s estimated 3 million shipwrecks.

I’ll be working hard to preserve our great story-telling for a new generation. As Ubelmann puts it “I’m working for the future and not for the past.”

Paul Evans

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THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY readersdigest.co.uk

Sister Sister

MARCH 8th marks this year’s International Women’s Day and to celebrate, we’re studying up on some of history’s less famed heroes. Mary Anning, for example, was an early palaeontologist who significantly shaped our understanding of Britain’s prehistoric era. Visit readersdigest.co.uk/inspire/ life/3-pioneering-women-who-changed-history

Your mother should know…

With Mother’s Day fast approaching, seven celebrities share the biggest lessons their mother ever taught them. Russell Brand’s mum taught him to “listen to people and treat them well”, while Jennifer Gardner’s taught her “Southern values… and to stop and smell the roses”. Visit readersdigest.co.uk/ mother-lessons

Why not treat your mum to breakfast in bed?

Recipes at readersdigest. co.uk/brunch-in-bed

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Over to You

LETTERS ON THE JANUARY ISSUE

We pay £50 for Letter of the Month and £30 for all others

✯ LETTER OF THE MONTH...

I must write to say how much I enjoyed Bill Bailey’s reflections. Bill described an idyllic childhood in the West Country with the support of an interesting and loving family.

I met Bill briefly when he gave a fireside chat at the Music and Drama Expo in Olympia last year. He had endless time and enthusiasm for the students and was happy to help with advice and encouragement. His background appears to have left him well grounded and devoid of some of the airs and graces that define so many celebrities.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE

In his “I Remember” article, Bill Bailey says his parents, although influential, did not constrain him in any way, yet he possesses all the attributes a parent would be most proud of.

I believe that leading by example plays a huge part in a child’s development, but we cannot mould our children in our own likeness. Instead, they should be the ones who find their own destiny.

PHILIPPA SAMPSON, Torquay

MICHAEL MELIA, Kent

POSITIVE RESOLUTIONS

I loved Fiona Hicks’ thoughts on “cultivating strong relationships” as a New Year’s resolution. I was determined to make 2018 a year of being “nicer”—whatever that entailed—and it’s already made a difference.

Amanda Riley Jones mentioned in her article that “our ability to get on with others predicts our fate in many areas of life” and it really is so true. She suggests that we should “behave like you like them, and they will like

you back”, which is also very true!

I was told this week at work how well I looked and how I was much more smiley—my confidence in myself and other people soared. In turn, I’ve genuinely seen a growth in the number of people who seem to relate to me and vice versa. What a terrific New Year’s resolution...

KAREN TAYLOR, Dorset

UNNECESSARY ADVICE

I agree with Olly Mann about the assumed empathy that people offer to others when they, or their relative, are about to go into hospital. Telling someone about a particularly bad experience that happened to someone else has the complete opposite effect to what was originally intended. This happens with some regularity when you’re about to have a child, particularly your first one. People are queuing up to tell you how painful/traumatic it is and share some horror story that happened to someone they knew. At a time when you’re looking for reassurance for what will be an exciting, yet nerve-wracking and life-changing moment, it’s the last thing you want to hear.

Whilst people may, in their own way, be telling you to prepare for the

worst, a more empathic approach would be to inform you that whilst it’s not going to be plain sailing, in the vast majority of cases mother and baby are fine and well cared for by our experienced medical staff.

It’s nice for people to show an interest but sometimes it might actually be better if they keep their mouths shut. It’s more helpful to find things out for yourself. You can certainy do without the doom and gloom merchants.

KEVIN BRIGGS, Shetland

FLYING HIGH

Lisa Fields’ article “No More Regrets” made me think about how many I may have given thought to since I reached 90. I regretted not becoming an RAF fighter pilot, after three years in the Air Training Corps in 1944, and being drafted into Army Signals. They decided to transfer me into the RAF after the war ended as they had demobbed too many radio men. However, despite my regrets, my training in radio and telecoms gave me a good job when I left the service.

My very best decision was to sweep the girl of my life off her feet and get married. Forty years later, she’s still by my side. Any regrets? No way! ALAN

CLEARING UP PENSION CONFUSION

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The impact of making a poorly informed decision when choosing a pension can be significant and may have knock-on effects years later; leaving you out of pocket at a time when you can least afford it.

According to YouGov statistics, almost three-quarters of adults in the UK have never taken pensions advice from a qualified professional. On top of this, 40 per cent are unaware of how many pension pots they are currently investing in, and 73 per cent don’t know how much their pension assets are worth.

How to understand pensions more easily

The confusion isn’t limited to the consumer. Even those responsible for the legislation often find pensions unnecessarily complicated; a recent poll found that 39 per cent of MPs believe the current pension system is not fit for purpose. Crucially though, help is at hand. Reader’s Digest

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...DIFFERENTLY

The Cadillac Ranch in Texas, directly on famed Route 66, offers an interactive art installation with ten garishly painted, halfburied luxury cruisers from a bygone era. A group of artists who called themselves Ant Farm realised this extraordinary concept in 1974 as a celebration of the stylistic development of America’s beloved luxury car, the Cadillac. It’s not only allowed but even encouraged that visitors take spray cans and leave their marks on these dormant dinosaurs—but beware, whoever wants their contribution to endure had better take a photo before the next visitor with a can of paint arrives.

Olly Mann considers the reality of life in another era, and decides he’s better off staying put…

The Time Traveller’s Strife

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio

4, and the award-winning podcasts The Modern Mann and Answer Me This!

IF YOU COULD LIVE IN ONE HISTORICAL ERA , which would you choose?

Perhaps you’d be Victorian, at the vanguard of industrialisation; or a Renaissance artist, painting pious pictures of breasts; or even an Ancient, slaughtering goats for Apollo en route to a packed performance of Antigone.

Not I. Whenever I’m chucked this dinner party curve ball, my response is identical: right now. Yep, of all eras of history, I’d choose to live in the age of Right Now; despite our political instability, our culture of celebrity, our “freakshakes”, PPI and laminate flooring. Partly this is because I know my forebears scratched a living in ghettos, so it’s hard to imagine myself enjoying an especially attractive lifestyle in ye olden days. (My great-grandfather supposedly remarked, when arriving from Russia in the 1890s, that Britain was great because “nobody spits at you in the street”.)

But I’d also choose Right Now because this era is so obviously, evidently, quantifiably better. Improvements in medicine are manifold: we live longer, keyhole surgery is routine, polio is effectively eradicated. Equal rights, admittedly, are somewhat work-in-progress, but broadly speaking, Westerners have the right to work, reside and vote as we please, regardless of gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. Then, of course, there’s the matter of technology. Information once available for a four-figure sum in dusty

BY LAUREN REBBECK

leather-bound encyclopedias is now free, with a tap of a keyboard or a click of a mouse. Ditto almost all music and art. Influential thinkers, leaders and creatives are directly contactable. Mobile communication

and cloud computing allow us to manage our work without being chained to a desk so stay-at-home parents, the wheelchair-bound and the unemployed all have a better shot at entrepreneurship. And, as I’ve

charted in this magazine’s tech pages for a number of years, even budget smartphones now provide professional-grade cameras, satnavs, calculators, microphones, calendars and pagers... all for substantially less than it once cost to buy such devices separately.

So, yeah: Right Now is when I would choose to live. I have my reservations, as we all do, about the sometimes scaryseeming world of AI robots, self-driving vehicles and corporatecontrolled surveillance we’re bequeathing to our children, but I’m intrigued, as each of these developments arrive, to actually try them out. I’m a bit misty-eyed, as we all are, about pre-internet days when kids spent longer outside, and Yellow Pages ads ran at Christmas. But nostalgia is partly a trick of the mind. My grandma claims London was nicer when she was a girl, in the 1940s—when everyone smoked, the smog was suffocating, and she was evacuated because her house was bombed by Nazis.

brilliantly explores in his 2015 book

Technological evolution is outpacing our own: humans feel innately unsettled if we don’t have time to become bored

The Four-Dimensional Human, the posts and comments we put up on social media don’t depart our minds when we press “send.” Instead, they can trigger a persistent, mild anxiety. So, as I go about my daily business in the three-dimensional “real world,” I crave an update on my status in the “fourth dimension”—my online persona. I’ll sit on the beach and admire the sunset, yet feel I haven’t fully enjoyed the experience until I’ve shared it with strangers on Instagram. I’ll pick up a newspaper on the train, and find myself wondering what Donald Trump’s tweeted since it went to press. I’ll feed my son his lunch on Wednesday, and wonder why my aunt has not yet “liked” the video I uploaded of him eating his lunch on Tuesday.

However, there’s a fly in the ointment and it’s this: the effect that being constantly connected is having on our brains. As Laurence Scott

This, clearly, isn’t particularly healthy and, worryingly, even the very people who designed this environment agree that it isn’t. Steve Jobs famously didn’t let his own kids use iPads; current Apple CEO Tim Cook admits he won’t permit his nephew to use social networks. Loren Brichter, who invented Twitter’s addictive pull-to-refresh

feature, has now removed notifications from his own phone.

The psychological side effects of social media aren’t side effects at all— they’re the ingrained intention of commercially-funded media companies. Essentially, the more time we spend using their products, the more advertising these companies sell. As long as there’s no substantive progression of that business model, our addiction will continue.

So it’s no surprise to me that the boom we’re experiencing in mobile technology, these weapons of mass distraction, has coincided with a surge of interest in books about

mindfulness, meditation and silence. Technological evolution is outpacing our own: we humans feel innately unsettled if we don’t have periods of our lives when we stop, think, concentrate and, yes, sometimes become bored.

I adore technology, but recently I’ve tried to create a few more phone-free moments in my day. That way, rather than being sucked into my timeline, I can pause to consider how I actually feel about the issues of the day. Such as, for example, which historical era I’d most like to live in.

Having thought about it more, I’d still definitely choose Right Now.

HAVING A (SNOW) BALL

These adorable animals are experiencing snow for the very first time:

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Films

BY EVA MACKEVIC

■ COMEDY: THE SQUARE When it comes to gobsmackingly good sceneper-film ratio, director Ruben Östlund’s latest blows all competition out of the water. Every other scene in this wildly uninhibited comedy-drama will make you gasp, squirm or squint in delightful bolts of shock. The Square revolves around art gallery director Christian (Claes Bang), who, after getting his mobile phone stolen, endures a series of bizarre and humiliating events. Crossing his path are the awkward journalist Anne (Elisabeth Moss), the pretentious artist Julian (Dominic West) and a whole ensemble of wacky supporting characters. It’s a witty, self-aware piece of cinema that deftly juggles issues big and small (from societal boundaries to used condoms) with cool-headed poise and elegance.

■ THRILLER: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE A troubled hired gun sets out to save the young daughter of a politician from prostitution, putting his own life and family in danger. Joaquin Phoenix is at his best as the emotionally desensitised, mumbling contract killer, swinging hammers and knives in this stylistically ambitious and gutchurningly violent thriller that wowed critics at the Cannes Film Festival.

Movie of the Month

■ ACTION: TOMB RAIDER Alicia Vikander steps into Angelina Jolie’s shoes as the adventurer-archaeologist Lara Croft in this iconic action reboot.

■ DRAMA: MARY MAGDALENE

Hollywood power couple Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix star as Mary Magdalene and Jesus of Nazareth in this grand biblical drama. Directed by Garth Davis (Lion), the film traces Mary Magdalene’s story from the moment she leaves her family in a small fishing village to follow Jesus and the Apostles to the moment of his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection in Jerusalem. Ambitious, slow-moving and sparse, it’s the perfect movie for spiritual, Eastertime contemplation.

■ HORROR: MOM AND DAD Fancy

seeing Nicolas Cage smash up a pool table in a Misfits T-shirt while singing the “Hokey Pokey” song? Of course you do! You’ll get this, plus lashings of bloody violence, hilarious slapstick and an appropriately driving soundtrack in this off-the-wall comedy-horror in the vein of Shaun of the Dead. When a mysterious mass hysteria causing parents to murder their children hits a sleepy US suburb, a teenage girl and her younger brother have to find a way to survive. Here’s Johnny!

On Your Radar: Wendy Stevens, medical secretary

WATCHING: Call the Midwife (BBC 1)

I really like this biographic memoir set in the Sixties, abundant in vintage memorabilia.

READING: My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella A warm-hearted and comic tale about the real life behind our perfect online feeds.

ONLINE: BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub I like to catch up on my favourite programmes and try some new ones. I also like to view missed films.

LISTENING: Radio 2

I really enjoy listening to Dermott O’Leary’s show, and Graham Norton on Saturday morning.

Fancy appearing in this section? Send your current cultural favourites, along with short descriptions, to readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

Fancy appearing in this section? Send your current cultural favourites, along with short descriptions, to readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

Music

BY EVA MACKEVIC

The Gershwin Moment

by Kirill Gerstein

Album of the Month

Few classical works boast an opening as memorable as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. A duo of a mischievous clarinet followed closely by a pacy piano, it’s an impish and animated interplay reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy skit. The essentially jazzy, haphazard patterns intersect here with Straussian waltzes by way of freewheeling harmonies and tempos—a glorious farrago on par with the internal soundtrack of a madman. The fusion of jazz and classical music was Gershwin’s calling card and both the Rhapsody and the Concerto in F included on this album are a great reminder of how innovative, electrifying but also divisive this combination was at the time.

On Our Radar

Picasso 1932—Love, Fame, Tragedy; Tate Modern, March 8-September 9. An exploration of an intensely creative period in the life of the 20th century’s most influential artist. Visit tate.org.uk for details.

The superb pianist Kirill Gerstein performs these works with joie de vivre and discerning intelligence. In a loosely structured context, where so much is left to interpretation, his pianism is as comfortable and assured taking the spotlight as it is moving aside and letting the orchestra shine when it’s needed.

LIKE THIS? YOU MAY ALSO LIKE... Masterpieces by Ellington by Duke Ellington This blissfully atmospheric throwback to 1950s New York is jazz heaven: mellow piano chords, a sumptuous build-up and horns doing things you didn’t know they were capable of! After-midnight listening recommended.

Words by the Water Festival, Cumbria, March 9-18. Release your inner wordsmith on the banks of beautiful Derwentwater. Visit theatrebythelake.com for details.

40 Years of Disco, nationwide, March 15-18. Shake your hips and stamp your feet to disco legends Sister Sledge, Boney M and many others. Visit tdpromo.com for details..

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Princess and the Cheetah The

Princess Michael of Kent chats to Fiona Hicks about a little-known period of her adolescence—and how it continues to influence her life

Today she lives in the cloistered environs of Kensington Palace, but few know that as a teenager, Princess Michael of Kent spent many formative months on a working farm in Mozambique. This period of her life, and her extraordinary experience of raising an orphaned cheetah cub, are the topic of Her Royal Highness’ latest book, A Cheetah’s Tale.

“I didn’t have a lot of experience at that age,” she explains. “All I really knew was school and what I’d read in books. I was young and new and found everything quite strange, being in Africa. It was a fantasy land:

the vistas and colours were so different to what I knew—and the shrieking monkeys.”

The Princess, who has also authored three history books and historical novels, found reliving the period emotional. “My previous six books took me five years each to research and write,” she explains. “This book flowed out of my memory and it made me cry remembering the end and how I felt at the time.”

The end she speaks of is the moment she had to say goodbye to her beloved cheetah, Tess (more on that later), but the period was also special because it was then that she got to know her father, Baron Günther Hubertus von Reibnitz.

Africa was a fantasy land: the vistas and colours were so different to what I knew

“I didn’t know him at all,” she reveals. “I was born in 1945, and he went to Mozambique in the late Forties.” The Princess remained with her mother and brother, moving from Bohemia to Australia for a period. Her mother had put off sending her to visit her father in Africa, for fear that she wouldn’t want to come back (“Once I came to know something of the magic of that continent…I understood how right my mother had been,” she writes in the book). She finally visited for a long stay after finishing school.

“I have a vague, hazy memory of my father from my early childhood— as someone who was genial and benign and generous—but my connection to him was through paper. There were a lot of photographs and letters passed between us, so I knew him in that sense, though you can project whatever image you like in your letters. But I didn’t feel the absence of him. I had a stepfather, a brother and a wonderful uncle.”

Nevertheless, the process of getting to know him when she was a teenager was, she says, “Fascinating. He was a hands-on farmer, but in the evenings we would play cards, or he’d reminisce about his early youth. He was a lot older and he’d had a rather interesting life. He was a raconteur; I loved sitting and listening, enthralled, to pre-First World War stories.”

The reality of life on the Mozambique farm was certainly far from the luxury and protection she’s known as a Royal. She was appointed a “guardian” to keep the snakes away from her, and at one point she even narrowly missed being eaten by a lion.

“It was my first safari and I was alone with my father. Somehow my tent had been forgotten at the farm,

I woke to a loud bang, and jerked upright to see my father… with his rifle.

Below the trailer I then saw the body of a lioness

waking up to feed her and her days playing with her—interspersed only by reading her stepmother’s Encyclopaedia Britannica to learn all she could about the species.

and a bed had been rigged up in the trailer and covered by a mosquito net. I was content and settled down gazing at the stars but had difficulty sleeping due to the constant coughing coming from the direction of my father’s tent.

“I woke to a loud bang, and jerked upright to see my father on one knee with his rifle aiming in my direction. Below the trailer I then saw the body of a lioness, an old lady who had left her footprints on the high tyre of my trailer. I should have been an easy meal. It was the lioness who had ‘coughed’ all night wandering around me.”

OF ALL THE ANIMALS, though, the one that left the greatest impression was Vitesse, her cheetah cub, known by the nickname Tess. The Princess and her father rescued the tiny cub on discovering that her mother had been killed. Her Royal Highness, then Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, was immediately devoted to the cub, spending her nights

“I was very confident, surprisingly. I had no idea that this tiny little thing was unlikely to survive, and that it was a miracle that it did. Only afterwards was I told how everybody was sure it would die and they would have to deal with my heartbroken self.”

But survive she did, remaining utterly loyal to her human mother. “People who saw me at the time would say, ‘Oh gosh, aren’t you afraid of her? Look at those teeth!’ But it didn’t occur to me at all to be afraid of her. If you know an animal, you know how they’re going to react. When she grew into a strong, capable hunter, she still obeyed and remained her loving self. And she was so funny!”

Their bond, however, was always overshadowed by the knowledge that they would have to be separated.

“My father repeated and repeated that animals go back into the wild. His word was law and I would never have dared disobey—and also, I knew he was right. I wasn’t going to spend the next 12 years or so with a cheetah on his farm in Mozambique!

No, no, no. At 18 I was looking forward to balls

With Laurie Marker at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia.

The animalloving Princess poses with a king cheetah, born within a litter of four orphaned cubs and dancing and travelling.”

The moment that Tess was released back into the wild was “brutal” but, in a funny way, it set the Princess up for the challenges of motherhood that would come 17 years later.

“I put off thinking of the moment and when it really happened, I couldn’t stay there any longer. Even when I was sent away to other parts of Africa to get a feeling of how it was, I lived what I was doing, and didn’t hanker after anything else.

“I’ve always done that in my life so as not to be unhappy. I shut away something that I don’t want to think about because it’s not convenient at that time—otherwise you spend your life being sad about the children going to school, for example. No mother likes her babies going to school for the first time because you miss them. It’s a terrible thing for a mother to have to send her child to boarding school, I

think. But there it was, that’s the way it is—so you shut it out and think of the next time they’re coming home.”

DESPITE HER HAPPY TIME there, the Princess has not returned to Mozambique for many years.

“I don’t really want to go,” she admits. “The civil war was a dreadful time there. The farm was on the

© CHRISTO SCHREIBER

main road between what was Rhodesia and the coast, and so that’s where a lot of the action was, because the road had to be kept clear for export to the sea. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that—you don’t want to be in the middle of a war zone. I just want to keep my memories as they were; I don’t want to go back to the place where I’ve been very happy if I know it’s changed a great deal.”

What hasn’t changed, however, is her devotion to cheetahs.

Bottle-feeding a tiny orphaned cub, just as she fed baby Tess long ago

“It was the current plight of the cheetah that persuaded me to write the story of my experience, and draw attention to the dilemma of this glorious animal,” she explains. This dilemma is twofold: first, that the natural habitat of cheetahs is gradually being destroyed by man and second, that more and more of these creatures are now kept as pets. “I have seen these in domestic situations in the Middle East, their

The goal of saving animals in the wild depends on man. We must try to save as many as we can

claws removed and often their canine teeth. A cheetah is a wild animal and should be allowed to live well in the wild.”

It’s this sentiment that propelled her to say goodbye to Tess, and that drives her in her wildlife conservation work today. “My husband and I are the heads of 117 charities, including the animal ones, and that keeps us occupied. The goal of saving animals in the wild depends on man and although I’m not entirely confident of success, I believe we must try to save as many of the world’s species as we can.”

One animal who did survive was Tess. The Princess was reunited with her just once after her release—and she had two of her own cubs in tow.

“To see ‘my little family’ looking strong and healthy,” the Princess writes in A Cheetah’s Tale, “overwhelmed me with a sense of happiness that I will keep close to me forever.”

A Cheetah’s Tale by Princess Michael of Kent (£20, Bradt) is available now.

© JOHN SWANNELL

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“I REMEMBER” Bob Harris

Co-founder of Time Out magazine and long-time BBC radio host Bob Harris, 71, has filled the airwaves with his mellifluous voice since 1970

Bob Harris on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 1977; (bottom left) Bob with family

MelodyMaker described me as Whispering Bob. That’s stuck with me ever since

© KEVIN NIXON/CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

…LISTENING TO THE RADIO WITH MY MOTHER. It was from her I inherited my love of music. My dad was Welsh and always singing around the house, so really I was enthused by the pair of them.

…MAKING A PACT WITH MY DAD WHEN I DROPPED OUT OF SIXTH FORM. He was a policeman in Northampton, where we lived, and he wanted me to follow him into the Force. But I had ambitions for a music career in London, so we agreed I’d join the Cadets for 18 months and if, at the end of it, I was still set on music, he’d back me all the way. At the end, aged 19, I was still itching for London. So my dad said “I’m 100 per cent behind you,” and was for the rest of his life.

…DAD ARRESTED MY FUTURE WIFE. Sue was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. There was this sit-down protest that brought the centre of Northampton to a halt. My dad was the arresting officer and it so happened the person he picked up and put in the van was Sue. Neither of us made the connection, but the first time I took her home, they both stood looking at each other. A very awkward moment.

Bob’s mum with broadcaster

David Jacobs

…MOVING TO LONDON WAS A MASSIVE CULTURE SHOCK. Sue and I moved there in 1967 and London was vibrant at that moment with bands like The Rolling Stones and The Who, the fashion of Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, and the counter culture of book and record shops. I grew my hair long and embraced the whole hippy scene.

…PUTTING TOGETHER THE EARLY ISSUES OF TIME OUT MAGAZINE IN 1968. I’d realised the way into music was through journalism and met Tony Elliott, editor of Unit, a contemporary arts magazine. He had the idea of what

was supposed to be a one-off tourist guide to underground London. I remember helping to put together the first one with Sue on the kitchen table of our flat.

…BECOMING FRIENDS WITH JOHN PEEL. Listening to him presenting on the radio had convinced me I could be a DJ. One of my first Unit interviews was with him, and then he had me on his programme to talk about Time Out. He was the force behind bringing me to the attention of Radio 1 producers and doing a pilot show which led to me to taking over Sounds of the Seventies in August 1970.

With good friend, John Peel, in 1993

…GETTING A BUZZ WHEN I WALKED INTO BBC BROADCASTING HOUSE. I still do. I’ve got a studio at the bottom of my garden but I still love the feeling of driving into London and crossing the threshold of Wogan House, as it’s now called. I do my radio shows live

as much as possible. It brings a different edge. You’re totally exposed and, of course, these days there’s the immediacy of feedback on social media while the programme is on air.

…BEING VERY NERVOUS WHEN I FIRST PRESENTED THE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST (OGWT) . Whereas I’ve always felt at ease on the radio, I’d never done any TV before, so I was learning the job in front of millions of people. I felt intimidated by the camera to begin with, making my presenting style very low-key.

Bob onstage at C2C; (below left) posing with his wife, Trudie; (below right) Interviewing Van Morrison for The Old Grey Whistle Test

Not long after I’d started, Melody Maker described me as Whispering Bob. That’s stuck with me ever since.

...BEING PROUD OF THE RANGE OF MUSICIANS WE HAD ON THE SHOW. Because we had no substantial budget, we were free to experiment. Many American bands who’d never been seen in the UK made their first showing on Whistle Test. People like Bonnie Raitt and

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Probably best of the lot were Bob Marley and The Wailers, ridiculously good and creating such an atmosphere in the studio. They were totally stoned.

…CONFIRMING KEITH RICHARDS’S MYTHICAL DRINKING PROWESS. Keith arrived in the studio one day smoking and swigging a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whisky. It was half empty by the time the interview started, and by the end the entire bottle was empty, yet Keith seemed completely unaffected.

…SUCCESS WENT TO MY HEAD AND LED TO THE BREAK-UP OF MY

FIRST MARRIAGE. OGWT was the focus of everything that was rock in Britain, but by 1976 it was also the focus of everything that punk and new wave music hated, and I became the coconut on the shy. I was a magnet for aggression, which I could hardly believe was directed at me with such venom. Sue was at home with our two daughters and thought the music business was shallow, whereas I was getting carried away on the hot air of success. We broke up in 1976, but we’re still friends, and now we reminisce about those tumultuous times.

…THE EIGHTIES, PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, WERE MY WILDERNESS YEARS.

My last national TV appearance was presenting Blondie on OGWT on New Years’ Eve 1979, and the first regular programme for the BBC after

that was when I came back on Radio 1 in January 1990. So almost to the day that I disappeared in the 1980s.

…HAVING AN OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE.

I became very ill in 1978, a combination of a hectic lifestyle and contracting Legionnaire’s Disease. I was rushed to hospital to undergo three lumbar punctures, an incredibly painful experience. In the middle of it I was aware of being up at some indeterminate height looking down on all these people below working on me.

I remember seeing a tunnel of light and feeling that everything was going to be OK. I didn’t have any worries about dying after that, but I did have huge fears about the danger of getting ill again.

…MEETING TRUDIE COINCIDED

WITH AN UPTURN

IN

MY FORTUNES. I met her through a friend of my second wife, Val Scott.

Bob posing with wife Trudie and his children Charlie and Miles after receiving his OBE

Val’s a TV chef and writer. We’d married in the 1980s but our careers had gone in different directions and our marriage was already breaking up by the time Trudie and I started seeing each other. It coincided with Stuart Grundy inviting me back onto the BBC Radio network. Trudie and I have been married over 25 years now, and we run the Whispering Bob Broadcasting Company. Trudie produces the UK Americana Music Awards, and our son Miles puts together the Under The Apple Tree live music sessions which you can also see on our website.

…BEING AMAZED WHEN RADIO 2 OFFERED ME THE CHANCE TO PRESENT THE BOB HARRIS COUNTRY SHOW.

At the time I doubted I had the knowledge, but gradually I realised country music was what I’d been working towards all my life. When you trace it back the earliest records I bought—the likes of Buddy Holly,

Duane Eddy, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley—all came out of country.

…PRESENTING COUNTRY TO COUNTRY FOR THE FIRST TIME.

When I first went to Nashville it was quite insular, but the success of artists such as Taylor Swift have drawn in new fans. Then you began to get British artists like The Shires making their own credible version of country. So while C2C started with the idea of bringing Nashville to London, it’s grown bigger each year, with various pop-up stages at the O2 and off-shoots in Glasgow, Dublin and in Europe. It’s a demonstration of the strength and energy of country music today.

As told to Jack Watkins

For more details of this year’s Country to Country festival and to buy tickets, visit c2c-countytocountry.com. The Bob Harris Country Show airs on Radio 2 every Thursday from 7pm.

UDDERLY INSEPARABLE

Research undertaken by Northampton University in 2016 has proven that cows have best friends. The study found that, when paired with their best bovine buddy, a cow’s heart rate and stress levels were significantly lower than when paired with a cow stranger. Another study by the University of Bristol in 2014 also proved that having friends makes cows smarter. How moo-ving!

SOURCE: BARNSANCTUARY.ORG

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Create Your Own Autobiography

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LifeBook Autobiography

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With 18 hours of face-to-face interviews focused on your life, our LifeBook ghostwriter has plenty of material to work with. We send you regular drafts as the book is developed to ensure your voice is captured. The completed LifeBook is printed, and hand-bound into ten beautiful books with a linen finish and personalised cover.

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How the strange new science of “suspended animation” will save lives

BY RENE EBERSOLE FROM POPULAR SCIENCE

BACK FROM THE DEAD

ONE AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY 2011, American Kelly Dwyer strapped on snowshoes and set out to hike a beaver pond trail near her home in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Hours later, the 46-year-old teacher hadn’t returned home. Her husband, David, was worried. Grabbing his phone and a torch, he told their two daughters he was going to look for Mum. As he made his way towards the pond, he called out for Kelly. That’s when he heard the moans. Running towards them, David phoned Laura, 14, and told her to call 911. His torch beam soon settled on Kelly, submerged up to her chest

in a hole in the ice. As David clutched her from behind to keep her head above water, Kelly slumped into unconsciousness. By the time rescue crews arrived, her body temperature was in the 20s°C. Before she could reach the ambulance, her heart stopped. The crews attempted CPR—a process doctors continued for three hours at a hospital nearby. They warmed her frigid body.

IMPROVEMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY MEAN THAT THE ODDS OF COMING BACK FROM DEATH ARE GETTING BETTER

Nothing. Even defibrillation wouldn’t restart her heart. David assumed he’d lost her for good.

But Kelly’s life wasn’t over. A doctor rushed her to the nearby Catholic Medical Center, where a new team hooked her up to a cardiac bypass machine that more aggressively warmed, filtered and oxygenated her blood, and rapidly circulated it through her body. Finally Kelly’s temperature crept back up. After she’d spent five hours medically dead, doctors turned off the machine and her heart began beating again.

Incredibly, Kelly Dwyer walked out of the hospital just two weeks later with only minor nerve damage to her hands.

Bringing people back from the “dead” isn’t science fiction any more. Typically, after just minutes without a heartbeat, brain cells start dying and an irreversible, lethal process is set in motion. But when a person becomes severely cold before their heart quits, their metabolism slows. The body sips so little oxygen that it can remain in a suspended state for hours without permanent cell damage.

Thanks to improvements in technology (like the cardiac bypass machine that saved Kelly’s life) the odds are getting better for coming back from the edge. They’re so good, in fact, that a handful of scientists and medical experts across the United States are now looking for ways to suspend life in order to perform surgeries without the threat of a trauma patient bleeding to death, or to prevent tissue damage during the treatment of cardiac events.

The US Department of Defence is also heavily involved. In 2010, it launched a $34m initiative called Biochronicity. Ninety per cent of war casualties result from bleeding out on the battlefield.

“We’re trying to decrease the person’s demand for blood so, for a period of time, they actually don’t need blood flowing,” explains Colonel Matthew Martin, a 49-year-old trauma

surgeon whose research is funded through Biochronicity. The purpose would be making a wounded soldier able to survive longer “so that we can get somewhere to treat the injury,” says the activeduty surgeon.

DR. MARK ROTH’S OFFICE

at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle is crammed with boxes of newspaper clippings about people who came back from the “dead.” There’s a skier in Norway, a toddler in Saskatchewan, two fishermen who capsized in the Gulf of Alaska—all of whom had flatlined in the freezing cold.

“I’ve been a student of these cases for 20 years,”

Dr. Roth tells me. At 60, he’s widely recognised as a pioneer in the pursuit of using suspended animation in trauma treatment.

After falling through the ice while snowshoeing, Kelly Dwyer was “medically” dead for five hours before doctors got her heart beating again.

Hunched over a microscope, he invited me to take a look at a petri dish bustling with tiny, hours-old zebra fish. “Because they’re transparent, you can see their hearts beating and the blood moving about the tail,” he says. “This is the core of our own animation—the heart and blood flow. We’re going to take away the oxygen and alter their animation.”

Dr. Roth began piping nitrogen

into a transparent box containing the petri dish. “In time the whole system in there will become straight-up nitrogen, which will get to these creatures and turn them off,” he explains. “In the morning, we’ll put them back into the room air, and they’ll reanimate.”

Then he prepped a similar experiment. Taking two petri dishes of nematodes at precisely the same stage

PHOTO COURTESY KELLY DWYER

Dr. Mark Roth used hours-old zebra fish to prove his theory.

watching a television documentary featuring a cave in Mexico that caused cavers to pass out because of an invisible hydrogen-sulfide gas.

of development, he placed one dish in his nitrogen box and left the other on a lab bench. His hypothesis? The gassed worms’ metabolism should gradually slow until they’re essentially suspended in time, while the fresh-air siblings should keep getting bigger. Because nematodes grow quickly, his theory would be proved or disproved by tomorrow.

Up until the early 2000s, Dr. Roth’s experiments were confined to tiny creatures. Then one night he was

“If you breathe too much of it, you collapse—you appear dead,” says Dr. Roth. “But if you’re brought out from the cave, you can be reanimated without harm. I thought, Wow! I have to get some of this!

After exposing mice to 80 parts per million of that gas at room temperature, he found he could induce a suspended state that could later be reversed by returning the mice to regular air, with no neurological harm. For Dr. Roth, it was a breakthrough. The medical community immediately took notice, seeing his work’s potential. A $500,000 “genius grant” from a philanthropic foundation followed soon after.

Since then Dr. Roth has identified four compounds (sulfur, bromine, iodine and selenium) that he now calls “elemental reducing agents,” or ERAs. These naturally exist in small amounts in humans and can slow a body’s oxygen use.

Dr. Roth wants to develop an ERA as an injectable drug that can, for one, prevent tissue damage that can occur after doctors halt a heart attack. This happens when normal blood flow resumes; the sudden rush of oxygen can permanently damage heart cells, leading to chronic heart disease (the leading cause of death in the world).

Roth’s current research in pigs shows that if he injects an ERA before the blockage is removed, it’s possible to keep the heart muscle from being destroyed. Human trials on heart-attack patients are already underway, and Dr. Roth says ERAs could one day be used for a range of medical conditions, including organ and limb transplants.

DR. SAM TISHERMAN HATES the phrase “suspended animation.” As director of the Center for Critical Care and Trauma Education at University of Maryland’s School of Medicine in Baltimore, he prefers “emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR).”

“We want to preserve the person long enough to stop the bleeding and resuscitate him.”

Unlike Dr. Roth’s method, Dr.

Tisherman’s approach is to cool patients into a hypothermic state. To do that, he replaces blood with extremely cold saline solution, quickly reducing the patient’s core temperature to a frigid ten to 12°C.

INDUCING A HYPOTHERMIC STATE COULD BUY SUGEONS AS MUCH AS AN HOUR

Routine care for trauma victims with injuries such as gunshot wounds typically involves inserting a breathing tube, and then using intravenous catheters to replace fluids and blood while a surgeon attempts to repair the damage before the patient’s heart fails. “It’s a race against time,” Dr. Tisherman says, “and only five per cent of people in cardiac arrest from trauma survive.”

Inducing a hypothermic state could buy surgeons as much as an hour to operate. Dr. Tisherman and his colleagues have spent more than two decades perfecting their procedure in animals. In 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration gave them the go-ahead for the first human trials.

After four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan Col. Matthew Martin was trying to achieve the same results as Dr. Tisherman—without extensive equipment that would be impossible to bring to the front lines. That means

“The goal is to create ‘hip-pocket therapy’, ” he says, “where a medic could whip out a syringe for a severely injured soldier, inject it and start the process of suspended animation, giving the soldier more time to get to a surgical facility.”

blood flow to the heart becomes inadequate—can slow down the metabolism without the risk of harming the animal.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SEATTLE,

Dr. Roth is also hoping the answer lies within an injectable drug.

He and his colleagues have identified a series of enzymes known as PI 3-kinase, which helps regulate metabolism. They also found a drug that controls the activity of those enzymes and is already in clinical trials as a potential cancer treatment. After examining the effects of the drug on pigs, Martin’s early data suggests that administering it at the moment of ischemia—when

A day after putting his nematodes to sleep, the worms that spent the night in the nitrogen chamber hadn’t grown but were easily brought back to life when exposed to fresh air. The ones left out on the table had grown noticeably larger. Soon they would have babies of their own.

It’s a far cry from saving a human trauma patient. But witnessing those tiny worms “resurrected,” I felt I’d just seen a glimpse of the future. using chemicals—not cold—to slow the body’s clock.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

These poor people are definitely having a worse day than you:

SOURCE: SADANDUSELESS.COM

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Mother Nature

BY SUSANNAH HICKLING

Susannah is twice winner of the Guild of Health Writers

Best Consumer Magazine Health Feature

ON MOTHER’S DAY we celebrate the love and generosity lavished on us by our mums. But sometimes they give us more than we bargained for:

MIGRAINES It’s thought that you’ll have at least double the chance of suffering from the mother of all headaches if your mum suffered from them too. If you’re affected, try to identify your triggers, such as coffee, red wine or chocolate, and avoid them.

BREAST CANCER Most inherited breast cancer is caused by faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, giving women a much higher risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer, and at a younger age. But—and this is important—it can also be passed down from your father’s side of the family. It’s therefore equally important to seek medical advice at an early stage about your risk if you have a significant family history of these diseases on either side.

WRINKLES It seems that our mothers’ mitochondrial DNA— mitochondria are the energy centres of our cells—influences our own tendency to age. On the up side, if your mum managed to keep her youthful glow into her later years, the chances are you will too. But your lifestyle—diet, weight and

fitness—also plays an important part in how good you look.

OBESITY More than one study has found an association between overweight mothers and overweight offspring. In one case, the research found a link between mother-daughter obesity and father-son obesity, but no correlation across different genders. However, nurture as well as nature will determine whether you pile on the pounds or not. Make sure you eat healthily and stay active.

INTELLIGENCE Now, this is something that most of us are happy to inherit from mum. In fact, in one study of 12,686 young people in Glasgow over eight years, researchers found that the best predictor of intelligence was the IQ of the mother. So there’s another reason to say, “Thank you, Mum!”

LIGHT SLEEPER?

The clocks are springing forward again, which means the mornings will start to become lighter. Light can set or interrupt your circadian rhythm, playing havoc with your sleep. Make bedtime better with these bright ideas:

■ Hang black-out blinds in your bedroom. They work for babies, and they’ll work for you.

■ Turn off gadgets at least 30 minutes before going to bed. Studies have shown that even small electronic devices can emit enough light to trick the brain and make you feel wide awake when you should be getting sleepy.

■ If you have an iPhone, turn on Night Shift. This setting replaces the phone’s blue rays with a warmer light that’s less likely to disrupt sleep.

■ Invest in a sunrise alarm clock, such as the Philips Wake-Up Light, which gradually increases the light in your bedroom as you approach your wake-up time. This prompts your brain to begin making the stress hormone adrenaline, which helps you wake up.

Don’t Stress Over Stress Incontinence

Ladies, have you ever leaked a bit when you’ve sneezed, coughed or laughed? If so, you could be one of the nearly 10 million women in the UK to suffer from stress incontinence.

WHY DOES IT HAPPEN? A weak or damaged pelvic floor (nerve tissue and muscles that run from the pubic bone to the base of the spine between your legs) is often the culprit. When it’s not strong enough to hold the pelvic organs in place, they can no longer support the urethra properly.

Pregnancy and childbirth are often to blame. Later, the menopause causes tissues to thin and muscles to weaken. Age, obesity and a chronic cough are other risk factors.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

A lot, is the answer. The best way is to perform Kegel—or pelvic floor— exercises. These work to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which you use to stop the flow of urine.

And it’s never too late to start. The muscles you need to train are the ones you would usually use to stop yourself having a pee when you’re desperate. Sit comfortably and contract these muscles for a count of ten and then relax for a count of ten. Repeat ten times, and perform the exercises three times a day. Don’t squeeze your stomach, buttock or thigh muscles at the same time. And make sure you carry on doing the exercises even when you think they’ve fixed the problem.

And there’s an added bonus to doing your pelvic floor exercises: they can improve women’s sex lives by increasing their sensitivity and making their orgasms stronger. What are you waiting for?

SPRING LEAN

Not only do you burn calories by doing housework, you can also build muscle. This is what an 11-stone person who’s cleaning actively for 30 minutes might expect to lose—and gain:

VACUUMING

Burns: 85 calories

Benefits: legs, glutes and core

MOVING BOXES

Burns: 170 calories

Benefits: biceps, triceps and chest

DUSTING

Burns: 51 calories

Benefits: shoulders, back, biceps, triceps

WINDOW CLEANING

Burns: 68 calories

Benefits: delts (muscles on the tops of the shoulders), shoulders and chest

6 Things You Should Know About DVT

1 A deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is a blood clot in a deep vein, usually in the leg.

2 Women are more likely to be referred to a specialist for a DVT, but men are more likely to actually be diagnosed with one.

3 If left untreated, a DVT can lead to a pulmonary embolism, where a piece of the blood clot travels to the lungs and blocks a blood vessel. This potentially fatal complication affects one in ten people with a DVT.

4 That’s why it’s important to be aware of the symptoms—swelling in the affected area, pain, tenderness, redness and warmth—and seek prompt treatment.

5 A DVT is more common when you’re over 40. Other risk factors are a family history and remaining inactive for long periods, for example after an operation or on a long journey.

6 If you’re travelling a long distance, make sure you drink plenty of water, take frequent breaks to walk around and, ideally, do some simple leg exercises.

Home-Grown Superfoods

BY FIONA HICKS

Fiona is a qualified nutritional therapist and member of the professional body BANT

THESE DAYS SUPERMARKET SHELVES are awash with chia seeds, goji berries, cacao nibs and many other exoticsounding foods. They promise good health—yet travel thousands of miles to get to your table. It’s easy to forget that we can grow nutrient-dense foods in our own back garden! Here are some of the best:

BLACKCURRANTS. These tiny berries are brimming with vitamin C. In fact, a 100g serving contains 300 per cent of your RDA, which is more than three times that of an orange. Vitamin C plays an important role in keeping your skin plump and your immune system firing—huge advantages

BEST IN SEASON: SPRING ONIONS

Why eat it? This vegetable, which is simply a white onion harvested early, is a good source of quercetin. This substance is a powerful anti-inflammatory and antihistamine, and helps your body fight seasonal allergies.

How to cook it? Choose the thinnest spring onions you can find and chop finely. These can be sprinkled over several dishes before serving, or folded into creamy mash potato for a fresh but comforting side dish.

that are worth the effort of looking after a blackcurrant bush. Once harvested, they can easily be stewed for a nice yogurt or porridge topping.

BROCCOLI. If you were only to eat one vegetable for the rest of your life, broccoli would be a good choice. As well as being rich in vitamin K, vitamin C and folate, it contains special compounds that help your liver to detoxify harmful substances (and, yes, that includes alcohol!). The best time to sow broccoli seeds is between March and June.

HORSERADISH. This pungent plant has a long association with health— records from the Middle Ages indicate both its root and leaves were used as a medicinal aid. The fresh root is as fiery as the ubiquitous horseradish condiments, but also sweeter. Grate and steep in a little hot water for a drink that’s bound to clear a blocked nose. It’s easy to grow, as it needs little attention and isn’t sensitive to cold.

CARROTS. These are stalwarts of British roast dinners for good reason. The humble orange root vegetable is a rich source of beta-carotene, a

compound that’s converted to vitamin A in your body. Vitamin A in turn contributes to normal vision— which is why your mother told you that carrots help you see in the dark! Sow in April and they’ll be ready three to four months later, and taste wonderful whether roasted or grated on a salad.

TOMATOES. Their deep red colour comes from a substance called lycopene, which has been associated with lowering cholesterol and supporting our cardiovascular systems. You don’t need a greenhouse either, as plants can be started off indoors by placing pots in a plastic bag and keeping them on the windowsill. Enjoy the fruits of your labour with some mozzarella, fresh basil and olive oil—delicious!

The Loneliest Condition

BY MAX PEMBERTON

Max is a hospital doctor, author and newspaper columnist

“WHAT’S WRONG?” I ASK. Matthew is about my age, with messy brown hair and the beginnings of a beard. While he comes across as a bit odd sometimes, he’s polite, well behaved; he sits in the TV room, he joins in the activities on the ward, talks to the other patients. “I’m lonely,” he replies. As a doctor, when I’m called to see a patient and I ask them what’s wrong, it’s usually something fairly straightforward. Even if it turns out to be a little complicated, there are always tests to order, scans to book; I can make some attempt to at least start sorting the problem out. It’s not always like that in psychiatry. Matthew has been acting a bit peculiar recently and the nursing staff are worried. On a psychiatry ward, there’s a high threshold for acting bizarrely, so when the nursing staff are worried, it’s time to act. He’s becoming withdrawn, spending more time in his room and crying in the night. I’d hoped that it was something medical, like an upset stomach. But instead he tells me that he’s lonely.

I KNOW HOW HE FEELS. I’ve been used to working in a team on a ward bustling with people, everyone rushing round. But it’s different here. Now that I’m a more senior doctor, it’s deemed appropriate to give me a whole ward to myself. The consultant psychiatrist I’m working under comes in every few days to check I’m surviving. The rest of the time I’m the only doctor on the ward. So, understandably, I’m finding the job rather lonely. Each ward has a doctor

working on it so, in theory, there are other doctors on site, but after security passes have been swiped, doors locked and unlocked, it’s not quite the same. I miss the camaraderie that comes with working on a ward with other doctors and the daily ward rounds. I suppose some consolation can be drawn from the fact that at least I’m not the only one feeling like this. I’m locked up with a lot of other lonely people. Matthew hasn’t got any friends. I try and suggest some things he could do when he’s discharged, clubs and groups he could join. But he shakes his head. He’s not stupid, he knows what other people his age do. He knows that other people his age aren’t hearing voices, or having to have medication injected into them to control their psychosis. What he needs is something that I can’t prescribe. I can’t conjure up a group of ready-made friends who’ll accept him for who he is: someone who plays football, who watches Celebrity Big Brother (no one’s perfect), enjoys going to concerts and who’s got schizophrenia.

MENTAL ILLNESS IS LONELY. It’s isolating and I’m not sure what, as a doctor, I can do about that. For people with severe, enduring mental illness it’s a life sentence. They don’t fit in, and people in the outside world don’t usually want to mix with people like them.

“What about the other people on the ward? Have you made friends with any of them?” I ask.

“They aren’t my age, and none of them are into the same things as me,” he replies.

“Will you be my friend?” he asks after some time. I really wanted to say yes, but I knew that more than it possibly being unprofessional, it would also be a lie. I’m not his friend because I’m his doctor. That therapeutic relationship works because to a greater or lesser extent the doctor is detached from the patient. He can tell what my answer is going to be, sighs and looks out of the window. “I wish I was normal,” he says. I want to tell him that sometimes feeling lonely is the most normal thing in the world.

MEDICAL CONDITIONS—EXPLAINED

Migraines

WHAT IS IT?

A migraine is a moderate to severe form of headache. Attacks tend to be recurrent and the pain is usually on one side of the head and described as throbbing. It’s commonly associated with other symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light or sound and sometimes visual disturbances.

WHAT CAUSES IT?

The exact cause of migraines is unknown, though they tend to run in families, so there might be a genetic component. It’s thought that there’s abnormal brain activity that affects the blood vessels in the brain although it’s not clear how or why this happens. Many people can identify certain triggers that bring a migraine on. This includes some foods, particularly with the additive tyramine, caffeine in drinks or chocolate as well as alcohol.

HOW’S IT TREATED?

There’s no cure for migraines, although there are treatments that can help. Many people find taking over-the-counter painkillers such as

paracetamol beneficial. It’s best to take these at the first sign of symptoms, rather than waiting for the migraine to come on fully. If painkillers aren’t enough, then a GP will sometimes prescribe a triptan.

WHAT CAN THE PATIENT DO?

Many patients find avoiding triggers the easiest way of managing their migraines. During an attack, most people find lying in a dark, quiet room helps. It’s also important to realise when you need to seek help immediately. Symptoms like paralysis or weakness down one side of the body could indicate that something else is happening, such as a stroke.

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Back to the Future

BY SUSANNAH HICKLING

AS YVES UBELMANN DODGES TRAFFIC ON PARIS’S Place de la Concorde it’s clear he’s a man on a mission. He’s heading to the iconic Grand Palais museum complex just off the Champs-Elysées, which is hosting the first exhibition to showcase the work of his company, Iconem, an innovative start-up that uses cutting-edge technology to bring the glory of the ancient world to life.

Ubelmann, 37, is an architect who specialises in the world’s ancient monuments, many of which are fast vanishing as a result of armed conflict, urban development and natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. His work takes him from Pompeii and Rome to Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, from

Oman to Haiti and back again to his homeland, France.

“Archaeology has always been a big interest of mine,” he says. “During my architecture studies and after I qualified, I visited many archaeological sites in different countries and I was shocked to see how quickly they were deteriorating.”

Ubelmann uses drones to take thousands of aerial photographs of historic sites under threat. He then applies computer algorithms that can take measurements from those images and transform them into ultra-precise 3D digital models, in a process known as photogrammetry.

These 3D models can then be used to make maps, provide an archive for the archaeologists and historians of the future and— crucially—reveal to the public the architectural wonders of the past.

immersive voyage into the heart of these often inaccessible sites,” says Jean-Luc Martinez, director of Paris’s Louvre museum, which collaborated on the exhibition.

UBELMANN IS ALSO A BUSINESSMAN, employing ten people who turn his images into photorealistic digital models on oversized computer screens in cramped offices in Paris’s traditionally arty Montparnasse area.

The Iconem images take visitors on an immersive voyage into the heart of these inaccessible sites

His Sites Éternels exhibition in Paris is a striking illustration of his work. The 360-degree floor-to-ceiling projections of reconstructed sites from the Middle East plunge visitors in a startlingly detailed world of temples and mosques, grand arches and Crusader castles.

“The images supplied by Iconem take visitors on an amazing

His family have had links to Montparnasse and to art and architecture for generations. At the end of the 19th century Ubelmann’s greatgreat-grandfather was a teacher of drawing in the very street where Iconem has its offices, while his grandfather was—like Yves—an architect who worked on the conservation of ancient monuments, including Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.

“From an early age I was steeped in a cultural bath that opened my eyes to historic monuments and to drawing,” says Ubelmann. “I draw often. I use it to enrich my understanding of architecture. It’s a family tradition!”

As a teenager, he volunteered on archaeological digs and, after qualifying as an architect in 2006, his

The Sites Éternels exhibition in Paris featured Iconem’s digitised 3D projections of Palmyra before its demolition by ISIS

work took him to Italy, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, studying ancient buildings and their settings.

It was in Afghanistan that he was really struck by what was happening to the country’s remarkable heritage. He saw that looting of ancient artefacts, coins, ceramics and sculptures was widespread. Elsewhere in the country, violent floods had carried off a 16th-century monument, while at an important Buddhist site mud walls were crumbling under the desert sun.

PHYSICAL RECONSTRUCTION

JUST wasn’t feasible in many of the countries he visited. “You can’t just block the growth of a town, you can’t provide a military guard for all the

sites—armies are often under attack— so looting is inevitable. And the authorities are often impoverished, and trying to deal with conflicts.

“The majority of governments in the countries where we’ve worked want to protect their heritage, but there’s a lack of funds, a lack of organisation.” Ubelmann also discovered that many sites weren’t even classified as historic monuments. Some were completely unknown. “It’s very worrying.”

He started to think about an alternative to rebuilding. “That alternative was to set up agreements to document sites digitally. We might have lost the sites, but we will have preserved their memory. This is very important, because often they

are sites that haven’t been studied. What astonished me, and what astonishes me today, is that there is no international programme of documentation.”

Unesco is able to focus only on the small percentage of archaeological remains that are classified as World Heritage Sites. Ubelmann, however, is also passionate about the hundreds of others. “These are the sites we need to protect the most. If we lose them, we lose all evidence of their history, of lives lived.

“I turned the problem over in my head for quite a while,” he continues. “And it was while looking for a means of documenting sites that I found two emerging techniques.”

In the late 2000s drones and photogrammetry were developing in parallel. A camera mounted on a drone could compress two months of laborious surveying using traditional methods into a few hours.

photographs to show how they had changed over time.

He teamed up with former helicopter pilot Philippe Barthélémy, who knew how to fly drones, and in 2010 they set off for Afghanistan to test the gadgetry at Mes Aynak, a spectacular 5,000-year-old Buddhist complex. It was packed with treasures, including hundreds of statues of Buddha, but was due to be destroyed so that copper reserves beneath the surface of the site could be exploited.

There was one problem. Mes Aynak had been an Al-Qaida training camp— home to Osama bin Laden. It was still mined

The race was on to document it before it disappeared for ever. There was just one big problem: Mes Aynak had once been an Al-Qaida training camp and home to Osama bin Laden. It was still mined.

Photogrammetry used software which could produce precise 3D models from as few as two images. Ubelmann believed he could combine these technologies to measure, map and recreate ancient sites with pinpoint accuracy. He could even introduce old

But with Philippe operating the drone and Yves controlling the camera from the ground, they surveyed the entire area in ten days without setting foot inside the complex. They were able to reconstruct it digitally with stunning accuracy.

THE SUCCESS OF THEIR FIRST EXPEDITION caught the attention of other countries trying to solve urgent conservation problems as well as attracting investors. Iconem was

Drone technology helped Ubelmann document Mes Aynak, an ancient Afghan site (right) in safety

launched in 2013 and in 2015 drone manufacturer Parrot invested €1.4m in the business.

Being a private company gives Iconem a flexibility not afforded by other conservationists, who are mostly government employees. When the international community suspended all cooperation with Syria, publicly employed archaeologists were no longer allowed to work there. But the ban didn’t extend to Ubelmann’s company.

As a result, he alone had access to some of Syria’s most important sites, including Palmyra, the once beautiful and wealthy city on the Silk Road that’s been largely destroyed by ISIS (Daesh) in recent years.

Ubelmann had been working in Syria since 2006 and knew the archaeologists, historians and

scientists well. When international funding and other conservation support dried up after the civil war began in 2011, he stayed in contact. “They felt abandoned,” he says.

“Before the crisis, archaeologists from all over the world would go there. Then, overnight, it changed: not a soul.”

Later ISIS looted and destroyed ancient sites and several experts were murdered, including the scholar who looked after Palmyra’s antiquities, Khaled al-Asaad.

Based on photographs Syrian archaeologists sent them, Ubelmann and his Iconem colleagues worked evenings and weekends making models until Yves was granted a visa in December 2015 to train local Syrian experts in photogrammetry.

“The archaeologists were very

moved that foreigners had come,” he says. “But we didn’t hesitate for a second. It was a human reflex to come to their aid.”

Then, towards the end of March last year, Ubelmann got a phone call tipping him off that Palmyra was about to be liberated from ISIS control. He quickly booked a flight to Syria and was able to see for himself the damage inflicted on treasures such as the famous 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel.

“I never thought I’d see something like that in my lifetime,” he says. “I was devastated.” But after looking more closely, he realised many of the building blocks and decorations

were intact. “They could probably be partially reassembled in the future.”

Iconem’s work would be vital to any future restoration. Ubelmann had four days to document the site. Based at Homs, he left at six every morning in a battered minibus with a group of Syrian experts to make the three-hour trip to Palmyra, encountering checkpoints along the desert road.

Landmines remained inside the site, so Ubelmann carried out his survey from the margins. The job was complicated and exhausting—but worth it. “We managed to digitise the entire site. That was a great victory.”

What makes their success all the

An ISIS photo shows the destruction of Palmyra in Syria with the moment it blew up the Temple of Baalshamin (above)

more significant is that a few months later ISIS returned to reoccupy Palmyra. Fortunately, they were driven out again in March this year.

Ubelmann hopes that one day the evidence of destruction he has collected will also be used to bring the perpetrators to justice.

IN IRAQ, TOO, ICONEM’S ABILITY to react quickly paid dividends. It was able to fly a drone 12 miles into territory controlled by ISIS in order to photograph the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud just days after ISIS had demolished the 2,600-year-old Temple of Nabu.

its work at Palmyra. Other projects are aiming to use crowd-sourced photos, open data and computer technology to “rebuild” in cyberspace the so-called Pearl of the Desert.

The Louvre’s Jean-Luc Martinez is convinced of the importance of Iconem’s work.

I’m working for the future, not the past. I’m documenting history that can be used by generations to come

Iconem’s images of Nimrud include a ziggurat, a huge squarebased tower built in terraces, which ISIS bulldozed shortly afterwards.

“We have the only 3D image of the Ziggurat in its original geometry,” explains Ubelmann. “If one day the Iraqi government or Unesco or someone else wants to restore it to its original topography, they will be able to do so on the basis of the work we have done.

“Palmyra and Nimrud demonstrate how useful it is to do this work very quickly. In both cases, if we hadn’t done it when we did, it would have been too late.” Iconem isn’t alone in

“Archaeologists have always documented sites,” he says.

“Technologies have multiplied and been used by archaeologists to capture as much data as possible and draw up a comprehensive record. Today, it’s the controlled alliance of two new technologies—the drone and an algorithm which treats the images collected—that allows Iconem to provide images that are precious to documentation.”

One thing is certain: the Syrian Heritage Project will be keeping Iconem busy for a long time to come. Ubelmann now wants to train more local archaeologists to use photogrammetry and help local people understand how precious their heritage is.

“I’m working for the future and not for the past,” he explains. “I’m documenting moments in history that can be used by generations to come.”

She ruled the British Empire for 63 years—a reign only surpassed by her great-great granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Author Terry Deary imagines what HRH Queen Victoria would decree if she still ruled the world…

If I Ruled the World Queen Victoria

The world would be united. If I ruled the world? Excuse me. I practically do. More than a quarter of the world’s population call me “Empress” and with a bit of a push, the other three-quarters could be mine. I always say that the sun never sets on the British Empire…Oh, very well, that phrase was dreamed up by a Scottish writer, John Wilson. But Mr Wilson won’t mind me borrowing it. Not if he values his sporran.

I’d hang ’em high. I’m loved, (nay adored), by my dear under classes. Yet, (it’s an oft-forgotten fact) there have been eight assassination attempts on my frail body. EIGHT! Why? Because, despite my insistence to the contrary, my police-plodding PM, Mr Peel, refused to have the perpetrators punished by hanging. I said the gallows would be a deterrent. He muttered about “making martyrs”. And then, THEN, that pompous (but popular) prattler Charles Dickens

campaigned against public hanging, and got his way. No noose is bad noose, I say.

English would be our universal language. If all the world spoke the same language, we’d understand one another better. I will command all those foreign chaps to speak English, especially those Americans. I love English (though I freely admit that I’m fond of a little German, as I used to say to my darling Albert). English, I shall decree, will be the lingua franca of the world and it will be de rigueur.

We’d all appreciate Bonnie Scotland as much as I do. I love my Scottish castles. I adore Balmoral— though Blair is no longer cool in Britannia. Sadly, the poor fisher-folk struggle to survive on their loaves and fishes. Herring with “neaps and tatties”, as they so quaintly call them. I shall proclaim “Let them eat Sturgeon”. Or a nice fat Salmon perhaps?

I’d ensure history never forgets me. I have ruled longer than any monarch before me. I’m 81 and no king or queen will ever pass my record, even if they live to 91. The Prince of Wales often jokes, “I don’t mind praying to the eternal Father but I must be the only man afflicted with an eternal mother.” Such a wit. He takes after me. The eternal mother, ruler of the world, a fitting epitaph. My memory will live on in statues and streets,

museums, cities and railway stations. But no East-End pubs, please.

I’d champion women’s lib. Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. When I rule the world there will be more women at the top…well near the top, but below me. Obviously. I will start by giving certain women— women of property and good breeding—the vote. A woman may even become an MP—a Memberess of Parliament. Of course, a woman Prime Minister is a distant dream, but one day she May.

A European Community would be an excellent idea. They call me the grandmother of Europe. So many of my babies sit on the thrones of the great Euro dynasties. What would be more natural than we should all share a special bond—a sort of European Union? Naturally it will be based over the Channel, so we don’t have to actually play host, but we’ll have a common purpose: to make the Empire great. My dear Kaiser Wilhelm in Prussia will be our strongest ally. Our united armies will be unbeatable. I’ll suggest they play at war like children in the nursery (with me as their nanny to make sure no one gets hurt.) Peace in our time. As told to Caroline Hutton

Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories: 25th Anniversary Yearbook (published by Scholastic) is out now.

A helping hand to EARLY RETIREMENT

ll health, redundancy, job dissatisfaction or wanting a better quality of life are just some reasons people decide—or are forced—to take early retirement. If you find yourself in this position, but don’t have savings to carry you through until you start receiving your pension, here are some suggestions:

Ill health pension

Some schemes allow you to take some of your pension benefits early if you need to retire due to ill health. You may also be entitled to some benefits—such as the disability living allowance or attendance allowance—to help you with personal care.

Cut costs

Check if you could get your utilities or insurance products cheaper elsewhere. Get rid of your car if you don’t really need it. Have a landline and a mobile phone? Do you really need both? Cancel unnecessary subscriptions or memberships. Downgrade your TV package. It all adds up.

Downsize or relocate

Selling your property and downsizing or relocating to a cheaper area could release a large amount of equity as well as reduce your monthly bills. If circumstances mean you need to retire quickly Reader’s Digest Property can buy your house for cash in under two weeks—or a timescale chosen by you—with no chain and no fees.

BRUTALIST Britain

brutalistWhilesomecalltheconcretecreationsofthemovementaneyesore,othersfindastrange beautyintheirblock-likeforms…

BY ANNA WALKER

BEST OF British

National Theatre LONDON

The word “brutalism” derives from the French phrase beton brute, meaning “raw concrete”, and that’s certainly in abundance at London’s National Theatre.

Prince Charles once famously described the architecture of the National Theatre as “a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting”.

Despite its divisive appearance, the theatre continues to draw admirers from all corners of the globe. When the Queen first opened the building to the public in 1976, architectural writer Mark Girouard commented on its remarkable “aesthetic of broken forms.”

Perched on the South Bank of the Thames, the edifice was based on architect Denys Lasdun’s conception of architecture as an urban landscape.

Talking to then theatre director Peter Hall, Lasdun described concrete as, “a very beautiful material when used in the way its own nature intends it to be used.”

■ Visit nationaltheatre.org.uk for more information

BAILEY-COOPER PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

New Street Signal Box

BIRMINGHAM

Home to the centre of Birmingham rail operations, this Grade II listed building is nothing more than a signal box, and yet it’s caused controversy since it was first erected.

Looking more like a bunker from the outside, the structure is true to the brutalist insistence on functionality over style.

Says Emma Gray, director of marketing and communications at Visit Birmingham, “The range of architecture in Birmingham—contrasting both old and new—has created a unique landscape, attracting record numbers of tourists to the city.”

The signal box is practical, honest and strikingly utilitarian; a fitting design for the infrastructure systems tasked with serving the busiest interchange in the United Kingdom.

Despite signal boxes increasingly becoming a bastion of the past, thanks to its listed status this one will continue its dutiful watch over Birmingham New Street Station for the forseeable future.

The University of East Anglia NORWICH

With its sharp corners, exposed, raw concrete and angular shapes, the buildings that comprise the 1960s-built University of East Anglia campus are a particularly lauded example of Brutalism.

So beloved by the students is the architecture here, that the campus newspaper is named Concrete.

Says UEA’s director of estates, Roger Bond, “The first Vice Chancellor of UEA gave the briefest of briefs for the campus design: ‘Urban buildings linked with walkways, a square and street, rather like a Renaissance hill town’.

“With this brief, the modernist architect Denys Lasdun masterplanned and designed the campus. The most memorable buildings are the Ziggurats, named for their step pyramid shape resembling ancient Mesopotamian structures and offering serene views of the manmade campus lake.”

■ Visit uea.ac.uk for more information

Preston Bus Station PRESTON

Few brutalist works have been met with as much controversy as the uncompromising Preston Bus Station, whose admirers sing its praises as ardently as its detractors voice their disgust.

Opened in 1969—the year that ended The Beatles and landed man on the moon—architect Keith Ingham claimed the design was intended to give ordinary people the sense of luxury that came with air travel, an indulgence few could then afford.

Says director of the Modernist Society, Jack Hale, “This is not just a good example of British Brutalism; Preston Bus Station is world class. With fine upturned ribs like the skeleton of a massive concrete fish, its elegance and scale is simply

breathtaking and the interior fixtures, signage and clocks are worthy of an international airport.”

Fans of the colossal building rejoiced in 2013 when the controversial structure was saved from demolition after a successful third attempt by dedicated societies, such as Save Preston Bus Station, to win it listed building status.

JOHN DAVIDSON PHOTO /ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

St Peter’s Seminary ARGYLL

By the time of this seminary’s completion in the 1960s, the number of applicants to holy office in the Catholic Church had significantly decreased, meaning there was never really a demand to meet its statuesque size.

Although it’s been derelict since the 1980s, its overgrown, ruinous state lends an otherworldly, ethereal beauty to the raw strength of St Peter’s concrete exterior.

Now reclaimed by graffiti artists as the ideal canvas for their colourful scribbles, keep an eye out for special events that allow unprecedented

access to the ruins, such as the NVA’s impressive light installation in 2016.

Says Diane Watters of Historic Environment Scotland, “St Peter’s Seminary is probably the most celebrated post-war building in Scotland today.”

It’s famous not only for the poetic qualities of its architecture, but also for its troubled short life as a functioning seminary and its abandonment, ruin and final salvage.”

■ Visit shop.scran.ac.uk/prod/ books/st-peter-cardross/121 for more information

Clifton Cathedral BRISTOL

The sculptural form of Bristol’s catholic Clifton Cathedral is unlike any other holy space.

Commissioned in 1965, it’s almost fortress-like in appearance and its simple design and stripped back décor (save for some stunning abstract stained glass) leaves worship and honesty at the heart of the church’s values.

The original brochure released to accompany the structure explained that, “Most informed Christians are well aware that the buildings we call churches are not strictly essential for Christianity. It’s the Christian himself who is the temple of the living God.”

Clifton’s altar is placed to one side, leaving the congregation sitting in a horseshoe formation that ensures

every churchgoer has a clear view of the service.

Mary Haddock of Building magazine praised the structure when it opened in 1974, claiming it offered the people of Bristol “a sermon in concrete.”

■ Visit cliftoncathedral.org for more information

Hollaway Wall MANCHESTER

“An easy-to-miss brutalist nugget, designed by artist Anthony Hollaway in 1966 and listed Grade II in 2011, the wall acts as sculpture and a sound buffer between the busy London Road and the University of Manchester,” explains Jack Hale.

“The weighty ramparts echo those of a medieval castle, and its stained and mossy concrete has aged and weathered beautifully.”

Explicitly brutalist, this wonder wall of concrete blocks out the noise of the dual carriageway to create a bubble of calm around

Manchester University’s Science and Technology campus.

The hidden gem unites immense practicality and brutalist design, and was created by Harry S Fairhurst and Anthony Holloway, the team later responsible for Manchester Cathedral’s beautiful stained glass windows.

What do you think of brutalism? Masterworks or eyesores? Email us and let us know at readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

© JACK HALE

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There’s no limit to what we can learn about the past from the discoveries of...

The SHIP WRECK Detectives

BY CHRIS MENON

AFTER DAYS OF SEARCHING THROUGH THE FREEZING, ROUGH NORTH SEA, Britain’s famous flagship HMS Hood finally chased down the German battleship Bismarck shortly after 6am on May 24, 1941.

During the brief engagement that followed, the veteran Royal Navy battlecruiser was hit three times by shells from the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The final salvo set off two catastrophic explosions on board HMS Hood, causing it to sink in less than a minute.

Ted Briggs, an 18-year-old Ordinary Signalman, was one of only three survivors along with Midshipman William Dundas, aged 17, and Able Seaman Bob Tilburn, 20.

Ted Briggs later described this historic tragedy in his memoir Flagship Hood: “I turned and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years. Both gun barrels of B turret were slumped hard over to port and disappearing fast beneath the waves. My experience of suction seconds before forced me to turn in sheer terror and swim as fast and as far as I could away from the last sight of the ship that had formulated my early years.”

Sixty years later the final resting place of HMS Hood was discovered by shipwreck detective David

Mearns, permitting Ted Briggs to place a memorial plaque on the sunken vessel.

In his latest book, The Shipwreck Hunter, David Mearns explains how it felt to discover this wreck: “It was such an emotional and sad moment for me, I didn’t feel like celebrating in any way. With other shipwrecks, I avoided connecting my emotions to the objective of the search, but Hood was different. In part it was because I’d grown so close to the veterans and families and, of course, to Ted.”

In total, Mearns has led the research and discovery of 24 major shipwrecks over the past 30 years. These ranged from the merchant vessel Lucona, which was deliberately sunk by a bomb in 1977 as part of

Ted Briggs

an insurance fraud, to those lost during the Second World War (HMS Hood, HMAS Sydney), as well as one of Vasco Da Gama’s armada, the Esmeralda, sunk in 1503.

Still, it’s the human dimension that really drives him. “Having been involved in so many shipwreck discoveries over the years my inspiration now comes from the human stories behind the loss of a ship. I am constantly inspired by the stories of the people who survived and the relatives who are still searching for loved ones.”

DESPITE THE VASTNESS of the oceans, technological advances in sonar and remotely operated vehicles have made the present era a golden one for discovering shipwrecks—an era that famously began with the discovery of the Titanic by Robert Ballard in September 1985.

The loss of HMS Hood was well documented, so with skilful research Mearns knew its rough location and the detailed circumstances behind its tragic loss. However, that isn’t the case with most shipwrecks. Unesco estimates that there are around 3 million shipwrecks, yet we only know the location of a small fraction and even fewer have been explored.

According to Serena Cant, Marine Information Officer at Historic England, there are around 45,000 documented wrecks for England alone, but only 7,000 are actual

THE MARY ROSE

Henry VIII’s flagship The Mary Rose sunk in 1545 in the Solent during a battle with the French. Many items from the wreck were raised by early pioneering divers John and Charles Deane in 1836, but the site was then lost again for another 100 years until being located in 1971 and raised in 1982. You can now visit it at The Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth.

Described as “England’s Pompeii,” this Tudor time capsule has revealed much about the sailors, their health and the artefacts they carried.

Of the 19,000 artefacts recovered, some of the most interesting objects relate to the guns found, as Dr Alexzandra Hildred, Head of Research & Curator of Ordnance and Human Remains at the Mary Rose Trust, explains: “We can now put names and physical characteristics to entire groups of guns, replicate them and understand their capabilities through experimental firing trials. It’s revolutionised our understanding of warfare at sea in the mid-16th century.”

archaeological sites that have been found. She estimates that, given the numbers lost in prehistoric and preliterate days, the actual number of wrecks that have ever happened is probably unquantifiable.

Of these, only 53 wreck sites (see map) around the UK have protected status under law due to their historic, archaeological or artistic importance. “It’s important we protect them to ensure their incredible heritage value is preserved for us and for future generations,” says Alison James, Maritime Archaeologist at Historic England.

PERSONAL POSSESSIONS ALWAYS REMIND US THAT PEOPLE IN THE PAST WERE THE SAME AS US

IN SUMMER 2017 James was involved with her most interesting wreck to date, a Dutch East India Company vessel the Rooswijk, that sunk in UK waters in 1740 while heading for Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) laden with trade goods. Items recovered provided fascinating insights, as she reveals: “One of the things that we have revealed this summer has been about the smuggled money on board the Rooswijk. Sailors were trying to make their personal fortunes by taking silver to the Dutch East Indies where they could sell it at vastly inflated prices. This really brings home the fact that the people on board these vessels were individuals living their lives as well as a part of the bigger story. Personal possessions always remind us that people in the past were the same as us—they had the same needs and family lives.”

THE STATE OF PRESERVATION

What such time capsules can reveal is remarkable. For example, James reveals that two separate Bronze Age wreck sites (at Langdon Bay and Moor Sands) have changed our knowledge of our trade with the continent at that time. As the weapons and other artefacts that were discovered are believed to have come from France, it indicates that 3,000 years ago trade with the continent was already of some importance to this island.

of a wreck generally depends on the local topography and environmental conditions. Fortunately, a maritime archeology project centred on the Black Sea that began in 2015 has discovered 60 well-preserved ships going back 2,500 years.

Professor Jon Adams, founding director of the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Principle Investigator on the Black Sea Maritime Archeology Project, comments: “For the first time ever we

found complete Greek and Roman merchant ships; even their masts and rigging was in place. They were astonishingly well preserved due to the anoxic conditions (absence of oxygen) of the Black Sea below 500ft.” Previously, such complete ships had only been seen on vase paintings and mosaics.

The wrecks have so far only been recorded, though it’s possible they may do more intrusive excavation in the future that will increase our knowledge of ancient trade relations, shipbuilding technology, and the lives of those on board.

Adams was also deputy director of the Mary Rose Project, and objects retrieved from this wreck have enabled insights into Tudor life, as he explains: “Many items were the same as those that would have been found ashore: clothing, musical instruments, books, sun dials, knives, fishing equipment and even rosaries. It’s precisely because so many of these humble, personal objects no longer survive elsewhere that the Mary Rose collection is so important in providing us with an unparalleled view of Tudor life. It’s in the timbers, navigation instruments, weapons

Protected wreck sites from Historic England; (left) David Mearns discussing HMS Hood’s bell with HRH Princess Anne.

THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

Between 1900 and 1901, Greek sponge divers recovered the remains of a remarkable bronze device from an ancient Greek shipwreck estimated to have occurred around 70-50BC off the coast of Antikythera. Seven large fragments and 75 minor pieces had survived for 2,100 years. It has since become known as the Antikythera Mechanism.

Constructed around 150100BC, the Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest preserved portable astronomical calculator. It displayed the positions of the Sun, the Moon and most probably the five planets known in antiquity, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It was also used to predict solar and lunar eclipses, kept an accurate calendar of many years, and displayed the date of Pan-Hellenic games.

You can find the Antikythera Mechanism on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

and the rig of Mary Rose that we can see a key stage in the development of the ocean-going ships that were about to become so important in an increasingly global world.”

Alongside the many underwater and marine archeologists, who are trying to detect and understand the significance of shipwrecks, are commercial marine exploration companies that supply the technical expertise to find wrecks, recover artefacts and, on occasion, gold and silver bullion. At times it’s difficult steering a course between the two rocks of profit and archaeology without coming to grief.

Odyssey Marine Exploration (OME) navigates these treacherous waters and in 2008 discovered the longsought shipwreck of HMS Victory, which sank during a ferocious storm in 1744. Back then, the loss of the flagship of the British Navy, and forerunner of Nelson’s Victory, was a profound shock to Britain. Its discovery in the Western English Channel enabled some archeological exploration, which found that the main reasons for the Victory’s loss were almost certainly poor ship design, top-heavy weight, instability caused by heavy guns and possibly rotting timbers.

Unfortunately, the vessel has been extensively damaged by natural erosion and trawlers dredging for fish, while a Dutch salvage company looted one cannon. Moreover, as

the wreck is outside UK territorial waters, it cannot be protected by Historic England.

HOWEVER, THE MARITIME

HERITAGE FOUNDATION is keen to selectively excavate and retrieve items of archaeological importance with the help of OME. Dr Sean Kingsley, lead archaeologist on the Victory Shipwreck Project for the Maritime Heritage Foundation, says: “By carrying out select archaeological recoveries and putting the finds in a national museum, we hope to share with the world the wonders of the greatest warship from the early Georgian age of sail. Leaving the wreck unprotected 50 miles offshore, in the middle of nowhere, is a fool’s paradise; playing Russian roulette with major British history.”

There has been concern that artefacts from the Victory might be sold off to cover costs but Sean Kingsley denies this and states: “Not one artefact from the 270 English Channel wrecks found by OME has been sold.”

Moreover, Kingsley believes there is still much to discover: “The Victory was a floating fortress manned by a crew of 1,100 ranging from aristocrats to sea dogs. This makes her the perfect maritime upstairs-downstairs story. The finds from the wreck should reflect this social diversity if and when the ship can be excavated.”

Many famous wrecks and untold riches remain to be discovered beneath the sea. Those include a Greek trireme, as used at the battle of Salamis when the Greeks defeated the Persians; any ship from the Minoan civilisation; the Merchant Royal lost off Land’s End in 1641 carrying gold and silver bullion; and the Flor de la Mar, which sunk off the coast of Sumatra in 1512 carrying treasure looted from Malacca back to Lisbon.

For David Mearns the wreck he yearns to find and excavate is Sir Ernest Shackleton’s polar yacht Endurance. He’s described it as the

LEAVING THE WRECK UNPROTECTED IS LIKE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH MAJOR BRITISH HISTORY

ultimate challenge, the “K2 of shipwrecks” because of the task of negotiating thousands of tons of ice in the frozen wasteland of the Weddell Sea where it lies. “Initially it was because I saw it as the greatest challenge for a shipwreck hunter like me. But now I want to find it for the Shackleton family, especially his grand-daughter Alexandra Shackleton, who is my biggest supporter and has become a very close friend.”

Communal and cathartic, each spring this spectacular ritual electrifies the citizens of Valencia

BY LIA GRAINGER

PHOTO: © BORIS STOIMENOV / SHUTTERSTOCK

Valencians gather to witness “La Cremà,” the burning of monumental figures on the final night of Las Fallas.

WE SAT AROUND A

long table in the floodlit street, the chilly Valencian midnight breeze doing nothing to cool our anticipation. My companions were men, women and children from the Casal Esparteros, a neighbourhood casal (club) whose main purpose was to erect the collection of enormous, cartoonish figures that towered over us as we sat and drank.

It was the second night of Las Fallas, the most important festival in Valencia, Spain, and I sensed these falleros (those taking part in Las Fallas) were looking for mischief.

An older member of the casal unfolded a long, papery spool and laid it in a ring around the table. Then, as we goaded him on with laughs and shouts, he lit one end, and in an instant the long string of firecrackers exploded all around us.

IN

THE SPANISH

CITY of Valencia, spring is welcomed with Las Fallas, a street festival that celebrates renewal and communal creativity on a colossal scale. Hundreds of local fallera groups or clubs each erect a collection of monumental figures or fallas (puppets) and place them in the street to be admired. On the final night, most of the fallas—except one or two of the more outstanding—are set on fire and destroyed.

Las Fallas is a five-day assault on

the senses, celebrated from March 15 to March 19 every year. It’s a barrage of brass marching bands, costumed falleros, fireworks, bullfights, paella, endless drinks, and games with firecrackers. Overseeing the chaos from as much as 135ft overhead are the fallas themselves, spot-lit observers of this annual mayhem.

I’d come to Valencia to gape at the mammoth fallas with the rest of the throngs, so the next morning, Friday, I set out to track down another one.

At 170ft high, the falla of Na Jordana stood even with the threestory buildings that surrounded it. In the thick crowds milling about the monument’s base, I met Alex Campón Moya. A lifelong fallero, the industrial engineer was eager to talk about the festival’s history.

“The festival has pagan origins,” explained Alex. Back in medieval Valencia, the city’s many craftsmen extended their working hours during winter with candlelight. These candles were perched on a multiarmed candelabrum called a parot. When spring finally arrived, workers took their parots out into the street and burned them to celebrate the changing season. Over time, workers began dressing them in old rags.

“At some point the fallas became a way to mock well-known locals, like the baker or the carpenter,” said Alex. From this evolution the niñot or doll-like effigy was born. Today, niñots still poke fun at well-known

Clockwise from above: The Bollywood-themed falla of Casal Convento Jerusalén, 2017; a “niñot” of Donald Trump, and one of a Mona Lisafaced woman. The 2017 members of the Casal Esparteros wait for their “fallera major” to join them on a procession around the city.

figures; Trump, Obama, Merkel and other world leaders have featured prominently. Somewhere along the line Catholicism was thrown into the mix and today the festival is also a celebration of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters.

“This year our theme is comedia the theatre,” explained Alex, pointing upward. The falla’s crowning niñot loomed above us, an elegant, Mona Lisa-faced woman with blue hair. She wore an ornate 17th-centurystyle corset dress, her billowing skirt transforming into a pair of peacocks halfway down her hips.

The work was overwhelming—and pricey. Alex explained that this year’s falla cost €100,000. “Back in the day, the casal would pay for all of it,” he said. Today, fallas are sponsored. Da

Jordana’s was flanked with banners advertising Alahambra beer, and a giant Coca-Cola logo made from strings of red and white lights hung nearby.

There was also some not-sosubtle political satire on offer. Alex pointed to a life-sized figure of a white-haired man dressed as an oldtime theatrical player and wearing a chastity belt. It’s Ximo Puig, he explains, the president of the government of Valencia.

“He was here a few minutes ago,” says Alex.

What did this dignified politician think of the likeness?

“He loved it! In Valencia, it’s the ultimate honour to be in a falla.”

I HEADED BACK to Casal Esparteros for lunch, where I’d been invited to try a local delicacy: arrós amb fesols i naps. At one end of the casal’s private clubhouse was a makeshift kitchen with three large gas stoves. A crowd of men stood around an enormous steaming pot that held enough of the rich brew—rice, pork, white beans, onion and turnip—to feed 300.

My explosive introduction to the festival the previous evening had come care of José Vicente López, the president of the casal and a round and rosy character bursting with pride for his falla.

More than art for art’s sake, the fallas are a competition.

Fireworks exploding before La Cremà on the final night of festivities.

José explained that as well as a monumental main falla, each club also builds a smaller sculptural work called a falla infantil that is designed to appeal to children. The Esparteros have won best falla infantil (children’s falla) 13 times in the past 74 years— no small feat considering they aren’t one of the wealthiest clubs.

While I waited for my piping hot bowl of food to be served, I chatted with Gemma Gómez, a 12-year-old girl who happened to fill one of the most important roles in Las Fallas.

“It’s an honour,” said Gemma. Tiny and pretty with straight black hair pulled back into an impossibly elaborate braided bun, Gemma was the year’s fallera infantil, a designated club princess of sorts. She explained that it was her duty to attend events throughout the year and during the festivities as an official representative of the falla.

She has support from the club queen to her princess—the fallera major. This year it’s 29-year-old María Cruz, and she holds hands with Gemma across the table as we chat. The petite princess seems mature beyond her age, until I ask her what she likes best about the festival.

She gives a wicked little smile: “The firecrackers.”

IN VALENCIA, Gemma is far from alone in her unrelenting love of blowing things up. I’d only been in the city for 24 hours, and it was already

clear that the constant onslaught of noise and explosions was at the very core of Las Fallas.

Strolling down an otherwise quiet street, I’d find myself jumping at the sudden bang of a firecracker and would turn to see a child barely old enough to walk with another one ready to go in hand. A parent would usually be casually supervising nearby—or goading the child to light another.

It rattled me, and I found myself wishing for a firecracker-free falla experience, something locals assured me was impossible.

Among those locals was Antonio Monzonís Guillén. At 85 years old, the tiny Valencian poet knew his hometown’s famous festival better than most.

The artistry of it all inspired a young Antonio, and art and poetry became his life work. He even painted fallas—one of his pieces sits in the Museo del Artista Fallero.

Many people like Antonio were able to make a career in the arts thanks to Las Fallas. He explained that to the northeast of the city is a fallero suburb, the Cuidad del Artista Fallero. Roughly 200 artisans work out of some 70 studios, the majority big enough to house the construction of these huge and timeconsuming projects.

The next morning I made my way to the artist’s neighbourhood to check out the museum. There I meet Alfredo

Nadal, a painter and expert in the history of the Valencian tradition.

“Here you can see how the fallas were traditionally built,” says Alfredo, walking over to an enormous, halfconstructed figure. Its wooden skeleton was half exposed, overlaid in places by thin, reed-like strips of wood to give it mass, and then covered with layer upon layer of papier-maché.

As we walked among the cartoonish figures, Alfredo explained that the biggest commissions could take a year to build. Today, though, the traditional wood has largely been replaced with something cheaper and easier to manipulate: Styrofoam.

“This new method has to change,” said Alfredo. When the fallas go up in flames on Sunday, the air won’t be filled with wood smoke, but with black clouds produced by the burning of plastic.

But it didn’t seem to bother the hundreds of thousands who flocked to ogle the monumental structures. The city’s population more than doubles during the festival, to reach upwards of 1.5 million. Endless crowds flowed up and down the cobbled streets, taking in the spectacle and—to my profound irritation—setting off more than the occasional firecracker.

LAS FALLAS SEEMED TO take place everywhere in the city at once, but every afternoon for a few brief minutes, the festival had a single

focal point: the mascletá (fireworks display) at the city hall square.

I arrived early but already a crowd hundreds of thousands strong stood in my way. At 2pm it started, first as a regular fireworks display—bright white explosions accompanied by echoing booms.

Then sound became the main event, a physical sensation as 120 decibels vibrated through every ounce of flesh and bone in the packed square. With one final, heartshattering boom, it was over.

Though its pagan origins still permeate the festival, there’s one custom at Las Fallas that is undeniably Catholic—La Ofrenda. Over the final weekend, more than 100,000 falleros pay homage to the patroness of Valencia with an offering of flowers. I headed down to Plaza de la Virgen to take in the spectacle. In the centre of the square stood an impressive 50ft-high figurine of the Virgin.

Falleros streamed by in full formal dress and handed their bouquets to a team who carefully placed them to form an elaborate design over the wooden structure. As I drew closer, I noticed that as they finished making their offering, most of the falleros were in tears.

BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, there was only one event left: La Cremà, the night of fire. In theory, the fallas infantiles are all burned at 10pm, and

every massive falla is lit at midnight. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough fire engines and firemen and women to be at every falla at once, so the burnings are staggered.

Several firemen with a massive hose arrived at the Casal Esparteros a little after 10pm, and everyone assembled around the falla infantil. A string of explosive charges had already been carefully laid among the delicate figurines.

The queen and princess, María Cruz and Gemma Gómez, stepped forward and solemnly lit the charge that would destroy their falla.

There was a series of loud bangs and flashes of light, and then slowly, quietly, amber flames began to creep their way up the falla.

The figures melted and wilted, cracking and spitting until nothing was left but the skeletal sticks that once held them up.

Gemma stood to one side in

Maria’s embrace, tears running down her cheeks.

“It’s over,” she said quietly.

I STROLLED AWAY from the melancholy scene in search of a giant falla that would burn at midnight and settled upon a Bollywood-themed, 75ft eruption of colour by Falla Convento Jerusalén. As the flames rose five, six storeys in the night sky, I turned to gaze at the thousands of fire-lit faces turned up in wonder.

The cremá felt timeless—something ancient and cathartic that allowed every citizen in an entire city to start with a clean slate. Walking back to my hotel that night, I spotted a small pile of undetonated firecrackers. I took one, lit it, and tossed it into the air, where it exploded with a particularly delightful crack.

And you know what?

I liked it.

The feast of Saint Joseph with the floral offering to the Virgin Mary

BY CATHY ADAMS

Cathy has danced in Rio, been microlighting in South Africa and hiked the mountains of Oman

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Oban’s beautiful, bustling harbour

My Great Escape: Beautiful Oban

Sue Watt from Fife tries oysters for the first time in Scotland’s Oban

MY HUSBAND IAN AND I booked a weekend break to the seaside town of Oban in June 2014. This attractive and atmospheric town in Argyll and Bute in Scotland, has always been one of our favourite destinations for a short trip away to relax and unwind.

Oban (translated from “the little bay” in Gaelic) is beautiful. With a horseshoe-shaped bay and busy harbour, the town has much to admire. It’s a diamond on the west coast of Scotland, close to spectacular hill walks such as peak Ben Cruachan, as well as some of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides islands; from Oban, there are regular ferry crossings to the Isle of Barra, Colonsay, Lismore, Tiree and Mull.

When we arrived at The Queens Hotel in Oban, we were delighted to find that it was a pretty, white Victorian building that looked like a fairytale castle—I made a mental note to return again on Valentine’s Day. We had a great view from our room, looking out over the water. The sun was setting and the water was streaked with gold. The view along the bay was stunning; the whole area aglow.

A short walk took us to the harbour, the heart of the town with a variety of restaurants that

specialise in seafood, such as Oban Seafood Hut (The Green Shack), which sells freshly caught fish. We had booked a table at Ee-Usk for dinner well in advance, knowing Oban was a popular place for eating out.

After a refreshing gin and tonic, we consulted the menu. My husband chose oysters and I asked him for a sample: it was my first ever taste of them, but definitely not my last.

After dinner, with our bellies full, we giggled, took photos and walked arm-in-arm along the jetty. We had escaped from reality. I felt blessed.

■ STAY BY THE SEA

Rates at the Best Western Muthu Queens Oban Hotel start from £74 a night. thequeenshotel-oban.co.uk

Postcard From....

The

Seychelles

COMPRISING A NECKLACE OF

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Things To Do This Month

THE CAIRNGORMS IN TWO MINUTES

■ WALK: THE CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK Britain’s largest national park is serene at this time of year and a new Snow Roads scenic route is set to open there soon (cairngorms.co.uk).

■ MOVE: THE CALEDONIAN SLEEPER Following a revamp, the Caledonian Sleeper returns this spring, taking passengers overnight from London to the Highlands (sleeper.scot).

■ SLEEP: THE BOTHY PROJECT This rustic cabin was first created as a studio for the Scottish artist community. Now, it’s outdoor living at its best. Prices start at £85 per night (canopyandstars.co.uk).

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Wild Beauty Desert of the

Camel breeder Tschulun (right) lives with his wife and their two children in a traditional round tent known as a Ger, which serves as living room, bedroom and kitchen combined.

The Mongolian horse is at home in the grassy steppes. These robust animals can withstand temperatures as low as -40°C.

An environmentalist photographer goes to the Gobi in Mongolia to capture images of an age-old nomad culture

PHOTOS BY BARBARA DOMBROWSKI

TEXT BY CORNELIA KUMFERT

Byambadorg, 58, was raised in the desert and owns roughly 1,000 goats, 20 horses and 400 camels. He says the desert has become increasingly unpredictable in the past few years.

Shamanism has been practised for centuries in Mongolia. Here Shaman Budsana prepares for a ritual in Ulaanbaatar.

Few pack animals can carry as much weight and travel as far as the camel. These nomads have bred them for millennia. At market, white camels claim the highest prices.

During a normal week, ten-year-old Khongurzul lives in Dalanzadgad, the capital of South Gobi, where she goes to school. She looks forward to her weekends at home in the desert.

Breeding goats is considered essential to the nomads, but the animals graze plants down to their roots, giving the vegetation zero chance to recover.

The Gobi is a vast desert and semidesert region that’s 1,000 miles long and 300 to 600 miles wide. Each year, grazing fields are lost to huge dunes such as this one.

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Enjoy Kenya’s scenic vistas and magnificent wildlife as you traverse the African plains on this intimate and exciting safari adventure.

To find out more information and to discover all of our tour experiences, visit readersdigestguidedtours.co.uk or call 0800 804 8373.

The Collette Worldwide sale is now on. Save up to £1,000 per couple and book with a low deposit of £99pp before February 28 2018*

* Applicable for NEW bookings made between January 14–February 28 2018, on selected tours departing January 14 2018–April 30 2019.

Get To Know Your Credit Score

Understanding your credit score can feel like a daunting task. But improving it could be simpler than you think…

BY ANDY WEBB

Andy Webb is a personal finance journalist and runs the awardwinning money blog Be Clever With Your Cash

IF YOU’RE PLANNING TO BORROW MONEY THIS YEAR, whether through a loan, re-mortgaging or opening a new credit card, your credit score will be the biggest indicator as to whether the bank will say yes or no.

But what exactly is it? Well, it’s very simple. Credit reference agencies collect data about you and your money and use it to build a credit report. Your credit score—or credit rating, as it’s often called—is just a numerical representation of this report.

The report itself contains information such as your address and date of birth, as well as how much money you currently owe, any bank accounts you have and details of missed payments, bankruptcies or defaults.

When you apply for money, the companies will ask one of the agencies for this information and use it to assess your finances. A healthy score can get you the best deals, but a low score means there’s a greater chance you’ll get higher interest rates, smaller credit limits, or be turned down completely.

And if you’re rejected for any credit, that can appear as a black mark on your credit file, lowering your score further.

Understanding your credit score

There’s often a fair bit of confusion around credit scores. In part this is because there are three different scores, all calculated in different ways by different companies. Experian score out of 999, whereas Equifax score out of 700 and Call

Credit give a rating out of 5. So a good score with one could be a poor score with another.

Even so, assuming the information held is correct, if one is good, the others should be too.

How to check your credit score

Both Experian and Equifax offer subscriptions to monitor your report, costing around £15 a month. But most people won’t need to pay this.

Instead you can take a look at your scores for free online, and even check your report too.

For your Experian score, register with Money Saving Expert’s Credit Club and to check your Equifax score go to Clear Score. The only downside to these free versions is they can be a few months out of date. Meanwhile Call Credit provide your report and score for free via Noddle.

If you’d rather get the up-to-date report in paper, you can pay £2 to each of the three main companies

and get a copy sent in the post. Look out for any mistakes or anything that looks fraudulent.

How to improve your score

If your score needs a boost, there are a couple of easy wins. Fixing any outof-date information or errors can make a huge difference, and if you’ve not registered to vote, getting on the electoral roll will help too.

Longer term, you need to make sure you’re making repayments on time and limiting your applications for new credit.

It’s worth checking your score every month with the free sites just to make sure it’s ticking along OK. That way, if there’s a sudden drop, you’ll be ready to fix it before it becomes a problem.

My Mum’s Money

Beating the bank closures

LAST YEAR MORE THAN 800 BANK BRANCHES CLOSED their doors for good. The banks say it’s because more and more people now manage their money online. But if you’re like my mum, having a local bank to visit is really important.

Though both my parents are techsavvy, they’re not comfortable banking via the internet. In part it’s because of security concerns, but also because they tend to use cash more than cards.

In recent months, most of their local banks have disappeared, including the bank she holds an account with. Mum already uses telephone banking, but that doesn’t help when she wants to pay in a cheque or get cash. So what are her options?

lot better than many places around the country—so she could switch bank. This is very easy to do now, and would give her full access to her banking in the local branch. However, having been with NatWest for more than 50 years, she’s not so keen. And besides, how long will those other branches last?

There are still two banks nearby—a

Fortunately there’s an alternative. There is a Post Office down the road, and if you have an account at any major bank, you can go there to deposit cash and cheques (as long as you have a personalised paying in slip), withdraw money and request a balance enquiry.

Trainline alerts

thetrainline.com/ ticketalert

Savvy travellers will know the cheapest time to pick up a train ticket is 12 weeks before you want to travel. However, advance tickets at the lowest prices can go quickly, which is why I’m a fan of this Trainline alert tool.

Simply enter the journey you want to take and when you want to travel, and you’ll be emailed as soon as the cheap tickets are available. Easy.

However, I wouldn’t book your ticket directly with the Trainline. Do so and you’ll be hit with some extra charges. Instead, go to the route provider’s own website or the ticket office and you should be able to buy your bargain ticket at no extra cost.

As a nation, we tend to fixate on house prices more than any other cost. Things have certainly slowed down, but are the prices actually falling?

Halifax found just 13 towns where the average price dropped in 2017.

Elsewhere prices increased by an average of 2.7%, led by Cheltenham, where house prices were up by 13%.

Here’s the dirty dozen (plus one) where prices were lower.

n Perth (-5.3%)

n Stoke on Trent (-4%)

n Paisley (-3.6%)

n Wakefield (-2.9%)

n Rotherham (-2.2%)

n Dunfermline (-2.2%)

n Barnsley (-1.6%)

n Aberdeen (-1.1%)

n Bromley (-0.6%)

n Bradford (-0.4%)

n Leeds (-0.4%)

n Hounslow (-0.2%)

n Sunderland (-0.2%)

Easy-to-prepare meals and accompanying drinks

Saag Paneer

BY RACHEL WALKER

Rachel Walker is a food writer for numerous national publications. Visit rachel-walker.co.uk for more details

SAAG PANEER IS BEST KNOWN AS A SIDE DISH , but it also makes a sensational mid-week meal. The Indian cheese used, (known as paneer), has a similar consistency to halloumi, and is stocked in most big supermarkets. This time of year it’s easier (and certainly cheaper) to use frozen spinach. This recipe doesn’t puree the saag (spinach), making it more of a robust main course, which is filled with flavour and packed with goodness to carry you through the last days of cold weather.

Serves 4

• 350g paneer

• 3tbsp vegetable oil

• 2 onions, diced

• 1tsp cumin seeds

• 5cm fresh ginger, grated

• ½tsp turmeric

• ½tsp chilli powder

• 2tsp garam masala

• 1 ripe tomato, diced

• 600g frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed out (whole leaf preferable)

• 75ml single cream

• Salt, to season

To serve: rice (white or brown), or freekeh

1. Cut the paneer cheese into 2cm cubes.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a frying pan, and cook the paneer for 5 minutes, turning the cubes occasionally, until they’re golden and crisp on all sides.

Tip the paneer onto a wad of absorbent kitchen roll, and set aside for later.

BY TIM & ZOË HILL

3. Heat the remaining tablespoon of vegetable oil in the pan (if needed), and fry the cumin for around 20 seconds, until fragrant. Add the onion, and continue to cook on a low heat for 5-8 minutes, until the onions have softened and are beginning to turn translucent.

4. Add the ginger, turmeric, chilli, garam masala, chopped tomato and all of its juices, and cook until the tomato

becomes softened, stirring the ingredients occasionally.

5. Add the spinach to the pan, and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the cream and 50ml of kettle water, and then return the paneer to the pan.

TIP…

Bring out all the exciting flavours of this delicious saag paneer by serving it accompanied by a generous wedge of zesty lemon

Season with salt and cook for a final 5 minutes, until the paneer is heatedthrough, and the sauce takes on a creamysmooth consistency (if needed, add a splash more cream or water).

Spoon brown or white rice or freekeh into four bowls. Top each bowl with the saag paneer.

Gris It Is

PINOT GRIGIO IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR WHITE WINES in Britain. It’s safe: bright and crisp —usually with a touch of lemony acidity. Most of the Pinot Grigio we drink is made in Italy, but head a little further north to Alsace, and you’ll discover a different style altogether.

In this Germanic pocket of northeast France, Pinot Gris is aromatic, sometimes sweet with hints of honeysuckle and white nectarine. It’s not your usual pub fare. It’s also not what you’d expect from a part of Europe where sauerkraut, sausages and potent, washed-rind Munster cheese are local delicacies.

pairing it with Thai fishcakes or Singapore noodles.

Usually, the best way to pair wine is to look to regional dishes but there’s a disconnect between Alsace’s powerful cuisine and its fragrant wine. Perhaps it’s no surprise that New World wineries have adopted the Alsatian style of Pinot Gris,

Morrison’s Wm Pinot Gris (1) is a great match for saag paneer—the delicate spices of the dish aren’t overwhelmed by its floral notes. The rich and dry Hugel (2) needs food, but fans of fusion could do worse than a case of these half-sized bottles which are perfect for dinner a deux. Meanwhile, the Cave de Beblenheim (3) is one to open with friends, though the exotic, peachy and honeyed aromas make it surprisingly hard to share…

TOP 3 TIP OFFS

1 Wm Morrison Pinot Gris, Morrisons, £7.25 (12.5%)

2 Pinot Gris Classic, Famille Hugel 2016, The Wine Society, £6.95/half bottle (13%)

3 Cave de Beblenheim, Pinot Gris Reserve, Waitrose Cellar, £10.99 (13%)

BOOK

Pudding of the Month

Banana

Split

This retro dessert has a long-standing appeal. No wonder, when it’s so quick to make—particularly with this speedy chocolate sauce, whisked-up from store cupboard ingredients.

Chocolate sauce

• 170ml double cream

• 120g cocoa powder

• 180g sugar

• 60g butter, cut into cubes

4 bananas

8 scoops of ice cream

Optional: toasted almonds, maraschino cherries

To make the quick chocolate sauce, tip the cream, cocoa powder and sugar into a saucepan. Cook on a low heat, stirring continually until there are no more grainy sugar granules. Stir in the butter, and allow it to start to bubble very gently. Continue stirring for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens and takes on a glossy sheen. Leave to cool a little.

Meanwhile, cut the bananas lengthways, and put the two scoops of ice cream in between each one. Drizzle your dessert with the chocolate sauce, and then top with toasted almonds, or a maraschino cherry.

The Art of the Larder, by Claire Thompson, £25, Quadrille. Store cupboard cooking at its best.

BARGAIN

Freezer fine tip permanent marker, £2.99, Lakeland. Especially useful if they inspire a freezer clean.

BLOW OUT

Bo Touch Bin by Brabantia, from £149, brabantia.com. Standout design to make recycling a breeze.

BY CASSIE PRYCE

Homes and gardens writer and stylist Cassie specialises in interior trends and new season shopping

Spring Greens

DECORATE

YOUR HOME WITH A FRESH COLOUR

PALETTE and bring a sense of the outdoors in with lush foliage and plenty of natural textures such as wood, jute and seagrass.

1

Create your own arrangement with fresh seasonal blooms in this green bubble vase, £6 (direct. asda.com/george/ home-garden)

2

3

Update your lighting on a budget with the stylish Theo tripod table lamp, (very.co.uk)

Add the mini green Geo cushion to your sofa styling, £12 (next.co.uk)

4

Display treasured photos or prints in this threeaperture frame, £12 (sainsburys.co.uk)

Back to Life

Use this month to enjoy early spring flora and prep your outdoor space for sowing summer seeds

Expect to welcome daffodils into your garden around this time of year if you planted the bulbs at the end of summer. Give them a helping hand by keeping them watered during dry conditions and leave foliage to die off naturally after flowering to encourage annual regrowth. Prepare pots and containers for summer seeds by replacing compost. It’s also time to check your wildlife provisions such as bird baths and houses to make sure they’re ready to welcome new nesters. Install the easy-clean wooden bird box (£6, wilko.com), if the harsh winter weather has caused damage to existing shelters.

A preview of some of the products launched at the 50th Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas…

Old School Cool

BY OLLY MANN

Olly is a technology expert, radio presenter and podcaster

ANKER ROAV VIVA

Amazon’s Echo product range has recently expanded to offer voice-controlled speakers for seemingly every environment. But they’ve yet to release an in-car version—which is rather odd, since hands-free technology strongly appeals when you’re driving. Enter VIVA, a £35 marvel that plugs into your cigarette lighter and syncs with your smartphone so you can call a friend, choose a radio station, listen to Spotify or navigate with Google Maps…all by just asking Alexa. Oh, and it can also fast-charge two USB devices at the same time.

KOHLER VERDERA VOICE LIGHTED MIRROR

This Alexa-enabled bathroom mirror finally offers everyone the opportunity to talk to their mirrors à la Snow White. It’s a neat concept, using your voice to adjust the integrated LEDs, time your toothbrushing, or reorder razors in the post. But if you’re after a shower sing-along or a mellow soundtrack for bathing—speakers are mostly about music, after all—do you really want that sound emitting from halfway down your wall?

ATARI PONG COFFEE TABLE

The first video game in history—now a physical table! If you think that sounds like an amusingly lo-fi concept, you’d be right: this air hockey-style game is all paddles and wires and pulleys, like an old school pinball machine. But the finish is sleek and high-end, and it emits some seriously satisfying sound effects. The underlying trend—grown-up geeks willing to part with hundreds of pounds for a sophisticated take on nostalgia—isn’t going anywhere. Witness the release, later this spring, of the Ataribox, Atari’s first new games console in more than 20 years. Its target market? Forty-somethings who want to play Pong.

HTC VIVE PRO

HTC’s VR system is now wireless— which means an end to gamers precariously tangling themselves in a mess of cables as they fend off zombies in their headsets. But there are implications beyond gaming, too. Since it’s now possible to support a high-resolution, power-hungry VR system without wires, surely it’s time our TVs became wireless too? Why, in 2018, do our so-called smart TVs—even those so thin they appear flush against the wall— still require cabled connections for soundbars and satellite receivers? The campaign for change starts here!

SONY AIBO

First unveiled in 1998, Sony’s robotic puppy is now even cuter. The aesthetics remain brazenly mechanical—there’s no attempt to disguise that this is a robot— but his movements now stunningly imitate a real-life dog, with touch sensors on his back, neck and chin, so you can pet him, and AI cameras in his nose, so he can recognise your family and fetch his bone. Children would go nuts for this, but he commands an executive pricetag: Aibo has just hit the shelves in Japan for 198,000 yen— about £1,275.

Simple-To-Use SMARTPHONES

Doro, the world leader in easy-to-use mobile phones, is working hard to make smartphone technology accessible to all— regardless of age or ability.

The Doro Liberto® 820 Mini is an unquestionably powerful smartphone, with high functionality rivalling the many competitors on the market. The simple and highly visual instructions—coupled with large icons and loud, clear sound—enables smartphone beginners to do more, faster.

Buy a new Doro Liberto® 820 Mini smartphone today, for the special price of £150, which includes an Anywhere SIM card connection and £40 of credit, allowing you to roam the UK with signal from O2, EE, Three and Vodafone.

Simply go to readersdigest.co.uk/ mobilephones or call 03454 133 953 and quote “Reader’s Digest o er”.

BY GEORGINA YATES

Georgina is a fashion and beauty editor for numerous travel titles and a blogger at withgeorgia.com

Basic Instincts

ROCK STAR PERFUMER GEZA SCHOEN turned industry conventions upside down in 2006 with the launch of Escentric Molecules and its unisex range “Molecule 01” and “Escentric 01”. Both fragrances are incredibly minimal, with “Molecule 01” comprising a single ingredient: laboratory-made aroma molecule Iso E Super. Since the issue of “01”, Schoen has released “02” and “03”, shining a light on other singlearoma molecules, Ambroxan and Vetiveryl Acetate. Last year “04 Molecule” and “04 Escentric” (£79, libertylondon. com) made it to the shelves. It’s a Javanol-based scent that Schoen says “smells as if liquid metallic grapefruit peel were poured over a bed of velvety cream-coloured roses.” The result is a subtle springtime fragrance with the depth of sandalwood accompanied by a delicate freshness.

MOTHER’S DAY DELIGHT

■ This Mothering Sunday, treat mums of all ages, or even yourself, to The Ritual of Hammam bath oil (£13.50, rituals.com). Pour into a freshly-run bath and enjoy the hydrating and refreshing qualities of vitamin E and eucalyptus.

BAG IT UP

■ Pretty and practical, the sparklyblue, structured makeup bag from Cath Kidston (£18, cathkidston.com) is just the right size to accommodate chunky palettes, wide powder cases and long pencils. The wipe-proof cotton lining is a real bonus too!

■ Show off your stripes with this fitted blazer. (£75, Lauraashley. com).

■ What’s a sailor without his stripes? (£55, thenautical company.com).

■ Set your stripes against some comfortable linendenim trousers. (£99, East.co.uk).

IN THE NAVY For Her For Him

■ A beret tops off a stripy uniform perfectly. (£7.99, tkmaxx.com).

■ Get ready for a long march with these lace-up leather boots. (£39.99, tkmaxx.com).

■ Really play the part with this stylish captain’s hat. (£39, thenautical company.com).

Discerning “chick-lit” and a sensitive look at modern masculinity top the list of our favourite page-turners this month

March Fiction

BY JAMES WALTON

James writes and presents the BBC Radio

4 literary quiz

The Write Stuff

Last of the Summer Moët by Wendy Holden (Head of Zeus, £18.99)

At first sight, this seems a straightforward, if unusually funny comic romp. Holden’s recurring character Laura Lake is now deputy editor—and token non-posh woman—on a glossy society magazine. At work, she debates such weighty matters as the pros and cons of furry lederhosen.

Home is an achingly hip part of London where the local shops—butter churners, artisanal bakers and glass-blowers— appear “more in tune with the mediaeval countryside”.

And from there, the jokes just keep coming—and hitting their targets with some precision. (There is, for example, a fashionable chef whose dishes include “beef aged in Himalayan salt caves served with After Eight gravy”.)

Gradually, though, the satire becomes more pointed, especially once Laura stumbles across a secret village where the super-rich live in contented seclusion, cut off from such unpleasant things as poor people.

After a slightly awkward lurch into a thriller plot, everything (unnecessary spoiler alert) ends happily. Yet, if this novel weren’t written by a woman who cheerfully accepts the “chick-

NAME THE AUTHOR

(Answer on p128)

Can you guess the writer from these clues (the fewer you need the better)?

1. Her most famous novel was published 200 years ago this year...

2. There have been at least 85 film adaptations—some quite loose…

3. …but all featuring a monster she never named.

lit” label, I wonder if more people would notice that, along with the fun, comes a sharp, sometimes quite angry, portrait of modern Britain.

Girl on Fire

by Tony Parsons (Century, £12.99)

After 20-odd years as a journalist, Tony Parsons scored a huge hit with his 1999 novel Man and Boy, which took a well-timed sensitive look at modern masculinity—a genre he mined for the next decade, until sales dried up. Now, he’s become a bestseller all over again, thanks to his crime thrillers featuring the grizzled but fundamentally decent London copper, Max Wolfe.

As Max’s name might suggest, Parsons isn’t afraid to go macho in these books and Girl on Fire, the fifth in the series, contains its fair share of guns, violent set-pieces and onesentence paragraphs such as “And then he shot me”. At times, in fact, it feels almost like an impersonation of a crime novel—but fortunately, a very good one. The action bowls along exhilaratingly, with plenty of twists and hair-raisingly topical material about the threat of terrorism. Meanwhile, Max’s single-father status also allows Parsons to stir some of his old sensitive stuff into the mix. The upshot is the kind of big, foot-to-thefloor read that, while occasionally over-the-top, is hard to resist.

PAPERBACKS

n The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce (Black Swan, £8.99)

Another warm and charming novel from the author of the bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

n The Day that Went Missing by Richard Beard (Vintage, £8.99) A novelist’s extraordinary memoir about how his brother drowned on holiday when they were boys—and how the family never talked about it again.

n The Shadow Queen by Anne O’Brien (HQ, £7.99) When it comes to royal historical fiction, O’Brien is now approaching Philippa Gregory status—and this book, about Richard II’s ruthless mother, shows why.

n The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben (Vintage, £8.99) Wohlleben is convinced that animals of all kinds have a wide range of recognisable emotions—and has lots of fascinating findings to back it up.

n Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury, £8.99) The much-loved fantasy author grippingly retells the stories of Thor, Odin and their fellow gods and goddesses.

RD’S RECOMMENDED READ

Six centenarian women recall the personal and historical events that shaped their lives—and the country—over the past 100 years

A Vote of One’s Own

THIS YEAR, OF COURSE, is the centenary of women getting the vote in Britain. To mark the occasion, TV historian Tessa Dunlop has had one of those ideas that belong firmly in the “simple-but-brilliant” category: speaking to six women who’ve been alive for all 100 of those years.

The range of interviewees is great too—from Olive, born and brought up in what was then British Guiana, to Joyce, a scholarship girl, who went on to teach classics at Cambridge. The others include Ann from a well-to-do publishing family, and Edna from a poor part of rural Lincolnshire—which duly meant that she entered domestic service at 14. Between them, the women we meet

The Century Girls by Tessa Dunlop is published by Simon& Schuster at £20.

have a sharp recollection of every major public event since at the least the 1930s. They also remember such overarching trends as the decline of the British Empire—about which they were made to feel so proud as girls. But it’s the less grand historical developments that really transformed their everyday lives: the coming of cars and washing machines or the acceptance of lipstick as something not just worn by prostitutes.

As for sexual attitudes, virtually all the women were horrified when they first menstruated, since nobody had told them about it. Their prevailing innocence also ensured that, as Edna discreetly puts it, “You didn’t do things in those days that you do today, dear.”

The result is a wonderful blend of British history with individual stories—and for any reader under about 90, an often startling reminder of how much things have changed.

In this passage, Dunlop finds Ann, not long after her 103rd birthday, in reflective mood…

One doesn’t know when one is going to topple over. That’s the thing. I still look forward to things—I looked forward to seeing you today, for instance—but one simply doesn’t know whether one will be here next week. I can’t tell you why I’ve lived so long—it’s sheer fluke!’

With such an uncertain future, Ann is making the most of the present, and remains an avid correspondent. Writer Diana Athill—three years her junior— was graced with a beautifully handwritten seven-page letter regarding their lifelong associations in the publishing world. Athill replied she was greatly relieved that, for once, pages of unsolicited ink from an unknown sender made luminous good sense. I, meanwhile, have been thoroughly scolded for my illegible scrawl. I tried to explain that rusty

TESSA DUNLOP’S FAVOURITE BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN’S LIVES

n Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Writing The Century Girls I had a particular urge to get under the skin of the 1950s. And who better to hold me gently by the hand and probe that curious, sedate post-war world than Barbara Pym, whose novels are full of delicious observational humour?

n Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson. All historians need another historian to look up to— and for me it’s Virginia Nicolson. Here, she examines the lives of women in the Second World War through personal anecdotes, diaries, memoirs and meticulous research.

n The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy. When writing The Century Girls I lost a longed-for pregnancy mid-term; this sublimely-written memoir of a similar loss helped me come to terms with the grief.

n Chase the Rainbow by Poorna Bell. A crisp and completely devastating account of one man’s depression and its consequences, told through the prism of his young, loving wife.

writing is due to over-dependence on computers and laptops. Ann isn’t interested. ‘I don’t do technology. I once thought iPod was the past tense of the verb iPad.’

obligation.’ Ann has fulfilled that obligation since 1935. This will be her 21st election ‘and surely my last! It’s impossible to compare today with 1935. Then, I was very aware of

‘Yes, it is a duty. I regard voting absolutely as an obligation’—Ann has fulfilled that obligation since 1935

Ann is the only woman in this book without a television. ‘I am currently halfway through George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I’ve read it many times. And Jane Austen can be perpetually reread. I know some almost off by heart.’ Literature’s classics provide Ann what modern society can’t—a high seriousness no longer in fashion. Some classics were her contemporaries. ‘My father knew A. A. Milne. Winnie the Pooh was written when I was a child.’

Meanwhile, today’s world silts up her doormat. ‘I do read the political leaflets. Mind you they all tend to say the same thing.’ It’s 8 June 2017. Ann has a bad leg, but because it’s polling day she must walk around the corner and do her duty. ‘Yes, it is a duty. I regard voting absolutely as an

AND THE NAME OF THE AUTHOR IS…

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein .

fascism on the Continent and that the national government weren’t doing anything about it. And today I suppose is uncertain, but in a very different way.’

Ann lives in a swing seat, but she won’t disclose who she’s voting for. ‘Absolutely not. What’s the point in all the secrecy, the little booth and pencil and so on, if one tells everybody?’ This discreet woman solemnly makes her way to the polling caravan wearing a blue trouser suit and faded gym shoes. A young mother with a buggy almost derails her on the pavement, it’s a near miss. No one would guess just how old Ann is and that she has a very sore leg, or that she’s worried at any moment she may topple over. She’s walking on her own, with a stick and white hair, her extraordinary history folded up inside her.

‘What advice would I give to young girls today?’ She looks at me as if the question is a trick. But when her answer comes, it’s almost a shout.

‘Get on with it!’

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Hugh Johnson OBE, 78, is the world’s pre-eminent writer on wine. His latest, Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2018, is out now, published by Mitchell Beazley.

1066 And All That

BY W C SELLAR AND R J YEATMAN

My father, my three siblings and I used to roll around laughing at this marvelous satirical chronicle of English history. It took all the fright and boredom out of history and made it fun—indeed it gave us all our grounding in the subject at an early age. I can still remember that Henry I died of eating “a surfeit of palfreys… and never smiled again” and that King John “demonstrated his utter incompetence by losing the crown and his clothes in the wash.”

Right Ho, Jeeves

BY P G WODEHOUSE

Wodehouse was a prolific writer of over 90 books. I’ve read a huge amount of them but I chose this because I’ve loved it since I first read it when I was 12. Wodehouse’s use of English is so

relaxed yet polished—he’s my writing model. I also admire the ingenuity of the plot and how all the twists and turns along the way add to the farcical nature of the story. Just imagine how much Wodehouse must have giggled his way through his career!

The Education of a Gardener

BY RUSSELL PAGE

I’ve designed quite a few gardens and published books, including The Principles of Gardening in 1979. Page’s classic book is about the training he had to become one of Europe’s most celebrated landscape gardeners. He explains how looking at what nature has offered you and then interpreting it in an intelligent way is the route to success. I remember thinking, Now I understand why this book has stood the test of time. Since moving back to London and losing my garden, I content myself with helping my daughter with hers. As told to Caroline Hutton

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Win £50 for your true, funny stories! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

LAST WEEK, AFTER cutting my hair, the hairdresser dusted down my shoulders and I stood up to leave. Looking over in my direction, the elderly lady in the chair next to me observed, “You’ve got hair on your bum.”

My sense of humour allowed, “Haven’t we all?” to exit my mouth before I had time to stop myself…

DENISE WATSON, County Durham

A COLLEAGUE RECEIVED some flowers accompanied by a card that simply said, “NO”. She spent the entire morning trying to figure out what her husband had meant by this cryptic message. Eventually she gave up and called him.

“When I was on the phone to the florist,” he told her, “she asked me if I had a message and I said, ‘No.’ ”

GINETTE HUGHES, Hertfordshire

MY PREGNANT FRIEND was visiting and so the general conversation turned to babies. My four-year-old daughter, Connie, asked me seriously, “When I was in your

tummy, Mummy, how did you shower me?” JONI COOPER, London

WHEN MY FIVE-YEAR-OLD greatgranddaughter told me that she’d studied maths at school that day, I saw a chance to test her.

I asked, “If you had six sweets and you gave one to a little girl and one to a little boy, how many sweets would you have left?”

After a pause she said, “Five.”

“Ouch! Happy Mother’s Day, Mum”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t like boys so I wouldn’t give him a sweet.”

JOHN ROBERTS, Conwy

OUR CHILDREN LOVE Yorkshire puddings with any roast dinner as we pour gravy in them.

At our large family Christmas meal in our busy local pub, with grandparents, aunts, uncles and many cousins, our eight-year-old son asked loudly, “Dad, where are the gravy cups?”

KEVIN CANDY, submitted via email

WE DON’T USUALLY HAVE cause to complain when dining out, but on one occasion my husband felt he had to say something about the terrible standard of the food and asked to see the manager.

We weren’t surprised when the waiter replied, “Sorry, but he’s gone out for lunch.”

SUZANNE ROSWELL, Norfolk

THE RESTAURANT WHERE we’d taken our teenage sons was crowded with fans watching a sporting event on television. The harassed waitress took our order, but 30 minutes later there was no sign of our food.

I was trying to keep my hungry boys occupied when suddenly shouts of victory came from the bar.

“Your hear that?” asked my 13-yearold. “Someone just got his food.”

RACHELLE HARDING, Cambridgeshire

A CHILD IN MY CLASS had listened intently to me talking during Religious Education about how God created everything, and Eve had been made out of one of Adam’s ribs.

At playtime I found him lying on the floor and carefully rubbing his ribs. I asked him if he was OK and he retorted, looking worried, “I’ve got a pain in my side Miss. Am I going to have a wife?”

BETHANY WEBB, Denbighshire

WHEN I WAS WORKING IN A ZOO, one of my most demanding but rewarding tasks was to hand-rear a cotton-eared marmoset monkey from infancy.

Since she viewed me as mother, this little marmoset would often meet and greet visitors as I went about the zoo from her position of safety perched on my shoulder.

One day a visitor approached me looking wide-eyed with delight and enthused to her four-year-old daughter, “Oh, look Sarah, it’s a cappuccino!”

Luckily I managed to maintain my composure until I was somewhere private.

LUCIE GUILBERT, Devon

I WAS READING JOKES from the “Laugh” pages out to my family. When my wife asked where I was getting them from, my daughter rolled her eyes and replied, “He’s getting them from Reader’s Disgust.”

ANDY SAUNDERS, Warrington

Word Power

This month we’re venturing far and wide—with a guide to help us on our way, of course. Can you find your way round a map? Check your sense of direction with this selection of cartographic terms and then turn the page to see where you stand.

BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. bearing n A: coast. B: direction. C: depression.

2. choropleth map n A: a folded map. B: a three-dimensional map. C: a shaded map.

3. topography n A: shape. B: weight. C: boundary.

4. contour n A: line. B: snowfall. C: river.

5. compass rose n A: tropical storm. B: symbol. C: surveyor’s glass.

6. gazetteer n A: index. B: foreword. C: chapter.

7. inset n A: detailed map. B: wall map. C: small map.

8. chronometer n—A: ruler. B: timepiece. C: distance.

9. toponym n A: woodland. B: place name. C: air pressure.

10. cadastral adj A: relating to railways. B: relating to municipal buildings. C: relating to land surveys.

11. meridian n A: square. B: circle. C: rectangle.

12. meteorological adj A: relating to the science of plate tectonics. B: relating to the science of weather. C: relating to the science of aircraft routes.

13. pictograph n A: sign. B: orchard. C: trail.

14. scale n A: ratio. B: a mountaineering tool. C: true north.

15. legend n—A: table. B: dam. C: glacier.

Answers

1. bearing—[B] Direction or position relative to a fixed point. “The mountain was north of the river, at a bearing of 12 degrees.”

2. choropleth map—[C] A map using shading to show average values. “To show Jane population density in Africa, Paul produced a choropleth.”

3. topography—[A] Shape; an area’s physical features. “Retreating glacial ice shaped the topography of Britain.”

4. contour—[A] Line on a map joining places of same height above sea level. “Judging by the contour, Bea thought the hike would be easy.”

5. compass rose—[B] A graduated circular symbol on a map. “Using the map’s compass rose, he saw the airport was in the east of the island.”

6. gazetteer—[A] A geographical index or dictionary. “Bill used the gazetteer to find the hamlet of Mavis Enderby in his atlas.”

7. inset—[C] A small map within a larger one. “The Shetland Islands are often shown in an inset on a map of Scotland.”

8. chronometer

[B] Highly accurate timepiece. “Captain

Cook relied on a chronometer to keep time at sea.”

9. toponym—[B] Place name derived from local features. “Newcastle is a fairly obvious toponym.”

10. cadastral—[C] Map or survey showing ownership and value of land.

11. meridian—[B] Imagined circle passing through both poles. “All points on the same meridian are on the same longitude.”

12. meteorological—[B] Relating to the atmosphere, especially weather.

13. pictograph—[A] Sign, symbol. “With so many pictographs on his map, James was able to get round Paris without knowing French.”

WORD OF THE DAY*

14. scale [A] Ratio of size. “The lecturer explained that, on a map with a scale of 1:35,000,000, a centimetre equals 350 kilometres.”

POGONOTOMY

The act of cutting a beard. Alternative suggestions:

“When a group of friends decided Tommy wasn’t allowed on the pogo stick.”

“An operation carried out on people who become addicted to pogo sticks.”

15. legend—[A]

A table or key. “Red dots signified ‘points of interest’ according to the legend.”

VOCABULARY RATINGS

9–11: Fair

12–13: Good

14–15: Excellent

Do you find yourself struggling to read for any length of time?

Brainteasers

Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles, then check your answers on p139.

BIRDHOUSES (Difficult)

The Robinsons have three birdhouses in different colours: red, blue and yellow. They’ve hung them in a tree so that they face their home. They had a number of branches to choose from, in the configuration shown.

n The red birdhouse is on a higher branch than the yellow one.

n The yellow birdhouse is to the left of the blue one, but not necessarily directly to the left.

n The blue one hangs from a thicker branch than the red one.

Only one of the following three statements is true:

n The red birdhouse is in the top row.

n The yellow birdhouse is in the left column.

n The blue birdhouse hangs from one of the two thickest branches.

Can you figure out where each birdhouse was placed?

LUCK OF THE DRAW (Easy)

There are six marbles in a bag. They are exactly alike except for colour: one is red, two are green and three are blue. Without looking into the bag, what’s the smallest number of marbles you would need to draw out to guarantee getting either two green or two blue ones?

ARITHME-PICK (Moderately difficult)

Place one of the four basic arithmetic operations (+, –, ×, ÷) in each box to make a correct equation. Symbols may be repeated, and you don’t have to use all four. All operations are performed from left to right, ignoring the mathematical order of operations. The result at each step must be a positive whole number. What’s the equation?

5 7 3 9 4 = 32

FAIR AND SQUARE? (Moderately difficult)

Would it be possible to join these six pieces together to form a square?

CROSSHAIRS (Easy)

None of the white squares in this diagram have their edges lined up. One of the squares is a different size from the others. Can you find it?

Brainteasers: Answers

BIRDHOUSES

The red birdhouse is hanging from the smaller branch in the top row. The yellow one is hanging from the centre branch. The blue one is hanging from the branch on the bottom right.

LUCK OF THE DRAW

Four.

ARITHME-PICK

5 + 7 ÷ 3 × 9 – 4 = 32.

FAIR AND SQUARE?

Yes.

£50 PRIZE QUESTION

Answer published in the April issue

Each block is equal to the (positive) difference of the two numbers beneath it. The completed pyramid will contain the numbers from 1 to 15, with one number in each block. We have placed two of them for you. 4

The first correct answer we pick in February wins £50!* Email excerpts@ readersdigest.co.uk

ANSWER TO JANUARY’S PRIZE QUESTION

63.

Multiply the total number of dots on the first domino by the total number of dots on the third domino.

AND THE £50 GOES TO… David Hoyle, Cheshire

Win £50 for every reader’s joke we publish! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

IF SHE SELLS seashells by the sea shore, then I think she needs a better business model.

COMEDIAN HARRISON SLATER

THE PRIMARY PURPOSE of your pinky toe is to periodically check if your furniture is still hard. SEEN ONLINE

A GIRL NAMED RUTH recently stopped working at our office. I’ve been referring to the company as

“Ruthless” ever since then. People in the office are starting to get pretty angry with me.

It’s probably because it’s a really awful pun. Also maybe because she died. SEEN ONLINE

I WAS EATING SOME PIZZA when I burnt the roof of my mouth. Then I thought, Wait a minute, this is the ceiling of my mouth.

COMEDIAN DEMETRI MARTIN

SAVED HIS BACON

3.3

…was the weight of the black pudding that saved 70-year-old Devonshire butcher Chris McCabe when he became trapped in his shop’s freezer in temperatures of -20°C. “It was the right shape,” he told reporters. “I used it like…a battering ram. It was solid, pointed and I could get plenty of weight behind it.”

GRAHAME GOES INTO a bar, orders 12 scotches and starts drinking them as fast as he can.

The barman asks, “Goodness, why are you drinking so fast?”

“You’d be drinking fast if you had what I had,” he replies.

Cautiously, the barman asks, “What do you have?”

“About two quid.”

GRAHAME JONES, London

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a badly dressed man on a unicycle and a well dressed man on a bicycle? A tyre. SEEN ON TWITTER

MARRIAGE IS HARD, MAN. Marriage is so hard that even Nelson Mandela got a divorce.

Nelson Mandela spent time in a South African prison getting tortured and beaten every day of his life for 27 straight years.

He got out of jail, spent six months with his wife and said, “I can’t take this.” COMEDIAN CHRIS ROCK

AS A KID I WAS ALWAYS MADE TO walk the plank.

We couldn’t afford a dog.

COMEDIAN GARY DELANEY

WHENEVER I SEE A MAN with a beard, moustache and glasses, I think, There’s a man who has taken every precaution to avoid people doodling on photographs of him.

COMEDIAN CAREY MARX

MEET THE SWIM REAPER

Introducing New Zealand’s new water safety mascot (via sadanduseless.com)

I’M GOING TO BUY MY MOTHER a house one day.

your head, you’re thinking, What on earth am I lying about over here?

I stand to gain nothing by this lie.

SEEN ONLINE

COMEDIAN PEGGY SINOT

Not to repay her for anything, just to change the power dynamics of our relationship.

I’M CURRENTLY WRITING a film script about going back in time to stop Hitler’s parents meeting at the Austrian Enchantment Under The Sea dance.

It’s called Back to the Führer!

COMEDIAN DES BISHOP

DO YOU EVER LIE FOR absolutely no reason? Just all of sudden, a big lie spills out of your evil head. A guy will come up to you and ask, “Hey, did you ever see that movie with Meryl Streep and a horse?”

And you go, “Yes.” In the back of

EVERY PIZZA IS A PERSONAL pizza if you try hard and believe in yourself.

COMEDIAN DEMETRI MARTIN

I’LL TELL YOU WHAT always catches my eye.

Short people with umbrellas.

SEEN ONLINE

I AM A MAN OF MY WORD. And that word is “unreliable.” SEEN ONLINE

SOME PEOPLE LOVE gloomy skies and some people hate them.

I just think there’s a lot of grey area.

COMEDIAN THILO SAVAGE

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES

The people of Twitter reveal what they’d do if they won the lottery:

@CMack823: “I’d pay Donald Trump to shave his head, just to see how it would grow back.”

@IogieHenderswag: “I’d buy all of the tickets to an Adele concert so when she comes out I can just smile and say, ‘Hello, it’s me.’ ”

@UghItsDanielle: “I’d hire a drummer to follow me around everywhere and play ‘ba dum tss’ whenever I make a joke.”

@Premium_Coco: “I’d hire a butler specifically to press the ‘Continue watching’ button when I’m on a major Netflix binge.”

60-Second Stand-Up

We chatted to funny family man

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE OF YOUR OWN JOKES?

My grandfather died on the occasion of his 92nd birthday. Which was a great shame as we were only halfway through giving him the bumps.

WHAT’S YOUR MOST MEMORABLE HECKLE EXPERIENCE?

My first ever heckle putdown was when I was doing a routine about sex and a man shouted out, “It’s better from behind!”

I replied, “Rather like your face”, which isn’t an amazing put-down but taught me just to say the first thing that comes into my head when heckled, a good lesson.

say these days. But then again he’s not my life inspiration…

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR CURRENT SET?

Reading out my late mother’s erotic poetry.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE ONE-LINER?

Always been fond of Woody Allen’s, “On his deathbed, my grandfather sold me this watch.”

WHO INSPIRES YOUR COMEDY?

Well, Woody Allen, although that seems less and less acceptable to

HAVE YOU FOUND SOME PARTS OF THE COUNTRY TO BE FUNNIER THAN OTHERS?

No. Some think they are, of course. But I’m not going to mention them.

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Comedy is a super power. Being able to make a room of strangers laugh can really feel like that.

Visit davidbaddiel.com for tickets to David’s tour, My Family: Not the Sitcom

Beat the Cartoonist!

Think of a witty caption for this cartoon—the three best suggestions, along with the cartoonist’s original, will be posted on our website in midMarch. If your entry gets the most votes, you’ll win £100.

Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk or online at readersdigest.co.uk/caption by March 9. We’ll announce the winner in our May issue.

January’s Winner

This caveman sketch had you voting in your droves. Despite having the Reader’s Digest team chuckling with his caption, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid Mammoth Brown is the only colour we do…”, once again our cartoonist didn’t recieve a single click. Our winner, however, recieved an impressive 42 per cent of the vote. Congratulations Colin White for your line, “I need something special to wear—I’m out clubbing tonight!”

Think Like A Child

How thinking childishly could make you rich

Simon Mayo’s Life in Radio

The presenter looks back at his decades on the airwaves

IN THE APRIL ISSUE Plus

• 36 Things Doctors Do to Protect Their Hearts

• Cornwall: Where the Pasture Meets the Sea

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