Reader's Digest UK May 2023

KING CHARLES III CORONATION

Olly Mann finds a wholesome use for Facebook, and stumbles on a familiar face online

The singer-songwriter talks jazz, meeting the Obamas and finding peace in her thirties

“I REMEMBER”: JENNY ECLAIR

The award-winning comedian looks back on a career full of filthy jokes, straight-talking women and reality TV gags

We reflect on King Charles III's life spent preparing for the throne

Delve into the fascinating details behind the centuries-old tradition

The incredible story of a waiter who saved three women from drowning 90

MALE FRIENDSHIPS

Men badly need more friends—could a monthly poker night be the tonic?

Why you should consider volunteering for a clinical

We explore the multicultural heritage of France's oldest city

Medical Research Foundation, 99 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HR. OR visit

Advice: Susannah

Column: Dr Max Pemberton

Memory: Jonathan Hancock

& RELATIONSHIPS 58 Column: Monica Karpinski

My Britain: Ballater

If I Ruled the World: Helen Lederer

May Fiction: James Walton’s Recommended Reads

Books That Changed My Life: Vaseem Khan

Column: James O’Malley

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Live

King Long The

On May 6, 2023, we will all become a small part of history as we witness the coronation of a new monarch—an ancient tradition that has remained essentially the same for over a thousand years. With King Charles III’s imminent accession to the throne, we invite you to join us in celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

Harry Verity takes a look at the fascinating history behind coronation ceremonies on p78—the pageantry, the meticulous planning, and the often bizarre traditions involved.

On p62, Jennifer McShane delves deep into the biography of HRH— from his difficult childhood to his public work, via life as the longestserving heir apparent in British history.

Then, we pay a visit to Ballater on p70—a quaint village next to Balmoral where the locals are used to seeing the royals in their shops and cafes. On p135, we take a look at the King’s favourite tunes (can you guess what gives him “an irresistible urge to get up and dance” and you’ll find some very special coronation-themed recipes from Bake Off stars on p126.

Happy Coronation Bank Holiday!

Eva

eva mackevic Editor-in-Chief

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Over To You

LETTERS ON THE March ISSUE

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

LETTER OF THE MONTH

TIREDNESS TAKES ITS TOLL

Thank you for the article on tiredness, “Tired Of Feeling Tired?” by Susannah Hickling. In these hard times it is sensible to be aware of our energy levels. I worked as a pharmacist and am a patient with a diagnosis of schizophrenia since 1986 and so have seen so many people in need of rest and felt in myself weariness and exhaustion. One year I was so tired that the GP referred me for blood tests in case there was something physically wrong. Thankfully, the tests were OK—it was my mind that was tired. Your writer lists nine causes, but one could add the negative effects of long-term mental illness too. I felt really beaten down and rotten. I was vulnerable to the sound of coughing and traffic, had feelings of guilt, and was troubled

by what I presumed to be telepathic voices. I had unreciprocated letters with friends and a poor love life, and that increased the dejection— my broken heart was a cause of tiredness. Just struggling through an ordinary day was a challenge. Tell your readers that there is something they can do. There is engagement with the doctors and surgeries and sometimes with psychiatrists—medication can help. I found meditation and reading very uplifting. I have also managed to place essays on mental health blogging platforms. Being tired is serious and I would really encourage people who are worried to approach their GP and look after their mental health. We are in the middle of a mental health crisis, some people say, and we need to take action.

ANDREW LOW, Middlesex

Power of Puppy Love

Olly Man’s “Doggy Diary” certainly made me laugh. Having never really been a dog person either—in fact, I used to roll my eyes at friends who referred to themselves as their pet’s “Mummy” and “Daddy”—I also found myself subject to a family campaign for a dog. “We will train it and take it on family walks and it will get us all outside more”, my family promised me. Next thing, I came home from work and found a puppy curled up in my kitchen! Adorable and mischievous in equal measure—she melted our hearts and mangled our shoes (hats and gloves were favourites too!). And I have become one of those icky people who say things like, “Come to Mummy!”, but then that’s the power of puppy love. To Olly I say—this is just the start, it gets better and worse but for the time being keep your shoes somewhere very safe! And prepare to be the main dog walker (no matter what you may have been told).

JENNIE GARDNER, Bath

Pen Pals

It was interesting to read Dr Max’s column “Pen To Paper” about the rather old-fashioned art of letter writing. When I was in middle school in the 1970s, I loved nothing more than writing to my various pen pals around the world. In fact, my best friend Caroline and I used to compete with each other as to who had the most pals around the globe! I agree with Dr Max that it takes more time, care and concentration to write a letter, opposed to the modern equivalent of texting or emailing. I have to confess that I rarely write letters the old-fashioned way anymore, but as Caroline moved to Greece several years ago, we still keep in touch. More often than not it’s a quick WhatsApp message or email, but every now and then I put pen to paper and send a witty missive and look forward to an air mail envelope landing on my doormat in reply!

MELANIE LODGE,

Yorkshire

Behind the (Sports) Scenes

I really found your feature “Meet the 1% Club” to be deeply thought provoking.

We have all of these sportspeople and teams who achieve great things, and we focus on the people in the limelight—the athletes themselves, trainers, coaches and managers. The people working equally as hard behind the scenes supporting them are forgotten, and I am very glad you have shone a light on people like Kate Shilland, a nutritionist who works with Crystal Palace Football Club among others, and Simon Bailey, who is the national chaplain to UK horse racing providing support to jockeys. All these people work hard to support those at the front, and it is nice to see them recognised for it.

LUKE RUSSELL, Yorkshire

Caregiving Decisions

It was with a heavy heart that I read “The Accidental Caregiver” because it struck a chord with me. For better or worse, my father became my mother’s caregiver after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They had moved to Spain before that and spent many years there before they realised my mother was not well and my father moved back to the UK to be near family.

My father never once said my mother should go in a nursing home. He kept her at her home until two days before she died. My sisters and I helped do the things my father found hard, like showering Mum.

I would describe caring for someone with a serious neurological disease as a bit like running a marathon. Many people will say that they will do as much as they can until they can’t anymore, and that’s not good for anyone. My sisters and I all felt my father should have let her go into a nursing home in the latter stages of her illness—it took its toll on all of us looking after her. And if you keep a lot of information private from each other, people will have no idea how bad it might be behind closed doors.

However, I think succeeding as a spousal caregiver means knowing when to ask for help, finding time for yourself and making peace with your partner. If sometimes my father was slightly impatient with my mother, we did not blame him. It was a no-win situation, and my father was always going to lose the love of his life.

GINETTE HUGHES, Hertfordshire

POETRY CORNER

BEST FRIEND

How to carry on with this sorrow, How to make plans for tomorrow, You were my life, my love, and now you’re gone, No wonder I felt I couldn’t go on.

But, wait a minute, what do I see, A little furry face looking up at me, A wagging tail and four little paws, Saying let’s go and have fun in the great outdoors.

I rescued you from the streets and unhappiness, You rescued me from despair and loneliness, Together we can see sunshine through the fog, There is no better friend than a rescue dog.

PAULINE CLARKSON, West Midlands

Want to see your short poem published in Reader’s Digest?

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Email us at readersletters@ readersdigest.co.uk. Include your full name, address and the title of the poem. We’ll pay £30 for every published piece

Tawny Owl

The early star welcomes the evening As the last rays of day paint the sky. I hear the tall grasses converse with the breeze, While a tawny owl listens, nearby.

The chattering stream spills over the stone And scatters the small fish and fry. The mouse with a scurry hides under a leaf, While a tawny owl watches, close by.

The crescent moon follows the bright star And are joined by the small clouds on high. The owl with its claw and pincer-like beak, Swallows the mouse, with a sigh.

MICHAEL TULLY, London

In the huge landscape painting World in Progress II, its creator, who seems to be supporting an animal folded out of paper, is easy to miss. Lying on the ground, Guillaume Legros, who works under the name Saype and lives in the Frenchspeaking part of Switzerland, becomes part of his work. It was to be admired in September 2021 at the feet of the headquarters of the UN in New York.

“Ephemeral artworks” is what Saype calls these paintings, which he sprays onto grass using biodegradable paint. World in Progress II, like the first part of the artwork that the artist created the year before at the UN‘s Geneva site, was a gift from Switzerland to the organisation for its 75th anniversary.

The Social Network

Facebook is dead, Twitter's a bin fire, but social media still has its uses, writes Olly Mann

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the podcasts The Modern Mann, The Week Unwrapped and The Retrospectors

Do you remember when social media felt good? When Friends Reunited connected you back to your high school sweetheart…

Or when you posted a song to MySpace, a giddy thrill akin to decorating your teenage bedroom… Or when Instagram filters miraculously elevated your smudgy camera roll snaps to a (semi) professional standard? It was fun!

Then, you got wise to all that. Fake news. Targeted advertising. Echo chambers. The outrage economy. You began resenting your time spent on social media, rather than enjoying it.

When a family WhatsApp group (supposedly dedicated to your granny’s health logistics) became swamped with stupid memes, you felt trapped. It seemed like a betrayal when that TikToker (who you only followed, during the pandemic, because they looked cute dancing round their kitchen) began posting conspiracy

theories. You stopped responding to those Facebook quizzes—no longer divulging your preferred method of cutlery organisation, or whether you can spot colour patterns in a ballgown—for fear this precious information could somehow be used to compound someone’s eating disorder, or skewer the general election. This was not fun.

I know this happened to you, because it happened to me. Social media became something I needed to

I’m pondering this having just returned from breakfast with my friend, Rob. I say "friend", but really he is someone I met on holiday when I was 16; aside from one trip to Glasgow to visit him three years later, I hadn’t seen him since. In 1997, Rob and I got along famously: we had a similar sense of humour, interest in technology, and high tolerance for rapid-fire chat. But Rob lived in Scotland, and I lived in London. We fell out of touch.

SOCIAL MEDIA—LIKE MANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO USE IT—HAD BECOME A TOOL

use for work—updating LinkedIn with my CV, or scanning through Twitter to stay abreast of the news. But the act of reclining in my sofa, phone in hand, actively absorbing my timeline as a source of entertainment? That life had gone. Social media—like many of the people who use it—had become a tool.

But, occasionally, I’m reminded how powerful a tool it truly is, in ways we have come to take for granted. Far beyond its ability to influence behaviour, build "personal brands", or inspire some unnecessary leap into the "metaverse", social media remains unrivalled in its original, uncommercialised mission—as a connector of people. A facilitator of friendship.

Then, in 2008, when it was all the rage, we became online "Friends". But we didn’t properly communicate; just a few Pokes and emojis. The unspoken context was, "What’s the point? We live at opposite ends of the country." And over time, I frankly forgot about Rob.

But then, last month, I was (I’m ashamed to recount) sitting on the loo, and, having completed the Sunday supplements, found myself doing what I virtually never do anymore: I opened Facebook. For fun.

The usual stuff came first: a campaign poster opposing the sale of my local reservoir. A video ad, ostensibly from some relatable middle-aged mum, promising "four ways to cut your mobile phone bill!".

A guy I once worked with, offering his hot take on The Last Of Us. I didn’t actually read any of this—I just scrolled on, with that familiar mix of mild frustration and otherness.

And then, there it was: a photo of a little girl whom I did not know, winning first prize in a school talent show. A photo, unusually, posted by Rob—the first interaction he’d had on Facebook for years—and tagged with the name of the school his daughter (for it was she) attends. Which is not in Scotland. It is five miles from my house.

Were it not for social media, I would never have known that Rob had moved to my neck of the woods. He is a private person, who now works from home for an American corporation—it’s not like his hometown, or telephone number, is a matter of public record. Were it not for social media, I could not have casually tapped through to Messenger, expressed delight in the coincidence, and asked if he wanted

to meet up for a drink (then discover he’s given up alcohol but OMG he’s local, so we can go for breakfast after I drop the kids off at school one morning, and there is nothing better than a breakfast social).

Over poached eggs and smashed avocado, our conversation flowed just as it had 22 years ago. We agreed to meet up again, with wives and kids in tow this time, and both said how bizarre it was that we’d spent years living so near to each other—shopping in the same delis and charity shops, taking the same commuter train—and yet had never bumped into each other. Truth is, even if we had, I’m not sure I would have recognised him without his profile pic as a visual aid: that teetotalism has been good for his waistline.

Despite all the (necessary) reckoning about how social media disrupts our lives, it was nice to be reminded that, sometimes, it is worth pressing Like. n

Once More With Feeling

The word "encore" may be French for "again", but it actually entered the English language as a corruption of the Italian word "ancora", which was called out by audiences as early as the 18th century in the Italian Opera in London

The French, Germans and Italians instead call out "bis" ("twice" in Latin)

SOURCE: GRAMOPHONE.CO.UK

Emeli Sandé

“I Feel So Grounded Within Myself”

By Simon Button

Happy and confident, singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé looks back on her amazing experiences and talks about the creative period she is in now

Since coming out last year, Emeli Sandé has never felt happier. “It’s all about understanding, accepting and embracing yourself,” the singersongwriter tells me. We’re speaking on the phone so I can’t see her face, but I imagine she’s smiling as she adds: “It has unlocked so many doors both creatively and emotionally within me and I feel so much more grounded within myself.”

Sandé is engaged to classical pianist Yoana Karemova and says of the wedding: “We don’t have a date yet but it’s definitely in talks. We’re very deep in love and it just makes life glorious.”

Emeli Sandé performs at the Belladrum Festival in Inverness, Scotland in 2011

Now 36, Emeli (who was previously married to marine biologist Adam Gouraguine before they split up in 2014) is much more settled in her thirties than she was in her twenties. “One thousand per cent,” she says. “You really settle into yourself as you grow older and you learn so much from different experiences. I look back on my twenties and I couldn’t have had a better time. I lived my dream, got to do all of these amazing performances and make albums. But now in my thirties I can let myself marinate. I feel so much more confident in myself, for sure.”

Released last spring, her fourth album Let’s Say for Instance reflects her happier, more grounded state of

mind. Most of it was recorded during lockdown. “A big inspiration was the idea of connecting with people, because so much of that connection had been taken away. I wanted to make the music as positive and uplifting as I could. I had a studio at home and could go down and record things in the middle of the night. I felt like I had complete freedom.”

Sandé will be playing tracks from the album along with signature songs like “Heaven”, “Next to Me” and “Clown” when she performs at Nocturne Live and the Love Supreme Jazz Festival this summer. She notes: “The great thing about festivals is that you can really push the boat out and try different things. Love Supreme is a jazz event so the band

“THE GREAT THING ABOUT FESTIVALS IS THAT YOU CAN REALLY PUSH THE BOAT OUT”

and I have been speaking about how we’re going to bring new elements of jazz and soul to the songs and reinterpret them.”

Having last year collaborated with jazz instrumentalists Ezra Collective, she continues: “I’ve really enjoyed stepping into the jazz genre more because that’s the music I gravitated towards as a kid. Coming back to it now is exciting and it’s really making me push myself out of my comfort zone. There’s so much freedom in jazz to riff and scat, which you can’t do in the more traditional pop field.”

Emeli was born in Sunderland and raised in Alford, Aberdeenshire by her Zambian father and English mother. She was drawn to music at an early age, saying: “It was all about expression, having a voice and being able to be loud. I sometimes found speaking to people quite difficult as a kid. I was very shy, so music allowed me to kind of have an alter ego and it allowed me to express things I couldn’t otherwise.

“I feel lucky that both of my parents had really good taste in music. Dad introduced me to Anita Baker and I was drawn to the power

Sandé in concert at

Emeli Sande (R) performs during the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games

“BEING AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE OBAMAS AND CAROLE KING WAS UNFORGETTABLE”

and passion of her singing; it was so much more than just presenting a product, it was really from the soul. I loved Elkie Brooks, Celine Dion, Mariah, Whitney—all of these massive singers. I was also drawn to empowered women who wrote their own music and, when it came to jazz, I was so impressed by Nina Simone. I thought, You have to be a writer and a singer and since age seven that’s what I wanted to do.”

Sandé began writing songs about a year later and took up the piano when she was 11 or 12. “When you’re a kid you often feel powerless

and that adults are controlling your life. Music was this little magic corner I could go to and create something. Still to this day it’s such a great feeling when a song appears.”

She was educated at Alford Academy secondary school, where her father was a teacher. That must have put pressure on her to do well?

“Massively,” she laughs. “There was no room for misbehaving or gradeslipping, which, when I look back, I’m thankful for. Education propelled my dad’s life forward and gave him so many opportunities, so he was

adamant that my sister and I didn’t take it for granted.”

Thus when she was offered a record deal at age 16, she turned it down in favour of studying medicine at Glasgow University. “I wanted a bit of stability,” she explains. “Moving to London and trying to chase a dream was something I ultimately ended up doing, but I wanted more security. I loved medicine. Growing up, I really loved physics, chemistry and biology, and I loved the academic challenge. Plus my dad wanted me to graduate before I went on to do music.”

After graduation she co-wrote songs with Naughty Boy for other artists and sang with the Chipmunks on their number six hit “Diamond

Rings” before signing a deal as a solo singer and releasing her debut album Our Version of Events in 2012.

That same year she performed at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. “To be trusted in such a high-pressure situation was an honour, especially since I’d only just made my first album. It was very nerve-wracking, but I managed to pull myself together. I’ll always remember how it felt looking at that microphone, knowing that I was surrounded by thousands of people and that millions were watching it around the world.”

A year later she was at the White House at a ceremony to honour Carole King. “That was equally nervewracking. There was Carole, whom

annual Commonwealth Day Reception 2022

I’d really admired as a songwriter growing up, and the Obamas sat next to her, and I was two yards away. Being in the White House, getting to speak to all these important and powerful people and sing for them, was unforgettable. I spoke to Carole and she was lovely. She was like a ray of sunshine, so positive, and she said, ‘Please keep the art of songwriting alive’. I felt touched that she appreciated what I was doing.” And Barack and Michelle Obama? “My first impression was, Wow, I didn’t realise how tall they were. Barack was fantastic. He put me at ease and he really made me feel like I’d just come round to his house, which I kind of had. He was like, ‘Let’s put on a show, guys,’ and he helped everyone chill out, which is quite a talent in a situation like that.”

Having recently worked with another hero, Nile Rodgers, on the song “When Someone Loves You”, Sandé has just finished recording her fifth album for release later this year. I wonder if she’s happier in the studio or on stage? “I’d say it’s equal, especially after lockdown and not being able to perform,” she concludes. “Sometimes you come off tour, you’re absolutely exhausted and you think, Right, I’m staying in the studio for six years now. But after two years of not being allowed to perform, I missed it so much. You miss the energy and connection.” n

Emeli Sandé is performing at Nocturne Live (nocturnelive.com) on June 16 and at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival (lovesupremefestival.com) from June 30 to July 2

Sandé meets King Charles (then Prince) at the

Jenny Eclair I REMEMBER…

Jenny Eclair (63) came to fame as a Perrier Award winner and is best known for Grumpy Old Women and her stand-up shows. She looks back on being an army brat, working as a life model and her many forays into reality TV

MY FATHER WAS ABSENT A LOT BECAUSE HE WAS IN THE ARMY. I was born in Kuala Lumpur, but my first memory is after we’d moved back to England, when I was living with Mum in Blackpool. I was around three when Dad came home from Arabia, where he was stationed; he put me on his shoulders and pretended that he didn’t know where we lived. We went up and down the road, with him going down the wrong garden paths and asking, "Is it this house?".

MY MOTHER WAS EXTRAORDINARY. She was an army wife who didn’t work, didn’t do much housework and read a lot of books. She only just died this year, actually. My parents had longevity. They had rubbish hair and my dad had rubbish legs and genetically I

haven’t been blessed with very much, but longevity does run in the family. Dad was 90 when he died and Mum was 93. She was probably the most stoic woman I’ve ever met. I’m on loads more heart medication than she ever was. She contracted polio when she was 22 but I think she took half an aspirin her entire life.

I WAS AROUND FOUR WHEN I FOUND I COULD MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH. I used to gatecrash my parents’ dinner parties, where I’d come down wearing my dad’s hats. I liked attention. We didn’t have a television and made up a lot of stories to entertain ourselves. There was a giddiness inside me that I could feel and I just liked laughing, making others laugh and pulling faces.

(Left) Eclair as a young girl; Queen Mary's School; (Right) Eclair's dad

I WENT TO SEVERAL DIFFERENT SCHOOLS including a very progressive primary school in Berlin, which set me up for a fall because it was all about using your imagination, interactive play, no sums and really good food at lunchtime with napkins. It was really civilised and I thought every school was going to be like that.

AFTER BERLIN, DAD WAS STATIONED IN BARNARD CASTLE , in the North East of England, and I went to a notoriously rough school where they were still beating children for not eating potatoes with maggots in them. The whole school used to line up to see someone get plimsoled, you were issued with one thick pencil and had to ask for toilet paper. But that was probably good for me

because I was becoming a little too precious.

AS A TEENAGER I WAS AT A DISCO IN BLACKPOOL pretending to be French when someone asked me my name. I was born Jenny Hargreaves but I said "Jenny Eclair". A few years later I used it when I was in the punk band called Cathy La Crème and the Rum Babas and the name just stuck. By the way, I hate rum babas. They’re disgusting. I can’t stand alcoholbased puddings. I’m a big fan of alcohol but not in desserts.

I STUDIED DRAMA AT MANCHESTER POLYTECHNIC and the school was meant to be a good one, but it was terrible. I got a free place and a grant so I couldn’t ask for my money back. My niece is studying at LAMDA now and they

Eclair with her young family

work them all day, every day. I got nothing like that. It was a sloppy, undisciplined, half-baked course. Mind you, I was a bit of a drop-out, had an eating disorder [anorexia] and I was terribly immature. I was so excited to have left home and to have this freedom that I didn’t really appreciate it.

I WORKED AS A LIFE MODEL FOR A WHILE and I have absolutely no shame about it. I could take my clothes off in front of a class and I wouldn’t be fazed. I have absolutely no prudishness. I despise it and it annoys me in any form. When it comes to art, the nude has been around forever, hasn’t it? I trained as an actress but I wasn’t any good, so after the polytechnic I was more drawn towards cabaret

performance—which was my way of doing something that wasn’t acting but was still on stage. It became apparent to me quite quickly that doing my own stuff and making my own decisions was the way forward.

I WAS A RUBBISH MOTHER AT FIRST. Phoebe was born in 1990 and I wasn’t much good until she learned to talk, then we could barter and emotionally bribe each other with stuff. Seeing her now with her son, I realise I skipped out on it as soon as I could. I got a childminder when she was about five months old and I abdicated all responsibilities as soon as possible. But I’m glad to say that we are very close now.

WINNING THE PERRIER AWARD IN 1995 WAS AN HONOUR because I

was the first solo female performer to do so. But I think it was one of those occasions where I was everybody’s second favourite and they couldn’t agree on a favourite-favourite, so I snuck in there. No one really knew what to do with me because the show at that time was so filthy that it couldn’t be aired on television. There was this kind of lull where it was like "She’s won but now what?". But I just stuck around and chipped away.

The Grumpy Old Women gang ,

GRUMPY OLD WOMEN CAME ALONG IN 2004 through the producer Judith Holder, a dear friend who I now do the Older and Wider podcast with. Grumpy Old Men came first but Grumpy Old Women was much better because Judith filmed a lot of reality stuff in her own home with her husband and kids rather

than just having talking heads. I was skint at the time and it was like, "It’s £400 so why not?". It was a sea change in my career because I got recognised loads more in supermarkets. I’ve no idea whose idea it was to do a live show but we did four in the end and it was great fun.

ONE OF MY WORST ONSTAGE EXPERIENCES WAS WHEN I HAD FOOD POISONING while performing at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. I threw up two or three times during the show. I managed to get to the wings but couldn’t get my mic off in time, so the audience could hear me retching. The other two "old women" had to prolong the sketches.

I’M STILL FRIENDS WITH DOM JOLY, whom I met on I’m a

Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2010, and I was happy to come third. But the weather was awful. Everybody thinks November in Australia is going to be really hot but it was raining and muddy, and at night it was so cold. I lost loads of weight, so at least it was good for that.

,

BEING A PANELLIST ON LOOSE WOMEN WAS SUCH A LAUGH. I was devastated when they didn’t want me anymore, because at the time [2011-2012] it was filmed at the South Bank studios, really close to where I live. We had great guests like Joan Collins, somebody from Blur, lots of other people, and the bookers had a radar for who was going to work as a guest and who wasn’t, so there was never anybody awkward to deal with, plus

Loose Women is not usually big Hollywood names.

I LOVE DOING REALITY TV AND I ESPECIALLY LOVED DOING SPLASH ! Tom Daley is so impressive. I don’t normally fangirl about anybody but I think he’s marvellous. He was there teaching us how to dive, along with the Olympic diving blokes, and what’s not to love about that? I’ve had such a ball doing reality telly, and I’ll do as many as they chuck at me. I’m on Taskmaster now and, although I’m not allowed to divulge any details, it’s like progressing back to primary school. It’s a playground where there’s no meanness.

MY 60TH BIRTHDAY COINCIDED WITH EVERYTHING BEING

CLOSED DOWN. It was May 16, 2020, but I don’t do parties—I’m very antisocial—and I eventually had a belated celebration in Stockholm with the old man Geoff [Powell] two years later. Speaking of Geoff, we met when I was walking down the road and he was underneath his Porsche, fixing it. We gave each other a look, then days or weeks later he came into the bar

where I was working in Covent Garden. He didn’t sit in my station but I said, “Table five is mine,” and it just went from there. n

As told to Simon Button

Jenny Eclair is currently on Taskmaster on Channel 4, Thursdays at 9pm. She is touring the UK with her Sixty Plus! (FFS!) show from September 2. For tickets visit jennyeclair.com

May Showers

Every month of May, a meteor shower called the Eta Aquariid passes over Earth. It's most visible in the southern hemisphere, but stargazers in the northern hemisphere can also see it low in the sky in the predawn hours. This year the shower is visible until May 28, but it peaks between midnight and dawn on May 6

source: rmg.co.uk

Eclair and her husband Geoff

Can Hearing Loss Be Reversed?

The answer may be yes

BY Vanessa Milne

“HI, VANESSA! Nice to see you!” It feels good to hear those words when I see people I know. But I take it for granted that I have even heard that greeting—and, in fact, all other sounds. I never think about how I’m hearing things, how my brain is translating sounds into meaning.

illustrations by Pete Ryan

Yet the process is fascinating. The journey of a sound from outside the ear and into the brain, which takes only milliseconds, is mind-bendingly elaborate. First, the sound waves enter each ear and vibrate the paper-thin eardrum. That vibration moves two small bones behind it, which dance in sync with the sound waves’ vibrations.

THE TRUE IMPACT OF HEARING LOSS IS BECOMING CLEAR: IT’S A MAJOR HEALTH ISSUE

Then a third bone sitting against the cochlea starts to vibrate, and things get really interesting. The cochlea is a pea-sized, bony structure shaped like a snail shell and filled with fluid. It’s lined with tens of thousands of hair cells topped with bundles of miniature tubes called stereocilia. That vibrating third bone beats against the cochlea, like knocking on a door. The cochlea’s fluid sways, and the hair cells wave like sea anemones. That movement causes the hair cells to release chemical neurotransmitters, triggering a series of electrical messages that are carried through the auditory nerves into the auditory cortex of the brain, which translates the electrical code into meaning.

The delicate stereocilia and hair cells have a limited lifespan. We start to lose our hearing because, as they’re used again and again through a lifetime of exposure to sounds at regular volume—or a shorter-term exposure to loud sounds—they can become damaged and stop doing their job. Called presbycusis, this agerelated, or sensorineural, hearing loss is the most common.

If I had mild to moderate presbycusis, certain consonants would be more difficult to discern, so “Hi, Vanessa. Nice to see you!” would sound more like “… i Vane…a. Nice …o …ee you!”

A Widespread, And Growing, Problem

According to the World Health Organisation, about 1.5 billion people have hearing loss, and that number could rise to 2.5 billion—or one in four—by 2050. People with profound hearing loss can now turn to cochlear implants. That’s when an electronic cochlea—a combination of a transmitter and a processor—is placed behind the ear, and a receiver is surgically inserted directly under the skin there.

Aside from age-related hearing loss, there are a couple of other, less common, types. One that can actually be reversible—if it’s treated early enough—is sudden sensorineural hearing loss. It can happen instantly or over the course of just a few days.

There are a variety of possible causes, including infections, head trauma and autoimmune disorders. It often affects only one ear.

The condition is typically treated with corticosteroids, drugs that fight inflammation, reduce swelling, and help your body fight off diseases. The medication is either injected directly into your ear or given orally as pills. This treatment can reduce or even reverse the hearing loss, but only if it’s administered quickly.

“I know many people who have had sudden hearing loss in one ear and thought it was nothing,” says Susan Scollie, who is a professor at the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and director of the National Centre for Audiology at Western University in Ontario. It’s fortunate, she says, that there is a treatment, “but

if you wait too long, the hearing loss can be permanent.”

For more moderate hearing loss that happens over a longer period of time, the standard treatment is hearing aids, but though they help a lot, many people who use them report that decoding speech in places with lots of background noise is still a challenge.

More Than Just An Inconvenience

But is it such a big deal if we can’t hear certain sounds? Yes, as it turns out. The true impact of hearing loss has been the subject of lots of new research and is becoming increasingly clear: it’s not just an annoyance, but a major health issue.

“For a long time, hearing loss was seen as an inevitable part of ageing, and relatively inconsequential,” says Frank Lin, director of the Cochlear Centre for Hearing and Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “But over the past decade, that’s really been turned on its head.”

Researchers have now connected hearing loss with other health problems. Studies have found that it can more than double the likelihood of having a fall, for example, and can lead to anxiety and problems sleeping.

People with hearing loss are also at risk of mental illness: a 2020 Australian review published in Gerontologist looked at 35 studies covering almost 150,000 people and found that hearing

loss was associated with a higher risk of depression in older adults. They suspect that people who lose their hearing don’t go out and socialise as much—perhaps because they often have a hard time following conversations where there is background noise—contributing to increased feelings of loneliness.

We have long known that living in isolation may be the reason hearing loss has been linked with loneliness and depression; research has also shown that isolation contributes to mental illness and even increases the risk of dementia.

In fact, there is a strong link between hearing loss and dementia. A 2020 report published in The Lancet identified 12 modifiable risk factors for dementia—and ranked hearing loss as the most significant one for middle-aged people. It recommended

that people with hearing loss use hearing aids to mitigate its negative cognitive effects.

The reason for the link could be that people who socialise less have fewer cognitively challenging conversations. Those with mild hearing loss are twice as likely to develop dementia; moderate hearing loss means it’s three times as likely; and people with profound hearing loss are five times more likely.

While hearing aids can’t reverse these things or give us the same quality of hearing we once had, they might help prevent the mental health effects.

Lin is currently running a large trial to see if using hearing aids reduces the risk of dementia, and whether or not they can help to decrease the incidence of falls. The results, due around mid-2023, will tell us, for the first time, whether interventions to prevent hearing loss have reduced the risk of these other issues.

Gene Therapy To Restore Hearing?

Other solutions are in the works. Researchers are looking at ways to help people regrow the cochlea’s hair cells and stereocilia cells to restore hearing. Some have taken inspiration from the animal kingdom: when birds and reptiles suffer from hearing loss, they regrow those cells, and can hear again within a few weeks—just as our bodies regularly grow new skin cells.

New hair cells in the cochlea would mean that, instead of just turning up the volume of all noise, as hearing aids do, we’d be able to hear naturally, and easily pick out speech from background noise.

So how might this be done? By harnessing our own genes. About half of age-related hearing loss has a genetic component, says Richard Smith, a physician and director of the Molecular Otolaryngology and Renal Research Laboratories at the University of Iowa. His group offers gene testing to people with hearing loss to try to pinpoint the reason behind it, which provides insights into how their hearing loss will progress.

Smith is confident that in the future, genetic testing will become more common around hearing loss, and new solutions will be available for those issues, offering a personalised approach that’s different for each patient.

“There’s a tremendous sense of excitement on the research side as we move forward with different types of gene therapy for hearing loss,” he says. “In the not-too-distant future we may have options besides hearing aids and cochlear implants.”

Decibel Therapeutics is one company that is working to make that future a reality. It’s trying to come up with gene-based solutions for hearing loss in adults.

“The idea is that you might be able to use gene-therapy technology to

regrow the hair cells that have been lost,” says Jonathon Whitton, audiologist, neuroscientist and senior vice-president of clinical research and

IN THE NOT-TOODISTANT FUTURE, THERE MAY BE OPTIONS BESIDES HEARING AIDS

development at Decibel Therapeutics in Boston.

The company is researching half a dozen gene-therapy products, three of which target hair-cell regeneration. The others tackle single-gene causes of hearing loss and protecting hearing in people about to undergo a type of chemotherapy that often leads to hearing loss. Two of the treatments have moved on to the clinical-trial phase, and others that show promise will follow within the next few years.

Whitton says the advent of regenerative medicine has already given scientists, healthcare practitioners and patients “an emerging spirit of optimism.”

The New Hearing Aids

As potential innovations work their way through the clinical pipeline, there are better mechanical options than ever before: next-generation hearing aids.

They also have noise-reduction capabilities, and microphones that can change direction automatically. “It’s really the equivalent of several hearing aids at once, moving back and forth seamlessly,” says Scollie.

Digital hearing aids have come a long way since their introduction in the mid-1990s. “We have gone from the first generation of digital hearing aids to fourth- or fifth-generation ones, and there have been a lot of improvements,” says Western University’s Scollie.

“Many of the improvements have been small, but they add up to a better-quality product. The single hearing aid that people receive today is the technological equivalent of seven or eight hearing aids all in one.”

One important improvement is the ability for hearing aids to automatically switch modes depending on the environment: for example, changing how they work when you’re in a quiet car listening to music versus in a crowded restaurant listening to a conversation you’re having.

The newest features also include Bluetooth, which can be connected wirelessly to a phone to have a conversation or stream music. It’s easier to hear when the voice on the other end of the phone comes through both ears, says Scollie, and it’s more convenient to be able to use hearing aids as high-quality headphones as well. It’s also possible to log in to an app to adjust the settings of your hearing aid.

A few hearing aids even do step counting, says Scollie, and she expects biometric sensors to be the next big development. This means that hearing aids would measure heartbeat and body temperature like a smartwatch does. “Measuring some of those things in the ear is actually a more appropriate location than the wrist,” she explains.

More Affordable Hearing Aids

The UK, and other European countries in Europe, already offer over-thecounter hearing aids. But new regulations in the United States in 2022 have also made them a reality there; it’s thought that Canada might follow its lead. This means that instead of going to an audiologist and getting a

CHEAPER HEARING AIDS CAN BE A GATEWAY FOR PEOPLE WHO MAY

NOT

OTHERWISE BUY THEM

hearing aid prescription, similar to the way we get a prescription for eyeglasses, consumers can buy these less expensive versions without actually needing a prescription.

The development comes with some caveats: what if a person’s sudden hearing loss is caused by an illness, for example, that needs to be treated promptly if it’s to be reversed? Others worry that people who buy over-thecounter hearing aids won’t get the personal fitting, adjustments and follow-up service they might need.

But on the positive side, these overthe-counter products could also act as a gateway for people who might not

otherwise buy hearing aids. One study estimated that more than 80 per cent of Americans with hearing loss don’t wear hearing aids.

HEARING LOSS RUNS in my family: my grandparents needed hearing aids, and my father uses them. One day I may need them, too. His are much more advanced than my grandmother’s were, complete with Bluetooth and the ability to “tune” to different situations, like crowds.

But they’re still not perfect in noisy environments. I ask Decibel’s Whitton whether he thinks it’s possible that, by the time 40-year-olds like me are in their fifties or sixties, we might be able to use medication, not technology, to treat hearing loss?

“Yes,” he says, pointing out that there is growing interest from researchers trying to solve this problem. “All these companies are being built around the idea that we can get there.” n

Lunar Phrases

The moon’s an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls

GEORGE CARLIN

Promises are like the full moon. If they are not kept at once they diminish day by day

GERMAN PROVERB

Team Player

Why you should consider volunteering for a clinical trial

by Sydney Loney From Chatelaine

I’m not sure how many tubes of blood I donated in the end—not being fond of needles, I fixed my gaze over the nurse’s left shoulder throughout the proceedings. But it felt like a lot. And yet it also felt like it was the least I could do to give back.

Illustration by Jeff Kulak

I’m now one year into a five-year clinical trial studying my emotional response to the results of genomic sequencing, a relatively new type of test that digs into nearly every letter of your DNA code (unlike traditional genetic testing, which looks at only a few genes at a time).

One of the goals of the trial is to determine how useful genomic sequencing is for both doctors and patients. In addition to the bloodletting, all that’s required of me are periodic 30- to 60-minute Zoom interviews with the researchers for the first year and a half, after which the team will continue to study my health data quietly in the background.

As someone who has been successfully treated for two different types of cancer, I know just how important clinical trials are when it comes to finding new ways to detect, diagnose and treat disease.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be here otherwise. And it was thanks to the trial of a new drug that a cousin of mine, who had been diagnosed with a rare, and terminal, form of lung cancer, was able to spend an extra year with his young family.

In my case, scientists were looking for cancer patients who had been given a negative genetic test result and were open to receiving genomic sequencing in hopes of discovering a gene related to their disease.

Maybe it would help identify a new genetic link to cancer. Maybe it

would offer my family answers about our seemingly genetic susceptibility to wayward cell mutations. And, just maybe, it would help lead to new treatments for future generations of cancer patients. To me, it’s humbling to be even a small part of that possibility.

Not All Research Is Created Equal

If you’ve ever shut down a case of the sniffles with cold medicine or hiked up your sleeve for a vaccine, it’s only because that treatment endured a long, thorough research process. No new treatment will be approved before it’s been through rigorous clinical trials.

According to Dr Jonathon Maguire, a paediatric scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, clinical trials are the gold standard for determining the benefits and harms of any health intervention. “We want healthcare to be as strong as it can be and for the risks to be as low as possible. For that, we need clinical trials,” he says.

There are three main types of health research: population research (correlational studies that look for relationships between two or more variables, say), laboratory studies with controlled experiments (think beakers and Bunsen burners) and clinical trials.

“A clinical trial assigns human participants to one or more

treatments or interventions to study their effects,” says Alison Orth, the unit director of Clinical Trials BC at Michael Smith Health Research in Vancouver, and a former clinical trial participant herself (Orth was part of a study involving a new whooping cough vaccine that showed fewer side effects than its predecessor).

When the trial begins, Phase 1 is all

FOR SOME PEOPLE, ENROLLING IN A TRIAL IS ALTRUISTIC. FOR ME, IT WAS OUT OF GRATITUDE

looks at its long-term effects. All of this can take up to ten years.

While the exact requirements for clinical trials and the standard of care differ slightly from country to country, trials generally follow this format worldwide, mirroring the World Health Organisation’s definition of a clinical trial that has three to five phases.

about safety and side effects and involves small numbers of participants—maybe 20 to 80 at most.

“Once the intervention has demonstrated its safety, researchers then focus on how well it works in different populations with an increasing number of participants in the trial, often in multiple countries,” says Orth.

Phase 2, which can involve up to 300 people, studies whether the treatment works as expected, while Phase 3 looks at groups of 1,000 to 3,000 people to determine how the treatment compares to other options or a placebo. Finally, once the treatment has proven itself, Phase 4

The speedy introduction of COVID19 vaccines occurred because of an unprecedented collaboration between scientists, politicians and manufacturers on their combined quest for a safe medical solution to the pandemic. Countries shared information and research findings, extra funding materialised, while red tape vanished and a lot of non-Covid research was put on hold. What would normally have taken years took months instead.

“It’s essential to understand that the Covid vaccines were developed based on science, technology and preparedness protocols that had been under clinical development and testing for some time before the pandemic,” says Orth.

But in addition to saving countless lives, the Covid vaccines may point the way toward faster clinical trials in the future.

More Awareness, More Participation

For these trials, researchers need participants. Unfortunately, not

everyone is keen to play guinea pig. In 2019, Canadian researchers (Orth among them) published a survey of 1,602 people. They found that 49 per cent were “somewhat willing” to participate in a clinical trial.

On the other hand, 43 per cent said they didn’t feel very well informed about the trial process and 37 per cent didn’t have any opinion whatsoever.

While many people have no problem volunteering their time to other worthy causes, Maguire has

seen first-hand a reluctance to volunteer for science.

He says that can stem from a fear of the potential risks (even though, he says, “The risks are very low—clinical trials are regulated by research ethics boards and they just don’t happen if they’re risky”) and a general sense of “What’s in it for me?”

It’s a fair question. For some, enrolling in a trial comes from pure altruism. Others, like me, enrol out of a sense of gratitude. As one of Orth’s

How to Find a Clinical Trial

The World Health Organisation offers a search portal for both ongoing and completed trials, so you can track any interesting new treatments on the horizon. For its part, the United States National Institutes of Health has set up a comprehensive database of more than 400,000 clinical studies in some 150 countries.

Another option is to ask your GP about clinical trials that might be a good fit for you. While you don’t necessarily need a doctor’s referral, it can be helpful to have an expert take you through the risks and benefits of participating in a trial.

Local university-affiliated hospitals, medical centres and

patient-support groups are also excellent places to learn about clinical trials in your area.

For people who still aren’t quite sure they want to be part of an experiment, paediatric scientist Dr Jonathon Maguire recommends checking out the People’s Trial. The website, created by a healthresearch board in Ireland, asks people from around the world what questions they’d like answered. It then sets up trials to find those answers.

One submission: whether reading a book in bed makes a difference to sleep. It turns out that 42 per cent of people felt their sleep improved after they read a book in bed. Thank you, science.

survey participants said, “Without previous clinical trials, I would not have received the excellent care and treatment plan. I feel it is paying it forward to be included and I hope that, when the trial is over, it will help other women in the future.”

For a long time, women weren’t explicitly required to be included in clinical trials. In Canada, for example, it wasn’t until 1997 that Health Canada decided they needed to be. In Europe, EU regulations that came into effect last year state that clinical trial participants should represent the people likely to actually

use the product, indicating an expectation of inclusion.

“Historically, clinical trials have lacked demographic diversity in their study populations,” says Orth. But everyone gets sick—and not everyone gets better the same way.

“People may react differently to the same treatment based on their age, sex, weight, race or ethnicity,” she continues. “It’s essential to include people in trials who closely reflect the population for whom the treatment is intended.”

Orth adds that there is finally a global recognition that we need to ensure better access and support for all communities to participate in clinical trials. However, it’s not always easy to get people to sign up.

“There’s still a degree of scepticism about science and the medical system as a whole,” says Maguire. He adds that we also don’t celebrate the people who participate in clinical trials enough, citing the Covid vaccine trials as an example.

“Every one of those people saved a lot of lives,” Maguire explains. “They’re heroes.” n © 2021, SYDNEY LONEY. FROM “TEAM PLAYER,” CHATELAINE (DECEMBER 2021), CHATELAINE.COM

Seasonal Trends

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older

VIRGINIA WOOLF

6 Changes That Could Help Your Asthma

Some triggers for this common breathing condition may surprise you. But there are ways of coping with them

1. Ease up on the housework

Susannah Hickling is twice winner of the Guild of Health Writers Best Consumer

Magazine Health Feature

It’s well known that dust can bring on an attack, but so can the chemicals in cleaning products like bleach and detergents. The key to easy breathing is to keep dust down and windows open, while avoiding sprays and aerosols and opting for unscented products that are low in VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

2. Pick painkillers carefully

Up to 20 per cent of asthmatics are sensitive to aspirin and ibuprofen, which are NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). If you’ve got a headache or a bad back, it’s better to reach for paracetamol. But, be warned, frequent use of paracetamol has also been linked to asthma. Beta-blockers used to treat

high blood pressure and other heart problems can set off asthma symptoms in some people too.

3. Calm down

Stress and anxiety make many conditions worse, and asthma’s no exception. First off, make sure your asthma is well managed and you’re taking your meds as prescribed. Then try to avoid stress. Easier said than done, we all know, but eating well, staying connected with friends and family, and exercising regularly will help. Excitement or even laughing can sometimes provoke an asthma attack, but breathing exercises can ease your wheezing.

4. Stay grounded

If there’s a choice between taking the train or the car and catching a flight, it’s better to opt for rail or road travel if you suffer from hard-to-control asthma. There’s less oxygen at high altitudes, which puts pressure on the lungs. Other triggers—such as dust or perfumes—in the air that’s circulated in the cabin could also set you off.

5. Practise asthma-safe sex

Bad news—there are several ways making love can bring on an attack! The most obvious one is the physical activity involved; your heart rate

EATING WELL, SEEING FRIENDS AND FAMILY, AND EXERCISING REGULARLY WILL HELP

increases and you breathe faster. Heightened emotions play a part too and if scented products, such as perfume or scented candles, are in the mix, these might also trigger symptoms. Some people have a latex allergy which can bring on asthma if you use condoms. Making sure your condition is well controlled and avoiding your triggers will help ensure sex makes you feel good, not ill.

6. Back off from the booze

Do you get a tight chest and struggle to breathe after a few bevvies?

Unfortunately, you might be allergic to the sulphites in cider, beer and wine. These are preservatives that occur naturally or are added to alcoholic drinks. You might get symptoms as soon as you start drinking or even the following day. Alcohol also contains histamines. These, too, can provoke an attack if you’re sensitive to them. Try to narrow down which drinks affect you and stay away. It’s possible to buy wine that’s low in sulphites. If you’re unfortunate enough to be sensitive to all alcohol, it might be best to avoid it altogether. Sorry! n

Crazy Facts About Crying

There are three types of tears

The first type, basal tears, keep the eye lubricated and prevent infection. We cry reflex tears in response to, say, peeling an onion or smoke and, again, they help fight germs. Last and definitely not least are emotional tears, prompted by strong feelings.

Some people can’t cry Sometimes people might be too depressed and emotionally numb to shed tears, but for others there are physical reasons. Dry eye syndrome, where the eyes are dry and gritty, can prevent you from crying proper tears. It might be because you spend too much time in a dry environment, or at a computer screen, or sometimes it can be age related or due to a health condition. Some medications reduce the quantity of tears you produce—for example, SSRIs which treat depression, antihistamines and some blood pressure meds.

Weeping can make you happy A lot of people feel better after a good cry, because shedding tears releases the feelgood chemicals oxytocin and endorphins. At any rate, bottling up your emotions is considered bad for mental wellbeing—a University of Texas

study found it can actually intensify feelings and make you aggressive. And then there are tears of happiness— when something amazing happens, you have strong feelings for someone or you cry with laughter.

Blubbing is good for your health Weeping triggers your parasympathetic nervous system, lowering your heart and breathing rates, and blood pressure. A metaanalysis of 22 studies found an association between repressing emotion and a higher risk of diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, especially high blood pressure.

People shed more tears in societies with greater gender equality Dutch researchers studying crying across 37 countries found that people, especially women, were more likely to cry in wealthier, more democratic and individualistic societies. They theorised it was because people had the freedom to express their emotions rather than because they were more unhappy. n

For more weekly health tips and stories, sign up to our newsletter at readersdigest.co.uk

Ask The Expert: Ovarian Cancer

Dr Adrian Franklin is a consultant clinical oncologist at GenesisCare in Guildford, and the Royal Surrey County Hospital

How did you become a specialist in treating ovarian cancer? I like physics and, as a radiation oncologist, I do brachytherapy, which is radiotherapy using radioactive implants. I started doing cervix brachytherapy and one by one all the other gynaecological tumours came my way, including ovarian cancer. It’s fascinating and a great privilege—you meet wonderful people from all backgrounds.

lifestyle and being body aware are important. Certainly, controlling your weight can help. If you are worried about any symptoms, seek advice as soon as possible.

What symptoms should women look out for? The symptoms are very generic. They can be bloating, abdominal pain, a change in bowel habits or not eating quite as much. See your GP if you have persistent tiredness and bloating together.

Who is most at risk? Being over 50 is a big risk factor. Starting periods early together with late menopause, having no children, a family history of cancer and being overweight can increase risk. There’s also a slightly increased risk for women taking oestrogen-only HRT and those who have endometriosis.

What can women do to reduce their risk? Having a healthy, balanced

What are the most interesting new developments in the detection and treatment of ovarian cancer? A couple of studies are looking at BRCA carriers—carriers of a faulty gene that can cause breast and ovarian cancer. Women with this, like Angelina Jolie, sometimes have mastectomies and annual MRI scans. Another is looking at removing the fallopian tubes, because we think many primary peritoneal cancers are likely to come from the fallopian tube. A study finding an association between women taking more indigestion tablets and later being diagnosed with ovarian cancer means this can now be part of health surveillance. The big development that is changing prognosis and quality of life is the use of PARP inhibitors. This is a targeted therapy that increases the time before the disease progresses. n For further information go to: genesiscare.com/uk/condition/cancer/ ovarian-cancer

Pill Popping

Dr Max muses on why people (himself included) take vitamin supplements

Every day I do something that, in certain circles, would raise a few eyebrows. If you’re honest, I bet lots of you do it too.

While I know that the evidence suggests I am wasting my time and money, each day without fail, I take a fist-full of vitamin supplements. It started off innocently enough—a multi-vitamin while I was recovering from flu a few years ago. More recently I noticed that I’d developed a funny creaking sound in my

knees. Imagining my future life in a wheelchair, despite the assurances of a rheumatologist friend, I started taking cod liver oil. After that, it was easy to add in ginseng, then vitamin B complex, and garlic. And of course where would I be without my echinacea? In bed, nursing a lifethreatening cold, no doubt.

The evidence would suggest that, as I have a fairly balanced diet, I’m not infirm, pregnant or alcoholic, there is absolutely no need for me to take any form of supplement. Countless studies have shown that they make absolutely no difference, except to your wallet. In addition to this, research is also emerging that suggests taking excessive amounts of supplements can actually do harm.

This got me thinking about the nation’s penchant for pill popping. That we need vitamins and minerals is not in dispute. That we need them from a bottle is what scientists would challenge. Studies have shown that vitamin supplements

simply don’t work in the same way as those occurring naturally in food, probably because it’s not just the vitamin that is important but a whole complex interplay between naturally occurring substances which just can’t be replicated and packaged.

In an often-cited study conducted by Cornell University, for example, it was found that apples contained many other naturally occurring chemicals in addition to vitamin C, including antioxidants called flavonoids and polyphenols. This meant that eating a small apple gave an antioxidant effect equivalent to taking 1500mg of vitamin C—far higher than most supplements— and in addition had anti-allergy, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and anti-viral properties as a result of the array of other chemicals they contained termed “phytochemicals”.

Objectively, it’s clear. For your average person living an average life, there is absolutely no need to take vitamin pills.

But the crucual question is: do I feel any better since I started taking supplements? And the answer is a resounding “yes”. I don’t feel healthier; I don’t get fewer colds. I can’t remember whole decks of playing cards or lift cars off trapped children. But I no longer worry that in some way my diet is letting me down. I’m careful not to exceed recommended daily allowances of

vitamin supplements, but taking a few pills each morning means I don’t feel guilty when I eat a pizza and leave the salad, or when I have Coco Pops instead of muesli.

This feeling of guilt and anxiety is a direct result of all the scaremongering from the medical and scientific communities about how we’re all facing ill-health because we don’t eat properly. It seems to me that the boom in vitamin supplements is a direct result of the pressure that we’re put under to lead healthy lives. It’s an artefact of the anxiety that they manufacture. Vitamin supplements aren’t really about not getting colds, saving our hearts or improving our nervous system. It’s about feeling a bit more relaxed about eating banoffee pie instead of a banana. I get a strange satisfaction from my morning ritual. I haven’t become more cavalier in my attitude to my health since taking supplements, just less worried about it. I believe that somehow, despite the evidence, they must be doing me good. I hand over my money, pop the pills and, most importantly, relax. And for that reason, they’re worth every penny. n

Max is a hospital doctor, author and columnist. He currently works full-time in mental health for the NHS. His new book, The Marvellous Adventure of Being Human, is out now

The Doctor Is In

Dr Max Pemberton

Q: I was wondering if there is a time scale for how long it would be before you would know you were suffering from side effects from medication. If you had been taking the medication for, say, a month or so, with no side effects, would it be safe to say that you are unlikely to have any side effects? Or can side effects appear months or years later? I am asking as I want to start using a hormonebased cream.

- Barbara

A: This is a really good question. Doctors are often asked a lot about side effects of medication and, if I’m honest, I think we’re not always that good at discussing them before we prescribe them, leaving patients to read those drug information leaflets with long lists of side effects, which can cause a lot of worry, often unnecessarily.

All medications have the possibility of causing side effects. Topical medications like creams or ointments tend to have more local reactions—things like rashes, redness or itching, depending on what the medication is. Tablets

can have more widespread effects on the body because the medication is distributed everywhere. The majority of side effects from medications subside within a few days to weeks.

You mentioned starting a hormone cream and most of the potential side effects of these are local skin reactions. However, some creams are absorbed into the body, so they can produce effects elsewhere. You don’t mention what type of hormone cream so it’s difficult to give a list of possible side effects for you.

Oestrogen gel is increasingly being used as HRT and doesn’t appear to increase the risk of blood clots. If you still have a womb though, the current recommendation is that you might need to take a form of progesterone to reduce the risk of uterus (womb) cancer. Oestrogen creams used in the vagina to help with dryness don’t carry the usual risk of HRT, don’t increase the risk of blood clots and don’t increase the risk of womb cancer, so you don’t need to take progesterone.

As a rule of thumb though, it’s always a good idea to specifically ask the doctor who is prescribing about possible side effects. n

Seeing is believing...

Want A Better Memory? Walk This Way!

These everyday steps will enrich your recall, says our memory expert, Jonathan Hancock

Afriend’s son is about to embark on the Camino de Santiago—the network of pilgrim paths that leads to the cathedral Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The route will take him several weeks, and it’s bound to be a very memorable trip. But then any walk can do wonders for your memory—if you let it.

We’re naturally good at remembering routes. It’s an in-built survival tactic, and the reason why many ancient learning techniques rely on journeys. Picture a familiar walk, visualise memory-jogging clues along the way, and when you retrace your mental steps, you’ll find that all the images are where you left them— you can remember your list with ease.

Real walks are even better. They wake your senses, take you to inspiring new places and get oxygen flowing to your brain. Research shows that 11 minutes of gentle exercise a day promotes good mental health— another vital foundation for memory. Walking with others brings more benefits. It’s often easier to talk freely when walking side-by-side rather than standing face-to-face. And your

conversations are more memorable— your brain connects where you were with what you were talking about.

Here are three easy ways to get these memory effects working for you:

• To prepare for a presentation or exam, recap key points as you reach particular landmarks. Later, thinking about those stopping-points should trigger the information you need.

• If you’re trying to stick to a goal or change a habit, associate it with a place you pass regularly. Choose an appropriate image to visualise and bring that to mind every time you walk by. You’ll get a regular reminder to keep your behaviour on track.

• Return to walks you’ve done in the past that remind you of happy feelings, people you miss and times that are wonderful to revisit. Walking in a familiar landscape, with time to take in environmental clues, activates treasured memories like nothing else.

Sometimes, walks really can become pilgrimages to the past. You certainly don’t have to go as far as Santiago de Compostela to tread some memorable pathways of your own. n

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Just Divorced

Why it's time for a change in the way divorced people are viewed by society

Amid streamers and bunting for birthdays, today you might also find decorations for divorce parties in the eventplanning aisle.

Mostly aimed at women, these wares are bright and cheerful, bearing slogans like “I do, I did, I’m done!”. They certainly paint a sunnier picture of divorce than what women lived through a century ago. Back then, divorce was nothing short of a scandal; a middle finger to social codes of respectability.

Monica Karpinski is a writer and editor focused on women’s health, sex, and relationships. She is the founder of women’s health media platform The Femedic

It was proof you’d failed as a woman, both in pleasing your husband and keeping your family unit together.

Today, divorce is something common and familiar. In the 1990s, Camilla Parker-Bowles gave highprofile representation to divorce in a way that was unprecedented for the royal family; the 2000s were peppered with big-name celebrity splits (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, anyone?). It happens to our neighbours, friends, and colleagues—around 42 per cent of present-day UK marriages will end in divorce.

But don’t raise a glass to how far we’ve come just yet. It’s 2023, and women are yet to completely shake that centuries-old stigma.

The term “broken home” is still used to describe families with divorced parents. We see divorcees lauded as “brave”—a backhanded compliment suggesting that being single is something to fear.

In 2020, newspapers applauded Davina McCall for “breaking her

silence” on her divorce simply by speaking about it, as if it were something she should be embarrassed about.

And who could forget the avalanche of media coverage around Jennifer Aniston following her split from Brad Pitt in 2005?

TODAY, DIVORCE IS SOMETHING COMMON AND FAMILIAR

According to the tabloids, her marriage broke down because she was too selfish and career-focused to fulfil her womanly duties: popping out babies.

The common thread here, running right from 1900 to now, is the idea that being a wife—and satisfying the gendered expectations that come with it—is the good and proper way for women to live. And going against the grain still carries consequences.

Many folks report being judged and excluded by others post-divorce. One small study even named the social fallout from divorce as the most constant source of distress from the entire experience.

For some, this means they lose friends. “I’ve been feeling stigmatised every time I have to say I’m divorced in any social situation,” wrote one user on discussion app Reddit at the end of last year. “Married friends seem to have put some distance [between us], as if divorce was contagious or something.”

Yet divorce itself is often for the better. It might hurt initially, but in

the long run, studies show that women are more likely to report greater life satisfaction following divorce than men.

How can we shift the shame around divorce to help us reach the light at the end of the tunnel?

Ending a marriage may never be easy, but seeing it as a neutral or even positive decision made between two adults can help change perceptions around it.

This starts with the way we speak to ourselves. It’s easy to internalise the idea that you’re a failure when your marriage runs its course, but according to research from the University of Arizona, if you instead accept divorce as part of life’s ups and downs then you’re more likely to fare better psychologically.

People with this attitude were more likely to accept their negative feelings and treat themselves with kindness. Better still: the researchers found that these are skills that can be taught. With time and practice, we can learn to be more sensitive and empathetic towards ourselves.

Those around us can take a leaf out of that book, and reflect on how they view and act towards divorced people. Social change takes a long time, but it’s driven by the choices we make. If we can accept that divorce is perfectly normal, we only need to start treating it that way. n

Relationship Advice

Monica Karpinski

Q: I have been using online dating apps for almost a year now and get some interest, but more than a few people I’ve matched with have just suddenly stopped texting me after a while. Why are they ghosting me? Can I do anything to prevent this from happening? - Jen

A: The reasons for ghosting are manifold, and sometimes there’s no good reason at all. Sadly, it does come with the territory of online dating—per a 2020 survey by dating app Hinge, 91 per cent of users say they’ve been ghosted.

A lot of the time, ghosting is a way to avoid conflict and uncomfortable situations. On dating apps, it’s also absurdly easy: you won’t be held accountable for going silent, and have no shortage of other profiles to connect with instead.

The number one reason that people ghost is convenience, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality . It’s easier to cut communication than deal with any awkwardness, or to be vulnerable with someone and see where things go.

In situations like this, ghosting is about them rather than you, and sadly there’s nothing you can do about it.

Losing interest in a new match is another common reason for radio silence. You could try to prevent things fizzling out over text by suggesting a phone call or meeting up. There’s no firm rule for how long you should wait, but I say at least a week.

It also must be said that sometimes, people ghost to protect themselves. I’m sure you conduct yourself with kindness and respect towards other people on the apps, but this is worth bearing in mind in regards to others ghosting you.

If you’ve been ghosted and aren’t sure why, it’s OK to reach out and seek answers.

When you do, use clear and neutral language. For example: “Hey, I just wanted to check in on where you’re at with us. If you aren’t feeling a connection, that’s fine, but I don’t want to assume anything. Let me know!”

Only do this once, and if you still don’t get an answer at all then that is an answer. n

(Left) The Prince of Wales on a visit to Donaghadee Harbour in Northern Ireland, where he viewed stones lining the harbour walls that were decorated with messages of hope during the pandemic, May 21, 2021; (Right) Prince Charles on his fifth birthday, November 14, 1953

The Life Of

CHARLES III KING

As the eldest son of Britain's longest-reigning monarch is crowned, we look back at the life of King Charles III and ponder what the future of the monarchy might look like under his rule

BY Jennifer McShane

When King Charles III became the UK’s new sovereign following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, his first public address thanked his “darling mama” for her love and devotion to their family and the family of nations she so diligently served through the years of her reign. It was clear then, the first child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was aware of the enormity of what lay ahead as her successor, but also his intent to honour and continue the work she had done so faithfully for decades.

Charles, 73, was born at Buckingham Palace in London in 1948. He was just three years old when he became the heir apparent as his mother acceded to the throne as queen, following the untimely death of her father, King George VI. For over seven decades, he had known he would sit on the throne as his mother did, but in his case, he had had plenty of time to prepare as he dutifully worked at, as some have called it, “the longest apprenticeship in history.”

From a young age, the future king saw first hand the sacrifices his mother made in the devotion to royal duty as a young woman. Safe to say, she had far less time than most mothers to spend with her firstborn son and heir, whose known shyness and sensitivity as a small child,

alongside the frequent-yet-necessary absences of both his parents, was noted by those closest to him.

When Princess Elizabeth (she was not yet queen until her accession to the throne in 1952) joined Prince Philip at his naval posting in Malta over Christmas 1949, they left behind their one-year-old son with his grandparents at Sandringham, and apparently missed seeing his first steps and first teeth. Further foreign trips followed without their eldest son, and when Prince Charles uttered his first word, it was apparently “Nana,” addressed to his nanny, whom he saw more of than any other person at that time. It was not easy for the parents or the child, but over the years, Charles has frequently spoken of admiring them both for their devotion to their family and the monarchy, even when their absence undoubtedly left a gap in the formative years of his childhood. His mother’s absence meant more time spent with his father, Prince Philip, who noted his young son’s more reserved demeanour (compared to the more robust character of his sister, Princess Anne, for example) and sought to encourage his son. However, those closest to Charles noted it didn’t always have the desired affect. As Prince Philip’s cousin, Lady Mountbatten said, according to a biography on Philip, the prince, “could see that Charles was a terribly sensitive boy who was going to come up against a lot of

(Clockwise from top)

Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh with Prince Charles, April 26, 1949; The Prince of Wales waves to the crowd as he is driven from Buckingham Palace to Euston station to take a train to Balmoral, and spend Whitsun with his parents and his sister, Princess Anne, May 27, 1955; Princess Elizabeth with her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne on Anne's first birthday, August 15, 1951

(Top) A portrait of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, commissioned for his 18th birthday, November 14, 1966. He is wearing the Balmoral tartan; (Bottom) Prince Charles, colonelin-chief of the parachute regiment, at the South Cerney, Gloucestershire dropping zone where he made two parachute jumps in one day as part of a Royal Air Force training course for

problems… I’m sure he just wanted to help make his character more robust… but in retrospect I think he overdid it sometimes".

He was the first heir to the throne of Britain to go to school rather than getting tutored at the family palace, briefly attending Hill House, a small pre-prep school in London, aged eight, before going as a boarder to his father’s old prep school, Cheam.

Charles, a very different character to his father, has spoken of not enjoying his time there. The same could be said for his time at Gordonstoun, where his father had been head boy, with Charles being open about its tough environment, though still appreciative of his experience there, particularly into his adult years.

It was also in Gordonstoun where his love of the arts came to the fore and he would act in numerous plays. “It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did—mentally or physically. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself… It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative,” Charles said in a House of Lords speech in 1975.

Charles grew gradually closer to both his parents. Following Queen Elizabeth’s death, he said in a documentary aired on the BBC that he felt incredibly “lucky” to have her as his mother. And his Prince’s Trust charity was one of several examples of

shared interests with his father (who had earlier set up the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme).

Royal historian Mok O’Keeffe adds that it’s this work with his Prince’s Trust that set into motion what he’ll continue as king, championing the marginalised in society—the foundation of The Prince’s Trust. “His work with The Prince’s Trust has given many the skills and confidence to improve their lives,” he explains.

In 1970, he graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts degree, becoming the first heir apparent to earn a university degree. Cambridge later awarded him a Master of Arts degree.

He became the Prince of Wales in 1969, after he had spent a term at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, where he learned to speak Welsh. Two years later, Charles took his seat in the House of Lords, and then spent the next few years serving in both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, following in his father's footsteps.

In 1981, the world watched as he married Lady Diana Spencer, who became the Princess of Wales. The couple had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, second and sixth in line to the throne. Their marriage was to be a tumultuous one and the couple eventually agreed to separate in late 1992 and divorced in 1996. Tragedy struck when, in 1997, Diana was killed

in a car accident in Paris, with the monarchy thrust into the spotlight and closely scrutinised for their response to such a publicly beloved woman’s death. It was among the most challenging times up to that point both for him and the royal family, with Charles no doubt noting the pressure the Queen came under during the previous years, especially her “annus horribilis” of 1992.

Happier times were ahead for the then prince, marrying Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, who became the Duchess of Cornwall. He met Camilla at a polo match around 1980 and despite the challenges of their friendship and then relationship widely reported on over the years, the Queen and many others were delighted at this new chapter in his life. Charles and Camilla, 75, are also expected to be coronated side-by-side, per Queen Elizabeth's request that Camilla become queen consort—the title given to the wife of a reigning king.

With his reign already begun, all eyes are on King Charles as he prepares to make his own mark on the monarchy. Reports have suggested his preference for a more “slimmed down” version of the monarchy we know now, and though we’re not privy to the changes he’ll enact, he has already started shifting a few things around. In his first public address as King, Charles named Prince William to be the Prince of Wales, the title he himself held before the Queen’s death. Mok

O’Keeffe agrees that he has had time to outlay a vision for what he will bring to the monarchy as king, but also that there are challenges ahead.

“The King has had significant time to consider what he will bring to the monarchy. At the same time he has supported heritage, with restoration of Dumfries House, and a focus on sustainability over the years—in late 2019, for example, he launched the Sustainable Markets Initiative—with his focus on organic gardening, and rural life through the Prince’s Countryside Fund,” the royal expert continued. “As the monarch, his role is primarily ceremonial, so he will be unable to be as vocal as he used to be when Prince of Wales, but it's clear from his work to date that he will want all his subjects to feel represented and included".

King Charles will have to be ready for the obstacles to come too. “With family difficulties, particularly involving Prince Harry and his recent book, the rise of republicanism and much more holding of public institutions to account, King Charles will need to navigate a difficult path. However, I believe he has brought fresh perspective and a willingness to learn—this has given him a perfect mindset to ensure the royal family continues to be relevant, support global Britain and ensure that it represents the diverse communities of Britain and the Commonwealth in the 21st century". n

(Top) The Prince and Princess of Wales in an open carriage, waiting to drive to Buckingham Palace after their wedding, July 29, 1981; (Bottom) The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, as Patron of the Big Lunch, attend the Big Jubilee Lunch on the pitch at The Oval cricket ground, London, on day four of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, June 5, 2022

My Britain:

Ballater, Scotland

Apicturesque village surrounded by majestic countryside, Ballater has a longstanding connection with the royal family. It is the nearest town to Balmoral Castle, and many of the local businesses have had royal warrants bestowed upon them.

Dig a little deeper and you will find a resilient community that has pulled together through storms, floods and fires. The sense of connection between locals is palpable, with initiatives like Victoria Week bringing people together for duck races and scarecrow competitions. Venture just outside of Ballater and you’ll come face- to-face with the natural world, from stunning lochs to untamed wildlife. Should you stroll along the glorious Loch Muick, you might just be rewarded with the sight of a golden eagle.

Alice Gawthrop spoke to some locals to find out what makes living in Ballater so special. ➺

Julia McIntosh is the owner of Wood and Wool, an interior design shop in the heart of Ballater that sells bespoke furniture, paintings and more

wood-and-wool.co.uk

I’ve lived near Ballater for about 50 years. I originally lived in a remote place in the Highlands and then moved to Aberdeen. My grandparents lived in Ballater so there’s a family connection.

As a child, I used to visit what was known then as the Toy Shop. That’s actually the building that now houses Wood and Wool. When it was the Toy Shop, it was frequented by the Royal Family, from Prince Charles and his brothers and sisters to Charles’ own children. The building is very wellremembered for that connection.

Ballater has a very calming influence on you. The local people are exceptionally friendly, it’s a very tight community. It became closer after Storm Frank in 2015, which wiped out a huge chunk of the retail part of Ballater, along with many residential houses. That closeness has continued all these years and the spirit of Ballater is very positive. They welcome anybody that comes into the community. It’s just a warm feeling when you’re here.

Wood and Wool was initially a hobby for both my husband and myself. Almost unintentionally it

grew into a very successful business. My husband is the wood side of Wood and Wool, and I started as the wool side, as initially I was going to develop my love of textiles. As it happens, my painting has become my main subject. At its heart, the idea for Wood and Wool was for my husband and I to bring our crafts together. Most of the work within Wood and Wool is created by us. My favourite place in Ballater is actually the building that houses Wood and Wool. The building was destroyed in Storm Frank, although we didn’t own it at the time. When we bought the property, it was derelict and hadn’t been occupied since the storm. We put a lot of hard work and love into it. It was the last building in the town centre that was unoccupied. Because of its history, and maybe my childhood memories of visiting when it was a toy shop, it felt important to us to bring it back to life. We felt like we completed the jigsaw of the community. Everyone was delighted when the lights came on and it came alive again.

Megan Taylor works at Deeside Books and Gifts, managing the gift side of her grandparents’ business since 2016

I was born in Torphins and brought up in Kincardine O'Neil, so I have always lived in Royal Deeside. My grandparents have owned their shop here in Ballater since I was very young and I have a lot of memories spending time in their book shop. I was very close to them growing up and was always coming to Ballater to stay over. Eventually, I did move in with them for a couple of years as it made it easier for work and I loved living in Ballater.

I don't currently live in Ballater but I commute from Strachan for work most days, and I still love it. The peace and quiet, the gorgeous walks and views—it felt like a holiday every day! Whether it is a beautiful summer’s day, or we have a few feet of snow, Ballater is always breathtaking. The backdrop of Lochnagar is a view that I never get tired of driving towards in the morning before work. It makes me feel so proud.

The community here is like no other, everyone looks out for one another. There are groups for all sorts of needs within the village, so no one ever feels alone here. There are always events on and things to

do. In times of need, the community of Ballater comes together and everyone is accounted for.

Deeside Books was first established as an antique and out-ofprint book shop in 1997. It was refurbished in 2016, after Storm Frank damages, introducing Deeside Gifts into the business. It's special for me to work here because I see my grandparents most days—that is something I will treasure forever. I love seeing my regular customers and meeting new people. It's so interesting hearing about other people's lives and where they have come from. My favourite comment I get is, "You are so lucky to live here!” As if I could possibly forget!

My favourite place in Ballater has to be the tranquility of being alongside the River Dee, or any of the many walks we have in and around Ballater.

Reesha Wales is the manager of The Bothy, a friendly and cosy cafe with an outdoor store next door facebook.com/ballaterbothy

I used TO live in Braemar as a teenager but we actually holidayed in Ballater because my step-dad was a policeman in Ballater, so we’ve always had a bit of a connection with it. About ten years ago I moved back. My mum’s here, all my family’s here, it’s nice to have that connection. My husband moved here to Ballater with me. Now he’s a greenskeeper on the golf course—a real dream-come-true job!

Ballater just has that special feeling. My husband always says, "the further north you go, the friendlier people get!" In Ballater, if you see someone walking down the street you still say, “Morning!” People still do that here, there’s that community feel. And there’s so much

that happens in the village which is all geared towards community. For example, we have Victoria Week, where there are activities on all through the week, and that’s organised by the people who live in the village.

We’ve been through a lot. In 2015, we had a big flood, and then the station burned down in the same year. Everyone really pulled together and reacted quickly. For example, after the flood, we created a flood response team. Everyone wants to be part of Ballater together, it’s not every man for himself. It’s very connected. There’s a strong outdoor culture too. In The Bothy, we made up little leaflets that show you the walks around Ballater. Every day, they all get taken by people keen to get out there! It’s stunning to live in. I actually live a mile outside the village and honestly it could be anywhere in the world, it’s stunning. And the wildlife is amazing, too. You can go up to Loch Muick and see deer roaming around. We’ve got buzzards and red kites, and recently a couple came into The Bothy and said they’d seen golden eagles. We had a kestrel on our fence the other day. It’s just amazing.

The royal connection for us is so special. They

come to Ballater and they’re able to just be normal people. You might bump into someone you recognise in a local shop or cafe but you don’t talk to them, they’re just there having their coffee. It’s nice because Ballater doesn’t talk about the royals, we respect them. And the revenue they bring to our village is huge. When the flood happened in 2015, they sent sandbags to block the golf course so water couldn’t come in any more. As locals we’ve invested in them and they’ve invested in us. It’s really special to have that.

The Bothy is a great place to work. I’ve got a really great team! The definition of a bothy is a place to come after a really long walk,

somewhere to kick off your shoes with a fire and a stove and simple, hearty food. It’s basically somewhere to escape from the weather. And The Bothy really captures that cosy, comforting atmosphere. The owners of The Bothy actually started a mountain shop in Braemar first in 1986, Braemar Mountain Sports, which holds Charles’ royal warrant. I think because it was outdoor folk that started it, that kind of continued all the way through and shaped the feel of The Bothy.

My favourite spot in Ballater is actually Loch Muick. It’s just out the back of Balmoral and it’s just stunning. It’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s right on our doorstep. n

Loch Muick

The World If I Ruled

Helen Lederer

Best known for playing the dippy Catriona in sitcom

Absolutely Fabulous, Helen Lederer has an acclaimed career of TV appearances, stand-up and comedy writing

I would have a room called “Chatham House Rules”, where people can go and seek debate without recourse to judgement. Words, language and passions will be shared. The experience would be filled with growth, learning and laughs, and what happens in the room stays in the room. This means people will finally have a chance to learn about how we are evolving and be in an environment where they can speak freely, and eventually, we can move towards a place of

understanding without fear of differences between people.

Everyone would be given free attic loft insulation. If you are lucky enough to have a loft, then the state would insulate it free of charge. Nice people would come around and locate your loft, possibly adding a stepladder for ease, but it would become entirely normal for it to be insulated for free by the state.

We would aim for a society where, like the French, we kiss more. We’ve never kissed less. Monitoring health and safety of viruses and immunity, of course, we could reintroduce more physicality in our social communication habits, especially since we have become very isolated from each other as humans. I’m betting that we could still be aware of health concerns

while increasing contact on a day-today basis.

Everyone in a neighbourhood would have easy access to a system where they can effortlessly become part of their own road or cul-desac. I feel like this would help people feel less isolated. They could opt in or out, it wouldn’t be like Big Brother, but it would make it easy to make friends with neighbours, which is something that has been lost as well.

Thank you letters would be normalised again. They would be reintroduced in schools as extensions of communication because of how obsolete they have become. Creative thank you letters would be a thing to be encouraged, even in the form of an email. It would be normal to thank people after a connection or a gift.

There would be more joyful opportunities for people over 60. It would be easy to find work and there would be a different attitude to those over 60 in the workplace. People with maturity would be valued more as workers by companies. Ideally, anyone under this category of over 60 would be headhunted for specific opportunities, and this would be proactively made normal. I think it is beneficial to have a mix of generations in the workplace, and we need to value those over 60 because

people are living longer and their skills are hard won. For instance, I wouldn’t mind having a stint working at B&Q in the paint section. I think people should be more free to move around the workplace, as elders.

We’d encourage reviewers of the arts to praise the endeavour of the artist instead of judging with labelled concepts. We need to recognise that art and creativity are values in themselves and to review art always with this in mind. This will enable people to perform a range of comedies without limitations. Things don’t always have to mean something; they can just be funny. It is important for us to learn to laugh without being told what to laugh at— this is a passion of mine—and even more important for this form of comedy to be expressed both on stage and in print. Laughter is a health asset—if we don’t laugh, we become miserable. The character I’m playing in the play I’m touring with, The Birds and the Bees, definitely needs to be opened up more as a person. I’m particularly interested in the art of laughter itself and having a lack of judgement. n

AS TOLD TO IAN CHADDOCK

Helen Lederer appears alongside Michael Starke in the play The Birds and the Bees on tour all over the UK from May to August and she founded Comedy Women in Print Prize (CWIP) in 2018

the history of coronation ceremonies

As the nation prepares to celebrate the first coronation for 70 years, Harry Verity takes a look at Charles III’s decades-long path to the Abbey

The coronation chair, with the Stone of Scone, in Westminster Abbey, at the coronation of Geroge VI, 1936

ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

The radiant Queen Elizabeth II photographed with her family in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace after her coronation in 1953

When King Charles III and Queen (Consort) Camilla procession through London on the way to Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach to renditions of Handel’s "Zadok the Priest", it will mark the culmination of decades of behindthe-scenes, meticulous planning.

For Charles, the first monarch to ascend to the British throne in the 21st century, the coronation has presented a unique series of delicate roadblocks that have taken decades to overcome.

The Great Transition

While we are long past the days when the country would go to war over rival claimants to the throne, Charles’ accession after 70 years still provoked tensions. Fears about his outspoken political views on environmentalism, his short fuse, or the failure of the British people to accept his wife as Queen were all very real challenges in the days following the late Queen Elizbeth’s death in September.

Mindful of this, for at least the last quarter of a century, extensive planning and a savvy PR operation have been underway, to ensure the coronation is the ceremonial high point of his accession, drawing a line under all of these issues and bringing the country together in celebration.

Operation Golden Orb

The plans for Charles’ coronation are

known by the codename Golden Orb. They are overseen by a committee chaired by Earl Marshall—the Duke of Norfolk. It is thought insensitive to discuss the coronation during the reign of a predecessor. However, the name of the committee was leaked in a government document in 2016, when it was left unredacted.

The committee has been meeting twice a year since at least the early 2000s, and its work coincided with other secret plans including Operation London Bridge—plans for Queen Elizabeth’s death and funeral—and Operation Spring Tide for Charles’ accession to the throne.

Call Me… George?

In 2005, it was suggested Charles had already begun discussions about his regnal name—the name he would take as King. The decision is not as obvious as you might assume.

There are many sensitives surrounding the name Charles. The first King Charles was put on trial by parliament and executed in 1649 and the second King Charles was famously a womaniser.

When Charles II’s brother James II was also forced into exile in 1688, his descendants staged rebellions to win back the throne. One of them, Bonnie

Clockwise (L-R); St Edward's Crown; street party in London, held to celebrate the Coronation of King George VI; Royal family gathered after the Coronation on June 2, 1953; Painting of the Coronation of Queen Victoria of England

Prince Charlie, referred to himself as King Charles III.

It was suggested that Charles might reign as King George VII in honour of his grandfather, the late Queen’s father. But in the end he adopted the name we’ve always known him by: Charles.

And thus during the coronation service, the Archbishops will publicly confirm this by reciting the famous lines: "Sirs, I here present unto you King Charles, your undoubted King, wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service".

Defending Faith

While the crowning is the most famous part of the ceremony—when St Edward’s Crown is placed upon his head—it is the anointing by holy oil, consecrated in Jerusalem, that is arguably the most important and solemn part of the ceremony. This will be a powerful statement affirming Charles’ traditional position as a divine monarch who rules for life.

One of the British sovereign's many titles is Defender of the Faith—a title originally given to King Henry VIII by the Pope but reappropriated by Henry when he split with the Catholic Church as the head of the Church of England. Media reports in 1994 suggested that Charles had aspirations to be a

Clockwise (L-R); The Ampulla and Coronation Spoon; Charles and Camilla on their wedding day; Tin boxes bearing images of British monarchs for sale in Portobello market; Queen Elizabeth II riding in the gold state coach enroute to her coronation

Defender of Faith rather than a Defender of the Faith to reflect modern multi-faith Britain. This would have been potentially problematic, as during the coronation ceremony the King must swear an oath to uphold the Protestant religion and to maintain, "inviolably, the settlement of the Church of England".

However, In 2015 Charles clarified his remarks. "It’s always seemed to me that, while at the same time being Defender of the Faith, you can also be protector of faiths… the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country".

Operation QC

By far the biggest decision of Charles’ coronation and a subject of debate spanning 30 years is whether there would be one or two thrones at Westminster Abbey.

Following the King’s divorce from Diana in 1996, Charles had ambitions to marry Camilla Parker Bowles. He hired PR expert Mark Bolland to rehabilitate Camilla’s image and present her as the future Queen. When tragedy struck in August 1997 and Diana was killed in a car crash, public opinion turned against Camilla. Charles and Camilla did not appear in public together until 1999 and when they finally married in 2005, the palace put out a statement declaring that Camilla would be known as HRH Princess Consort in the event that Charles ascends to the throne.

This was an unprecedented situation: legally, all former wives of British and English Kings had been known as Queen. Nevertheless, it appeared to settle the issue, mindful of the sensitivities towards Diana.

In 2018, however, this statement was removed from the Clarence House website. In 2020, Charles’ office insisted that Camilla would still be known as Princess Consort when he came to the throne.

In the end, it fell to the late Queen Elizabeth to clear up the issue when she issued a statement on her own Accession Day in 2022 declaring her "sincere wish" that Camilla be styled Queen Consort.

Privately, it is believed Charles has long lobbied for Camilla to be Queen, even re-writing his coronation vows before this announcement to include a reference to her in what has been termed Operation QC—Queen Camilla—by the press.

The History of the Coronation Ceremony

The coronation ceremony dates back over 1,000 years and emulates tradition in Europe in which the church had great sway over affairs of state.

The first crowned King of all England was Edgar, which took place on Whitsunday in AD973 at Bath Abbey. A plan for that coronation, devised by Saint Dunstan, survives.

By the time of the publication of the Liber Regalis (or Royal Book) in 1382

for the coronation of Richard II’s consort, Queen Anne, the ceremony had been updated to include more of a role for nobles, as well as the church.

Since the coronation of Harold II in 1066, all monarchs have been crowned in the Abbey. The coronation chair in which monarchs are crowned was introduced in 1296, during the reign of King Edward I.

St Edward’s Crown, which is traditionally used to crown the monarch, was created for the coronation of Charles II, following the Restoration in 1660. It is based on an original used to crown St Edward the Confessor that was melted down during the Interregnum.

Over time the service has expanded and contracted to fit with the times. George IV’s ceremony was predictably lavish and ostentatious. William IV had to be persuaded to have one at all and the services of the early 20th century, including that of Edward VIII and Alexandra, focused more on the pageantry to reflect the might of British Empire, which was then at its peak.

The coronation of Elizabeth II was the first to be televised in its entirety. 70 years on, the coronation of King Charles III and Queen (Consort) Camilla will include a bigger role for other faiths and will be shorter, mindful of the cost of living crisis. n

Harry Verity is an author and history journalist. His debut crime thriller The Talk Show is available now

CHARLES’ PATH TO THE THRONE TIMELINE

1960s Preparations begin for Operation London Bridge, the secret plans for the funeral and death of Elizabeth II, and the accession of her heir, Charles.

1969 Charles is invested as Prince of Wales at a ceremony in Caernarfon Castle, aged 20.

1981 Marries Lady Diana Spencer in a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.

1982 Fathers an heir of his own, Prince William of Wales, securing the future of the throne.

1994 Media speculates over his plans to be Defender of Faith rather than Defender of the Faith when he ascends to the throne .

1996 Following revelations that he committed adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles, Diana and Charles formally divorce.

1997 Diana is tragically killed in a car crash in Paris. Media and public opinion of Camilla is hostile.

1999 Charles and Camilla are seen in public for the first time, paving the way for her formal acceptance into the royal family.

2000s Planning for Operation Golden Orb— Charles’ coronation—intensifies as the Queen celebrates her Golden Jubilee.

2005 Marries long-term partner Camilla Parker Bowles. Clarence House announces that Camilla will be styled as HRH The Princess Consort upon Charles’ accession to the throne.

2010s Takes over more responsibilities from Queen Elizabeth and begins holding weekly practice meetings with prime ministers to prepare for his role as sovereign.

2018 At a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, leaders agree that Charles should succeed Elizabeth II as Head of the Commonwealth.

2022 Charles is now centre stage. He fills in for the late Queen during her Platinum Jubilee, at the state opening of parliament, and during the royal maundy service as she suffers from mobility issues.

Feb 6, 2022 The late Queen declares it her "sincere wish" that Camilla be known as Queen Consort when Charles takes the throne, paving the way for her to be crowned beside him at the Abbey.

Sept 8, 2022 Queen Elizabeth II dies at Balmoral aged 96, setting in place Operations London Bridge, Spring Tide and Unicorn to mark national mourning and transition.

May 6, 2023 The culmination of decades of work, Charles III and Camilla will be crowned King and Queen (Consort) of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms in a smaller, simpler ceremony.

Cold Water Rescue

A quick-thinking waiter saves three women from drowning

BY Peter Hummel

AT THE FLOSSLÄNDE restaurant in scenic Augsburg, Germany, waiter Paul Blachut is busy at work. It’s a warm Sunday afternoon in May 2021 and many cyclists and hikers have come for refreshments at this pretty place beside the Lech river.

From behind the bar, Blachut, 24, has a good view of the river; there are stone steps that stretch some 20 metres down from the restaurant to the riverbank. He can see that, along the S-shaped shore, people are picnicking and children are playing. Many are cooling their feet in the river. The meltwater from the Alps means the water is very cold at this time of year, and it flows quickly.

Among those enjoying the cooling water are a mother and her two teenage daughters, all in long dresses. They’re standing on the edge of the riverbank, playing with an inflatable tube when, suddenly, the girls lose their footing and are caught in the river’s current.

Paul Blachut sits by the Lech river in Augsburg, Germany

It all happens so fast. The girls desperately grab on to the tube, which their mother is sitting in, plunging her into the river, too. Now all three are being carried away by the current.

A BYSTANDER RACES UP the steps to the restaurant, and Blachut looks up from his work when he hears the shout: “I think three people are drowning in the Lech!”.

Blachut can only see an inner tube bobbing in the river. Then he spots the three women a short distance away, flapping their arms, trying to grasp anything they can. Blachut’s mind races. Why isn’t anyone helping them? Horrified, he sees that one of the trio keeps sinking.

Despite having no lifesaving training, he sprints down to the riverbank, quickly taking his mobile phone, wallet and keys from his pockets and pulling off his T-shirt. Then he jumps into the river. He doesn’t care about the cold; all he can think about is saving the women. It’s obvious they are helpless.

As Blachut gets closer to them, he can tell that the mother seems to be in the most trouble; her head is now submerged. She is drowning.

He recalls a movie in which a lifeguard grabs a drowning victim around the torso, pulling the person ashore while swimming on his back. Blachut tries this, but the woman’s clothing makes her so heavy; he

keeps being dragged under, too. He needs a new plan.

Improvising, Blachut dives under the drowning woman, pushing her upward and using that momentum to hurl her toward the shore. He can’t recall if it took three, four or five thrusts, but at some point, an onlooker is able to get close enough to grab the woman’s hand, pulling her to shore.

Blachut knows he needs to rescue the two daughters—and they are now further down the river. He plunges into the current again, swims quickly downstream and manages to get hold of one. He propels her toward the shore in the same way he did her mother, and is able to get her out, too. Looking back to the river, he can see someone is helping the girl’s sister—a good thing, because the teenager in front of him is unconscious.

As Blachut gently lays her down, a bystander with medical training comes forward and attends to her. An ambulance arrives about five minutes later. Thankfully, it’s not long before she is conscious again and reunited with her grateful sister and mother.

Several onlookers expressed their admiration for Blachut following the incident, but he is modest about his role. “The whole rescue only took two or three minutes,” he says today, adding that he is happy to have received high praise from his boss for his courage. Indeed, it was a job very well done. n

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Men don’t make friends as easily as women do, and the pandemic didn’t exactly help. I’m glad to return to my dates with mates

Poker Back To Table

TheBY Don Gillmor

photographs by Vicky Lam

Years ago, I lived beside a pessimistic 70-year-old Irish man named Steve who told me he hadn’t had any friends since quitting his factory job 20 years earlier. The bowling league, pub visits and poker games had all withered. Steve sat on his porch all day.

Across the street was 70-year-old Werner. Weather permitting, Werner sat on a battered recliner he’d set up on his lawn. The two men stared at one another but rarely talked. When Steve collapsed on his porch, Werner watched as the ambulance crew tried to revive him. I went to Steve’s funeral, a subdued event (there were just four of us, including a priest who hadn’t met him), and thought about the nature of male relationships.

Steve and Werner are a handy metaphor for the kind of isolation that COVID-19 has visited upon many of us, an isolation that still lingers. Though we men were heading in that direction anyway: the percentage of males with at least six close friends fell by half between 1990 and 2021, according to the Survey Centre on American Life.

Simply put, men are in a friend recession. We are gifted in the art of isolation, the result of social conditioning and 10,000 years of evolutionary forces, where cooperation among men has been offset by competition. The invention of the bigscreen television hasn’t helped.

We can find ourselves stranded by middle age. It’s easy for our friendships to drift; people move, we’re occupied with children and work. We’re tired, we’re distracted, we change. Then there’s our preference for socialising in groups rather than one-on-one, as noted in a 2020 Oxford University study. Groups are looser, less intimate. And our group activities often revolve around something—a sport, a bar, a poker game. But when the activity goes, the group can go with it.

I once reconnected with an old friend who’d played professional American football and I asked him if he was in touch with any of his former teammates. No, he said, when they left the sport, those connections ended. Without that central activity to sustain them, they all vanished from one another’s lives.

There was a time when card games or getting together with the guys to watch football was a sort of guilty pleasure, a vaguely senseless masculine activity. Now we’re learning that these things, or at least the connectiveness they represent, are fundamental to men’s mental health.

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I was invited to join a poker game made up of writers, a few musicians, a lawyer, a media guy. We met monthly and the game became a sort of oasis. There were literary quarrels, laughter, discussions about music and lots of stories. We didn’t socialise much outside of the

game; spouses and children got a conversational nod, but mostly remained in the background.

That poker game became part of the essential fabric of my life, and it evolved with the group. We used to start at 7pm with a martini and play until 2am. There are no martinis now (a lot less alcohol of any kind), and we quit before midnight. The haze of cigarette smoke is long gone. The food is better—over two decades we’ve gone from crisps and pretzels to sushi and homemade tarte Tatin. Two of our original players died and one moved away, but the game remains, with new players joining, a new society forming.

When the pandemic arrived, we switched to Zoom games. We downloaded a poker app on our phones and looked at those nine boxes containing our heads on our computer screens. The poker app dealt all nine players instantaneously, so the Zoom version galloped along much faster than the live version, where the dealer laboriously shuffled and dealt, or stopped mid-deal to tell a story until someone finally barked, “Deal the damn cards.”

Despite the efficiency, the app

presented problems. It took all of our concentration to keep track, on multiple screens, of what was going on with each other and with the game. Conversational flow and easy banter didn’t really happen. It was starting to feel like any online poker game, the kind played with anonymous strangers.

Two of the guys eventually pulled out, saying they’d wait until we could get together in person. A couple of months later, when our live game finally returned after a two-year break, we rejoiced. We didn’t care that someone’s dog ate much of the food we’d put out. We didn’t mind the slow dealing, the stories and losing hands. It was just good to see everyone, to talk and to feel the comfort of the group.

ISOLATION IS A COMMON FACTOR in

male suicide, particularly males who are middle-aged and older. It’s one reason male suicide rates are three times higher than those of females. According to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford University, women really do have more friends than men, and women’s relationships

with their friends are more intense. Loneliness already played a role in men’s declining mental health, but the pandemic created more isolation and a subsequent global spike in depression and anxiety.

Workplace socialising—drinks with colleagues, lunches with clients— disappeared or was relegated to Zoom. Offices are finally opening up again, but not everyone is coming back, at least not full-time. Those who are, may be working in an almost-empty office, lonelier than working from home.

RESEARCH SHOWS THAT

MEN

GET MORE FROM MALE-FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS THAN WOMEN

DO

Even though getting together with other men is beneficial for mental health, in my experience there are limitations to men’s groups—the biggest one being that they just aren’t conducive to discussing emotional issues. At my poker game, we celebrate one another’s successes, but we rarely acknowledge failures or vulnerabilities. This can be taken to extremes; one of our poker guys died of cancer without telling any of us he was sick. We thought Bert looked a bit thin, a bit tired. Then he was gone.

In a 2018 article in the American Journal of Men’s Health about men’s social connectedness and mental health, the authors wrote that men often seek emotional connections outside of male groups, looking to their spouses or female friends, which allows us to maintain a “pattern of masculinity in public while seeking emotional support from women in private.”

The Oxford University study observed that men like socialising in groups, but women prefer to socialise one-on-one. It’s a setting more conducive to discussing fears, vulnerabilities—maybe even diagnoses or illnesses.

Which is one reason friendships with women are the perfect complement to male friendship. I have a spouse to confide in, and a few women friends I regularly meet oneto-one for lunch.

The dynamic is much different than getting together with the guys, as much as I love doing that. With my female friends, we talk about our children, about work, about the state of everyone’s health and our ageing parents. We have a glass of wine and talk for two hours and I emerge into the afternoon light, unburdened. I like to think they do, too.

There isn’t much research on malefemale friendship, because as a widespread phenomenon it’s relatively recent. For centuries, men dominated the workplace and made friends there.

Women were at home, meeting with their female friends.

But the research that does exist points out one obvious fact: men generally get more out of male-female friendships than women do. Women already have female friends with whom to share feelings and fears. All they gain from us is the male perspective, which may not always be uplifting.

And there are issues with heterosexual male-female friendships, chiefly sexual tension. In a study published more than 20 years ago in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, women reported this as the least appealing aspect of having a male friend, while for men it was one of the main reasons to initiate a female friendship.

The research, while not new, supports the view made famous in When Harry Met Sally…, a cultural touchstone when it comes to malefemale friendship. In the 1989 film, Billy Crystal says to Meg Ryan, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” Ryan asks if that means men can only

be friends with women they don’t find attractive. No, Crystal responds, we want to have sex with them, too.

So there are risks to male-female friendships, which can be compounded by jealous spouses (though not mine, thankfully). But the rewards of cross-sex friendships, as researchers call them, are significant, at least for men. In these days of rampant mental health issues and strained health services, cross-sex friendships can complement male friendships, creating a place where men can be more vulnerable.

Cross-sex relationships also tend to decline as we age, though this is changing. Today’s elderly grew up in a world with clear lines between the sexes. Those lines have blurred with subsequent generations. One study even showed men value their cross-sex relationships more than same-sex friendships (it was the opposite with women, for whom female friends remain more important).

I’m just really glad to have both. I can meet my female friends for a nice lunch, a glass of wine, an unburdening. Then head off to poker. n

Indulgences

I only drink champagne on two occasions. When I am in love and when I am not

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CELEBRATE The Coronation In Style

The weekend of May 6 will see the celebration of one of the most historic events ever to happen in the UK, with King Charles III’s coronation taking place on Saturday, May 6 2023 at Westminster Abbey in London.

But the festivities don’t stop there. With a concert and laser light show at Windsor Castle on Sunday 7th and an extra bank holiday on Monday May 8, along with community initiatives such as the Big Help Out—and pubs, clubs and bars being able to stay open for an extra two hours on the Friday and Saturday—the whole country is gearing up for some fantastic festivities.

Read on to explore how you can make the most of the weekend, on this, the most memorable of events.

Get ready to tune in

Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation was broadcast live on TV on June 2, 1953. With more than 20 million people watching

the service, TV outnumbered the radio audience for the first time ever, and was propelled into being a mainstream medium. This year, both the coronation and the “Coronation Concert” will be televised, and there are also plenty of other royaltyrelated TV specials scheduled, so settle down on the sofa with a glass of something chilled to celebrate.

However, if you fancy venturing out, there are also plans for the Coronation to be televised on large screens at more than 30 locations across the UK. The public screens will be hosted across all four nations of the United Kingdom, and current locations include Cardiff Castle, Belfast City Hall, Piece Hall in Halifax, Jubilee Square in Brighton and Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens.

A right Royal feast

A feast fit for a king? Yes please! For some Coronation party food, why not cook up a delicious combination of traditional British

sweet and savoury nibbles. Finger food is always easy and allows guests to graze across the day, so consider afternoon-tea style sandwiches with a range of fillings such as cream cheese and cucumber, coronation chicken, egg mayonnaise, or smoked salmon—and don’t forget to cut off the crusts for an extra elegant touch! Supplement your sandwiches with quiches, scotch eggs and sausage rolls, and go for trifle, victoria sponge and scones with jam and cream for dessert.

Decorate and celebrate!

What better way to celebrate a once-in-alifetime event, than in quintessential British style? Whether you go for brilliantly British, or elegantly understated, there are some fantastic coronation decorations, ranging from “Royal Coach” cake stands to London themed cake toppers via celebratory King’s cushions and union jack bunting. Check out sites like Etsy or Not on The

High Street for something more beautiful and bespoke, or look for brands such as Emma Bridgewater who have launched coronation-themed ranges featuring iconic napkins, plates, mugs and more.

Get organised

If you’re catering, lower stress levels and make sure that you have everything you need before the weekend. Book in a home delivery from the supermarket, and check the opening times for your local stores for any last minute items. Hosting guests? Make your house their home with some celebratory touches such as fresh flowers by their bed (King Charles is apparently particular to delphiniums). Remember also that Monday is a bank holiday, so plan ahead if visitors are using public transport and check for any changes to timetables.

Party games

Games are always good fun at the best of times. If you’ve got a group of you together why not hark back to days gone with some traditional British fun? If the weather’s good, get out in the garden and enjoy a three-legged race, then cool off with some apple bobbing. An indoor or outdoor treasure hunt can get everyone involved make the clues Royal themed if you can.

If the weather stops outdoor play, then old-fashioned board games such as tiddlywinks, backgammon or marbles can while away the time. Rummage in second hand shops or look at ebay (or in the loft!) to find the real vintage deal. Alternatively pop up a dart board, and indulge in one of Charles’ (alleged) favourite games!

Get crafty

If you’ve got the grandkids or just feeling a little bit arty, why not use the bank holiday to indulge in some coronation-themed crafts? Try making and decorating your very own paper crown, or creating your very own castle out of cardboard (loo rolls make great turrets). For something a little bit different, use red, white and blue crepe paper to make streamers—simply tear off long strips of each colour paper, hang some string just above head height, then drape and secure the crepe paper with sellotape. Add a homemade “Royal Coronation” sign, and you’ve created a fantastic backdrop for photos and more!

Community celebrations

There are lots of community events planned across the UK. On Sunday, the Coronation Big Lunch is a way of bringing communities together to celebrate with food and fun in a nationwide act of friendship. From street parties to a neighbourly cuppa, the idea behind this is to get to know the people you live near and mark this historic occasion together.

On Monday, the Big Help Out has been planned to encourage people to join the work being done to support their local area and to try volunteering for themselves. Both Big Lunch and Big Help Out events are individually organised, so check your local listings to see if there’s an event happening near you.

An event to remember

There’s no need to forget about the coronation once the weekend is over— there are some great collectables and memorabilia to invest in. Westminster Collection has a wonderful range of coins to commemorate the occasion, including a fantastic limited-edition God Save the King Coronation Dual-Plated 50p. With a run of only 50,000, it’s a good investment too. Alternatively, Danbury Mint has a wide range of commemorative coins, stamps and gifts, including a limited-edition handcrafted mohair Steiff bear. Called “God Save The King”, this collectable is a lovely way to honour King Charles III and remember the event in years to come.

Join someone else’s party

Of course, hosting Coronation celebrations may not be quite your thing. If that’s the case, let someone else do the party planning. Warner Leisure Hotels are running UK based King’s Coronation weekend breaks across all of their hotels (subject to room availability) with check-in on Friday, May 5. Choose from their stunning countryside or coastal properties; all will be offering free bubbly and live streaming of the coronation, so you can sit back, relax and enjoy the fun, without any of the hassle. n

France’s oldest city is as vibrant and diverse as it was more than two millennia ago

The Notre-Dame de la Garde cathedral

MarseilleMagnificent

By Paul Robert

A young man in a t-shirt and jeans exchanges a few words in Arabic with the middle-aged woman baking flatbreads over an open flame in the tiny bakery. She cuts one and gives him a slice. It’s my second day in Marseille and, curious, I’ve stopped to watch.

I’ve seen small neighbourhood places like this in the Middle East but did not expect to find one in this southern French city. The customer turns to me with a welcoming smile. “Tourist?” he asks, as he drops a coin on the counter. He takes a bite of his bread and walks off down the narrow street without waiting for a reply.

I’m on the Rue Rodolphe Pollak in the Noailles area of Marseille, France’s second largest city (and its oldest), and its main trade seaport. The warren of streets is a few minutes’ walk from Vieux-Port, the tourist heart of the city. Noailles’s small open-fronted shops sell vegetables, meat, cleaning products, rattan furniture, and, it seems, all the spices of the Middle East. In addition to French, languages spoken here include Arabic and African French.

This bakery the size of a small kitchen is run by Yasmina Ayab and her son Mohammed. When I flaunt a couple of words of Arabic, Yasmina smiles broadly and invites me to sit with her. She tells me she is from Algeria, having come to Marseille about ten years ago with her children, to give them a better future.

It’s a familiar story here—one that tells the story of Marseille itself. Migration and invasions have shaped this sunny city on the Mediterranean ever since Greek merchants landed here 2,600 years ago, built a harbour, and mingled with the local Celts. Later came Romans, Jews, Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks.

During the House of Bourbon dynasty in the 17th and 18th centuries, the port was transformed into a ship-building centre. In the 20th century came Armenians, West Africans, Comorans, and Arabicspeaking people from North Africa. It all adds up to one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Europe.

the Noailles neighboUrhood, situated a stone’s throw from the

main commercial artery of La Canebière, is atmospheric: noisy, not very clean—and so colourful. There are graffiti slogans on the walls and, on a small square that honours the Greek roots of Marseille with a fountain dedicated to Homer, I come across an improvised monument with eight fading portraits. It commemorates the eight people killed in 2018 when two buildings suddenly collapsed for lack of maintenance. This is a neighbourhood with a soul.

And it is very welcoming.

Close to Yasmina Ayab’s bakery I discover an Algerian restaurant, Le Fémina, on the Rue du Musée. “This was established by my greatgrandfather,” the owner, Mustapha Kachetel, tells me. He points at the fading black-and-white photos on the wall. “My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father.”

The restaurant has been in this building since 1921, and Mustapha celebrated the centennial in 2021 with what he describes as “a huge couscous festival.” He makes his signature dish with barley, not the usual wheat, using a couscous recipe that hasn’t changed since back in the 1920s. It originates from a region in Algeria where his greatgrandfather was born.

“After four generations in France,” I ask him, “do you feel French, or Algerian?”. Mustapha doesn’t hesitate: “Algerian.” But he puts it in

perspective for me. “Algerian and French are only nationalities. I am Marseillais !”.

And, he insists, couscous itself is actually part of Marseille culture. Mustapha was a member of the Algerian delegation that supported couscous being registered on Unesco’s Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The dish was then added in 2020.

AS WELL AS FRENCH, LANGUAGES SPOKEN HERE INCLUDE ARABIC AND AFRICAN FRENCH

To be honest, before I travelled here, couscous had not been the first meal that came to mind when I thought of Marseille. It was bouillabaisse, the rich soup with olive oil, garlic, fennel and saffron that fishermen’s wives used to make from the catch they couldn’t sell to restaurants (I was truly anticipating it; a couple of days earlier when I was on the train heading to the south of France from my home in Amsterdam, a friend texted me a question. I replied: “I’ll think about this over a bowl of bouillabaisse”).

I envisioned enjoying it with a pastis de Marseille—an anise-flavoured aperitif—at a small portside cafe in the company of locals who would be discussing the world in an incomprehensible dialect.

The eclectic, arty streets of Le Panier

This was clearly a romantic notion based on earlier experiences I’d had in out-of-the-way French villages. I quickly learned that Marseille was nothing like those places. For one thing, there are no small cafes at historic Vieux-Port.

It is a huge, impressive marina lined with beautifully restored buildings, including hotels and a soap museum (olive oil soap, along with pastis, is a signature product of Marseille), alongside 17th-century fortifications built under Louis XIV. The restaurants do serve bouillabaisse, but when I see the price at one place I am shocked: 69 euros! No bowl of soup should cost that much, even if they made it with gold-scaled fish. I check a neighbouring place: 59 euros.

I give up and end up two streets away from the old harbour in a new restaurant, Ourea, that’s popular with local foodies. For 28 euros, Chef Matthieu Roche serves a three-course lunch that includes one of the most delicious tuna steaks I’ve ever had.

More and more young, talented people are discovering Marseille is an ideal place to realise their dreams. Some, like Roche, are locals, but there is also a growing number of Parisians moving here. Those who leave the capital are choosing Marseille over anywhere else in France. Tired of the rush and cost of life in larger cities, the newcomers—dubbed “bourgeois bohemians,” or “bobos” for short—come for the more relaxed Mediterranean way of life.

“I worked in finance in London,” says Claire Lombard, the 34-year-old

co-owner of Maison des Nines, a small restaurant/shop/gallery on the edge of Noailles. “I had to leave England because of Brexit, but I didn’t want to go home to Paris I wanted something different. Here in Marseille, it is easier to start something new. You don’t need a fortune to live, so in the worst case, you can afford to fail.”

Lombard started Maison des Nines with two other women. One, Estelle Billet, 29, worked in marketing and retail in Paris and now runs the boutique section of this combined business, selling items like artisanal soap, perfume and jewellery. The three friends also sell vintage clothes.

The bobo invasion has led to the gradual gentrification of the poorer neighbourhoods in downtown Marseille. One is Le Panier, a village-like area just north of VieuxPort with boutiques, restaurants

and cultural spaces set among old houses in narrow lanes. Whereas in Noailles the street art is gritty, in Le Panier walls display sophisticated art by various artists, each with their specific styles.

My tour guide here is Corinne Ferrand. She has turned her love of her hometown into her profession, but I’ve asked her to forget about tourist highlights as she shows me around (after all, the Marseille Cathedral and the splendid NotreDame de la Garde basilica, which towers over the city from a hilltop, are easy enough to spot).

As we walk through Le Panier, we pass a pétanque court, where the local variant of France’s iconic ball game boules is played. “The court is run by the community but it can also be rented for corporate events,” Ferrand explains (did I mention the creeping gentrification here?).

The Mucem museum sits opposite Fort Saint-Jean at the Vieux-Port

Before heading out of Le Panier along the Quai de la Joliette, where ferries head to and from places like Corsica, Algeria and Tunisia, we turn from one small street to the next, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere that contrasts with the buzz of Noailles.

Walking through these contrasting neighbourhoods of Marseille— avoiding, like most locals do, the crime-ridden districts in the city’s north—I wonder if the mix of cultures ever leads to problems. That evening I ask Fabien Chabord, who

IT IS A HUGE, IMPRESSIVE MARINA WITH HOTELS AND FORTIFICATIONS

owns a bar on Place Jean-Jaurès in a hipster area up a hill from Noailles. The bars on the square are filled with locals of all ethnicities watching the TV screens; the city’s football team, Olympique de Marseille (referred to as OM), is playing Lokomotiv Moscow. OM is ahead and the mood is cheerful.

“You can see that the different groups band together,” says Fabien. “The later it gets, you sometimes get tensions; this is a tough town.”

Laughing, he adds: “I always retire at 2am. That is a good time to do so.”

Later, as I walk back through Noailles to my hotel, I think about

the distinct communities here living in the same neighbourhoods— together, side by side, but not mixed. There are Tunisian bakeries, Algerian butchers, Armenian grocery stores, Syrian restaurants, and bobo vintageclothing shops. Like Mustapha, their owners may also feel they are Marseillais first.

“You’ve seen that very well,” says Adrien Joly when I bounce this idea off him the next day. Joly is a director at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Mucem). Established in 2013, it is France’s biggest national museum outside of Paris.

It covers anthropology, history, archaeology and art. Joly takes me around the playfully displayed collection that explains the history of Marseille and its enduring focus on the Mediterranean world, rather than on the European continent to the north.

It is splendid, though locals were slow to warm to this cultural newcomer because, as Joly puts it, anything that comes from the central government in Paris “is to be distrusted. But when they see it, they love it,” he says. “I think Marseille is now proud of it.”

The museum, like so many newcomers to this grand old city over the centuries, has had to work hard at earning its place in the people’s hearts. And one day, it too will be truly Marseillais. n

Win a Seven-Night Classical Danube River Cruise For Two Worth £3,500

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My Great Escape:

Bewitching Banff

Our reader Leah Rottier explores the Rocky Mountains

of Canada’s

“Bear Country”

The impossibly cold air hit us the minute we walked out of the terminal at Calgary Airport in December, but the sky was bright and it stayed that way for the two-hour drive to Banff. Highway 1 led us out of the city towards the Rocky Mountains—a long, open road with breathtaking scenery. As we reached Kananaskis, a sign warned us we were entering “Bear Country”, but we wouldn’t be lucky enough to spot any hibernating creatures on this trip.

The roads through the Rockies were dotted with bighorn sheep and mountain goats, but the best of the wildlife was to be found in the centre of Banff. While walking through the town, deer literally popped up everywhere and danced

nonchalantly alongside tourists and locals alike.

Our hotel was perfectly situated for exploring the Rockies and we spent an entire day around Sulphur Mountain, a colossal mountain over 8,000 feet high, famous for its hot springs. The Banff Gondola took us right to the top of the mountain

where we took in the magnificent vista. The sheer magnitude of the forests and enormous mountains left us in awe of the space and the silence, with the country plaques at the top of the mountain reminding us just how far we were from home. Driving back to the hotel, we spotted a frozen lake and tents

which hardy locals were using for ice fishing, seemingly unbothered by the freezing conditions. During our stay, we came across similar scenes on a few frozen lakes, so it seems to be popular here!

The last day of our trip was spent hiking around Lake Louise— astonishingly beautiful scenery where emerald waters reflected the surrounding snowy mountains and the majestic Fairmont hotel perched on the edge of the lake.

It was hard to leave such a magical winter wonderland and exchange the fresh snow and delicious maple syrup pancakes for a rainy arrival back home! n

Tell us about your favourite holiday (send a photo too) and if we print it, we’ll pay £50. Email excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk

HIDDEN

GEMS

PALACE OF PURIFICATION

Toronto

Water treatment plants rarely feature on travel itineraries—but an exception should be made in Toronto.

That’s because its RC Harris Water Treatment Plant, widely known as the “Palace of Purification”, is unexpectedly beautiful. Operational since 1941, this large building beside Lake Ontario blends art deco style with a dramatic, temple-like sprawl. Things are elegant inside, too, as marble walkways connect cavernous halls.

No wonder, then, that the landmark plant has featured on Canadian stamps and boasts many on-screen cameos, often in portrayal of an asylum, a prison or a bad guy’s base. Those credits include two Guillermo del Toro horrors, Mimic and Nightmare Alley, plus the RoboCop TV series and two cult stoner comedy films, Half Baked and Strange Brew. Its construction also underpins Michael Ondaatje’s novel, In the Skin of a Lion, which introduces the characters of Hana and Caravaggio ahead of The English Patient.

Named after Roland Caldwell Harris, a long-standing Commissioner of Public Works for Toronto, the plant was deliberately designed with the intention to impress—unlike most other public-serving edifices of the time. Pumping in gallons from Ontario, the world’s 13th-largest lake by surface area, it continues to supply a large percentage of the city’s water supply today.

Inside entry is only possible amid occasional free, guided tours— with the best bet being late May’s annual Doors Open Toronto event (try eventbrite.ca). It’s always possible, however, to walk around the Palace’s lawned, bird-rich grounds, which slope down to the lakeside. Find them in The Beaches, a relaxed and popular eastern neighbourhood of Toronto. n

By Richard Mellor

Minted MAJESTY

What does the coronation mean for the UK’s currency depicting the monarchs—old and new?

When Queen

Elizabeth II died, my 11-year-old niece was concerned it would mean money was worthless as you wouldn’t be able to use the coins and notes that featured her face. That is, of course, not the case.

All the current coins and notes which feature Queen Elizabeth II will continue to be legal tender, even though there’s a new monarch on the throne. And they’ll remain so until they need to be replaced.

Which could take a while—there are currently around 27 billion coins with the Queen’s face on one side in use in the UK. Though there have been wholesale replacements of coins in the past, such as through decimalisation in the 1970s, the resizing of 5p, 10p and 50p coins in the 1990s, and the new £1 coin in 2017, this was quite unusual.

Normally, old coins only stop being used when wear and tear take them out of circulation, and Buckingham Palace is keen to avoid any unnecessary environmental and financial impacts by changing this.

That doesn’t mean we won’t find King Charles III’s face in our wallets already. In fact, 50p coins with the King appeared at the end of last year. And all new coins minted since January 1, 2023 have featured King Charles on them.

But expect to continue to use coins with both the Queen and King for a good while yet. According to the Royal Mint, it’s only since 1992 that every coin featured the same reigning monarch. Previously you’d find a hotch potch of monarchs’ faces on coins, stretching back to medieval times.

If you find a new coin in your change, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the absence of a crown on King Charles’ head. It might seem strange but there’s precedent with King George VI (Elizabeth’s father) and other kings (also crownless).

Another difference in the new coins the King faces left, while the Queen faced right—also following a tradition that alternates the direction of profiles between monarchs.

Some have said that the design, by sculptor Martin Jennings, features a hidden bird next to the King’s ear. Whether it’s an unintended extra or deliberate, once you see it, you can’t unsee it!

Andy Webb is a personal finance journalist and runs the award-winning money blog, Be Clever With Your Cash

You’ll have to wait until next year to see King Charles on a banknote, with mid-2024 likely to see the first release. The longer transition is because there are a number of

banknotes with the portrait of the Queen already printed by the Bank of England but not circulated. The idea is to use these ones first, and print the new versions only when they’re needed.

The back designs will all stay the same as they are now, with Winston Churchill on the £5 note, Jane Austen on the £10 note, JMW Turner on the £20 and Alan Turing on the £50. The difference will be on the front and in the see-through security window, with King Charles (crownless again) replacing the picture of the Queen.

Surprisingly, this is only the second time a monarch has been on a Bank of England UK banknote. It wasn’t until 1960 that Queen Elizabeth became the first one to feature.

Worldwide it’s less clear if King Charles will replace the Queen on current and former Commonwealth currencies. In Canada the Queen appears on the $20 note, on coins in New Zealand, and others include some Cypriot and Eastern Caribbean Central Bank cash. Over in Australia, it’s likely the King will appear on coins, but it’s been announced that the $5 note will instead “honour the culture and history of the first Australians”.

What to do with old coins and notes?

Of course, even though you’ll be able to keep using the current currency featuring the Queen, we have seen

some changes in recent years where that isn’t the case.

The move from paper to polymer notes is now complete, so you can’t spend the older notes. Last September it was the old £20 and £50 notes that were withdrawn, with the £5 and £10 notes removed in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

If you find one of these old notes, don’t chuck them in the bin, as they still have value. To make them useable you’ll need to swap them for the new style notes (with either the Queen or King), which you can do by sending them in the post to the Bank of England. You can also change them in person at participating Post Office branches, or the Bank of England itself if you happen to be near Threadneedle Street in London.

The only recent coin you might still have that can’t be used is the round pound coin. It’s easier to swap this over as you can deposit it into your current account at your bank.

Don’t forget to swap your stamps

The King’s portrait will appear on stamps issued by Royal Mail from April 4, 2023, though, as with cash, you can continue to use those with a picture of the Queen—with one major exception.

Last year new style stamps were issued which feature a barcode, and these are now officially the only traditional stamps you can use as of January 31, with the notable exception of either Christmas or picture stamps.

However, there’s a six-month grace period lasting until July 31, 2023, where post with the old stamps will still be accepted.

You can either use them before that date, or send them by post to the Royal Mail Swap Out service. You’ll be able to find the form on the Royal Mail website or from local Post Offices. n

May Day

The origins of May Day come from a mix of Beltane, the Celtic day celebrating the return of life, and the Roman festival Floralia, worshipping a flower goddess

Although the source of the maypole tradition is unknown, it can be traced back to medieval times and is still used in May Day festivities in some places today

Today, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and is unofficially recognised or celebrated in many more, all over the world

Speak to Reader’s Digest Equity Release today

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The UK’s most popular equity release product is called a Lifetime Mortgage. It allows you to borrow a tax-free cash sum from the value of your home, which you can spend on fulfilling your goals and ambitions. With this, you will retain 100% ownership of your home, and there are flexible payment options (though no payments are required during your lifetime) that allow you to stay in control of your finances.

Reader’s Digest Equity Release is a service that was created to ensure you can get the facts about equity release from someone that you trust. We provide access to quality advice that considers all of your options, so that you can be sure you are getting a recommendation that is really tailored to your personal circumstances.

Here are three things to expect if you choose to enquire with Reader’s Digest Equity Release today:

1. Friendly Information Team

The UK-based Information Team are on hand to answer your initial questions and check that you and your property are eligible in a few simple steps. If you’re not ready to proceed straight away, they will stay in touch so that you can book an advice appointment when you are ready.

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You can meet with an adviser faceto-face, via video call, or speak over the phone; whichever method you choose, you will receive the same personal service.

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We understand that everybody has unique circumstances and equity release isn’t right for all of these. If this is the case, you can trust that your adviser will tell you.

Your adviser will also be upfront about the benefits and risks, including the fact that borrowing from the value of your home will reduce the value of your estate. Your entitlement to means-tested benefits could also be affected. You will learn of the ways you can mitigate these risks.

To find out more and discuss your needs and goals with a member of the Information Team, call 0800 029 1233 today. n

Coronation Parties With Pets

How to consider your furry friends when holding street parties and celebrations

With the King’s Coronation upon us, many of us will be looking to hold street parties and celebrate with neighbours, friends and family. Charity Blue Cross is urging dog owners to consider their four-legged friends to ensure the day is as safe and stress-free as possible for our pets. Here’s what to consider to keep your dog happy on the day:

If you’re having people inside your home or in your garden for a party, then ensure your dog has a safe place to go to if they want to have some quiet time on their own.

Food

Will your dog cope with the celebrations on the day?

Some puppies and dogs may find a celebration or street party stressful and overwhelming, with lots of people, children, music, noise, and possibly other dogs around. You may want to consider leaving your dog at home. If you’re leaving your dog at home consider:

• Where your dog is going to be left.

• Ensure they have a cosy, quiet area that makes them feel safe and secure, with toys and treats.

Keep a close eye on your pet as there will be food and drink around, and people may be holding barbecues. Don’t be tempted to give your pet tasty treats from the barbecue. Many human foods are best avoided by pets and alcohol is a definite no-no. Make sure to ask guests not to leave food, skewers or hot cooking utensils within your pet’s reach.

Glass

Glasses can be easily broken on the day so make sure that any breakages are cleared up quickly, or consider using plastic cups and glasses during your party instead.

Safety

By British law your dogs should be

microchipped and your personal details up to date on the database. They should also be wearing a collar in a public place with your contact details on.

If your pet should run off during the celebrations, they are far more likely to be returned home safely if these details are all up to date.

Fireworks

People may look to set off fireworks around the event, which can be stressful for our pets. Do not take your pet to an event if you know fireworks will be set off. At home, be sure that your pet has a safe place to go and hide if needed, and also look to have the TV or radio

on and the curtains or blinds closed to help your pet stay as calm as possible during the celebrations. If you’re planning to let off fireworks yourself during your Coronation celebrations then let your neighbours know in advance, so they can take measures to protect their pets.

Decorations

Decorations can cause injuries or stomach blockages if chewed or swallowed by your pet. Hang decorations up high, out of the reach of pets and keep an eye on them throughout the day. n

For more expert pet advice visit

READER’S DIGEST’S PET OF THE MONTH

Email your pet’s picture to petphotos@readersdigest.co.uk

Age: Four years

Breed: Moggy

Owner: Sally Collingwood

Fun Fact: He had to sit on the naughty step because he chewed through the washing machine hose and flooded the kitchen

Growing Responsibly

Growing plants is often seen as a very “green” thing to do, but like many products they take a huge amount of energy to produce,

explains Tony Le-Britton, author of Not Another Jungle

Many large-scale growers have implemented technology and growing techniques to minimise their impact on the environment, such as using geothermal energy to heat greenhouses, solar power to supply electricity and lighting, and even harvesting rainwater from the expansive glass roofs of their greenhouses. This water can be circulated and reused, minimising the amount of wastewater and avoiding taking water from the grid. There is an incentive here, too, as waste in commercial growing equals less profit, so many of the systems in place are extremely economically and environmentally efficient.

What can we do?

While domestic growing doesn’t involve the same carbon footprint as commercial growing, it’s important to consider what we can all do to minimise our own impact while still enjoying growing plants.

Overconsumption of plants is a big issue. It’s so easy to get overexcited

when you see all these incredible plants, and you can end up carrying home huge numbers of them. But large collections are an enormous amount of work; the more plants you have, the more limited your time and resources become, and plants can suffer. This leads to another issue— many people give up and throw away their plants, and in a similar way to the world of fast fashion, the low price of some plants means that if it doesn’t look perfect—or in the case of orchids or other flowering plants— stops flowering, it’s not such a wrench to just chuck them away and replace them.

It’s important to value your plants—buy plants you know you have time to look after, regularly assess your collection, and rehome rather than throw away things that don’t bring you joy or fit into your growing conditions. In my shop, I have a zero plant-waste policy; any plants not looking their best are sold at a discount with the necessary advice to perk them up, or I’ll take them home and do it myself.

If you are ready and able to increase your collection, propagate

from your own plants rather than buying more, and share plants with others. I’ve got a wall in my shop where people can swap cuttings. This removes the need to buy plants and encourages a sharing and propagation culture, while also building a community of likeminded, passionate plant people. I really recommend finding or even starting a group where you can get swapping plants.

Make considerate adaptations

Try to use substrates that are the least environmentally damaging and reuse when repotting. Unless the plant potted in it was diseased, just mix in fresh ingredients to add structure, nutrition and life to existing substrate instead of throwing it out. Many traditional substrates and additives have a huge environmental cost and aren’t sustainable, so reusing these will greatly reduce your gardening footprint on the environment. Recycling takes a huge amount of input, which can end up more damaging to the environment, so buy fewer things of a higher quality. These will last many years and reduce your impact on the environment and be more costeffective in the long term. Goodquality tools last a lifetime and can be passed down the generations rather than buying something of

lower quality that needs replacing every year. The same goes for pots; so many pots and trays are made from flimsy plastic which lasts a season, and most can’t even be recycled. Much better to invest in some really sturdy plastic pots which will last a lifetime. I propagate and then grow many of the plants for my shop on windowsills at home, with no additional light or heat needed. n

Not Another Jungle by Tony Le-Britton is available now (DK, £16.99)

WIN an Ultimate Yorkshire Cheese Hamper & Experience

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BEE BIKES BUD BULB EASTER EGGS GROW KITES LAMB MAY NEST RAINY SEEDS SOWER STEM SUN TWIGS WARMING

Victoria Sponge with Orange, Rose and Hibiscus

Bake Off star Crystelle

For The

Pereira shares her recipe for a delicious Victoria Sponge with a twist

Make the Sponge

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.

Recipes For The Coronation

Celebrate the coronation of King Charles with some home baking for your party

3. In a bowl, combine sugar with the orange zest and rub with your hands to release the oils from the zest.

4. Cream together butter and the orange sugar until light and fluffy. An electric whisk or stand attachment works best for this, beating for around 7-10 minutes.

5. Add in vanilla and eggs, one by one, and mix until smooth.

6. In a measuring jug, add milk and oil and whisk together.

7. Sieve the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, alternating with the milk/oil mixture, folding carefully with a spatula in between each addition, until no streaks remain.

8. Fill 2 lined 8-inch tins with the cake batter and bake these in the oven at 160°C for 25-30 mins, until springy and a skewer comes out clean.

9. Leave the cakes to cool completely before you assemble.

Make the Jam:

• Combine the water and hibiscus in a saucepan and heat this for about 2025 minutes until the liquid has reduced (about ¼ cup of liquid should remain) and is a dark purple colour.

• Pour the liquid through a sieve and discard the hibiscus flowers.

• In a large pan, combine the hibiscus liquid, lime juice, sugar and strawberries and mix well to combine.

• Place the pan on a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

• At this point, take a potato masher and mash the strawberries.

• Increase heat, and bring the jam mixture to a rolling boil. Continue to boil for about 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 105°C and is thick.

• Take this off the heat and transfer to a cool dish.

Make the whipped cream:

• In a cold bowl, combine all the ingredients for the whipped cream and whip using a whisk until you have almost stiff peaks (make sure not to overwhisk).

To assemble, making sure the jam and the cakes are cold to the touch, place one cake layer on a board/cake stand, flat side facing up. Spread over a thick layer of jam, followed by the whipped cream, flattening it out with an offset spatula. Place the final cake layer on the top and dust with icing sugar.

Ingredients:

Orange Sponge:

• 340g self-raising flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• Zest of 2 oranges

• 230g unsalted butter, room temperature

• 340g caster sugar

• 2 tbsp vanilla bean paste

• 2 tsp orange blossom (if you don't have this, add the zest of 1 more orange)

• 4 large eggs, room temperature

• 230g room temperature whole milk (can replace with dairy-free milk)

• 60g olive oil

Strawberry and Hibiscus Jam (feel free to simply use storebought jam):

• 1 cup dried hibiscus flowers, 30g

• 1 cup water

• 375g strawberries

• 200g jam sugar

• Juice of half a lime

Whipped Cream:

• I x 300ml tub double cream

• 1tbsp vanilla bean paste

• 1 capful rosewater

• Squeeze of honey

• Icing sugar for dusting

Torta Pasqualina (Easter Pie)

Torta pasqualina is a timeless classic from Liguria; some claim that the recipe dates back as far as the 15th century. It's traditionally baked for Easter, hence the name, and it's packed with symbolic religious references. Here, Bake Off winner Giuseppe Dell'Anno introduces his simplified version

Make the Pastry

1. Place the flour in a large bowl, add the salt and make a well in the centre. Pour oil and water into the well, then start mixing with a spoon to incorporate the flour gradually. When the ingredients have roughly come together, turn the mixture onto a clean and dry worktop and knead briefly until the dough is smooth and homogeneous. Divide the dough into four quarters and form them into balls. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave them at room temperature to rest for no less than 30 minutes.

Make the Filling

2. Place the ricotta in a sieve over a bowl to drain any excess water, and set aside for later.

3. Slice the onion thinly and chop the chard roughly; place both in a large pan, add 2 tablespoons of

water, cover with a lid, and place over moderate heat. Cook until the chards are completely wilted, stirring occasionally. Take off the heat, turn the vegetables into a colander, and leave them to drain off any excess liquid while cooling.

4. In the meantime, beat two of the eggs in a large bowl (large enough to accommodate the entire filling) and save 2 tablespoons of beaten eggs for later. Add the drained ricotta, salt, pepper, nutmeg and parmesan to the same bowl and mix well with a fork, until creamy and well combined. Drain any remaining liquid off the chards by

taking small handfuls of the cooked vegetables and squeezing them in your fist. Drop the squeezed vegetables into the ricotta mixture and incorporate them well with a fork.

Assemble and Bake

5. Place the shelf in the lowest position in the oven and preheat it to 180°C static. Oil the tin and line the bottom with a disc of baking paper.

6. Roll each ball of dough to a 2mm-thick disc over a well-floured surface. Fit the first disc of pastry snugly into the tin, letting the extra pastry hang off the sides, then lay the second disc of pastry over the first. Spoon the filling in and level it off with the back of a spoon. Create three deep indentations in the filling, each as large as an egg, then crack one egg in each depression. Lay the third disc of pastry over the filling, and finally lay the fourth and last disc of pastry. Trim off the excess pastry by running the back of a knife along the edges of the tin, then pinch the edges of the pastry against the rim of the tin to seal them. Brush the top of the pie with the beaten egg saved earlier and pierce a few vents in the top layer of pastry with the tip of a knife.

7. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until the top of the pie is of a deep golden colour and the edges are starting to brown. Leave the pie to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes before removing the sides and transferring to a serving plate. Serve at room temperature. Torta pasqualina keeps in the fridge for up to three days and it can be frozen pre-sliced into individual portions.

Serves up to 10 (for a 23cm springform tin)

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

• 400g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

• 1 tsp salt

• 100g extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for greasing

• 180g cold water

For the filling

• 250g ricotta

• 1 small onion

• 800g fresh chard, washed and drained

• 2 tbsp water

• 5 medium eggs

• 1/8 tsp salt

• ¼ tsp ground black pepper

• ¼ tsp nutmeg

• 60g grated parmesan

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We have a scrumptious £200 hamper filled with dreamy delights such as jams, chutneys, honey, marmalade and much more from the wonderful Medlar Preserves. “Handcrafted artisanal jams and preserves made with locally sourced, preservative-free ingredients. Gourmet flavours, no additives, vegan and gluten-free options. A local favourite.” Visit www.medlarpreserves.co.uk to order

Complete the crossword and the letters in the yellow squares can be sorted to reveal a word that describes the contents of the hamper. Write this word on the entry form. See page 151.

MONTH FILMOFTHE

H H H H

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

An engrossing study of a lifelong male friendship, one that’s at times rockier than its Alpine setting, The Eight Mountains is the latest film from Belgian filmmaker Felix van Groeningen. Like his earlier films The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) and Beautiful Boy (2018), which starred Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet as father and son, this wears its heart on its sleeve.

Adapted from Paolo Cognetti’s award-winning 2016 novel, Le Otto Montagne , it begins in the 1980s when two boys—city kid Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) and local lad Bruno (Cristiano Sassella)—become friends in a (fictional) village in the Italian Alps. Van Groeningen (who co-directs here with his

real-life partner, the actor Charlotte Vandermeersch) elegantly captures the indelible bonds formed in childhood, despite the two boys’ very different backgrounds.

But this film truly takes flight when the story moves on into adulthood, and Pietro (played as a grown-up by Luca Marinelli), now a writer, and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) are reunited after years apart, with the disparities between them now yawning like a crevasse.

A Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize-winner, The Eight Mountains scales its emotional peaks and troughs with consummate skill and deliberation. The vertiginous rugged backdrops, staggeringly shot, will doubtlessly cause you to catch your breath, too.

H H

THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY H

Jim Broadbent takes the title role in this well-meaning drama about a retiree who decides to find meaning in his life. Adapted by Rachel Joyce from her own novel, the story starts when Harold receives a letter from a hospice in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. A former colleague and friend Queenie is dying of cancer. Try as he might, Harold can’t find the right words in his reply, but as he goes to post his letter, he has an epiphany, deciding to walk the 500-odd miles from South Devon to see Queenie, an act of faith he believes will keep her living.

While Harold finds kindness on the road, from doctors to dogs, it’s

a trip that does not sit well with his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton), especially with unresolved grief in their past. Directed by Hettie Macdonald (Normal People), it’s a film of simple pleasures, not least showing the lush highways and byways of England. Broadbent, age and emotion etched on his face, is a dependable presence, while Wilton does tremendously in a difficult role. There are flaws—the flashbacks are poorly handled, and some of Harold’s pitstops test credulity—but this quasi-spiritual pilgrimage has a good heart, showing a great belief in humanity.

By James Mottram

We Need to Talk About Cosby (iPlayer) is a fine example of television wrestling with itself. Over four hour-long parts, filmmaker W Kamau Bell discusses the tarnished legacy of Bill Cosby—TV figurehead and convicted sex offender (overturned on appeal)—with colleagues, academics and those in Cosby’s orbit. Some methodically unpick the art from the artist; others highlight moments in the stand-up and sitcoms where the mask seemed to slip, and question why nobody cared to notice. Crucially, the survivors introduce their own testimony. There’ll be a fair bit of this in 2023, with the BBC’s Jimmy Savile drama The Reckoning set for the autumn. If Bell’s show prompts mixed emotions, well, that’s likely the point: Cosby brought joy to millions, while causing intolerable— indeed, belatedly actionable—pain to hundreds more. There’s much to talk about.

There’s a lot of trial-by-television this month, although Jury Duty

(Amazon Freevee)—a clever hybrid of character comedy and hidden-cam prankery from those behind Borat and the US The Office—isn’t what it first appears. Notionally, we’re watching highlights of a three-week civil case filed against a worker accused of singlehandedly bringing down a printing company. The twist: everyone involved is an actor, bar Juror number six, sunny solar panel engineer Ronald Gladden, whose reactions to this three-ring legal circus are wholly unrehearsed. A potentially cruel gotcha instead proves altogether genial entertainment: Gladden gets new playmates, acting lessons from fellow juror James Marsden (playing a preening variation of himself), and to lead the jury like Hank Fonda in 12 Angry Men. “We all fell in love with you,” confesses one of his co-stars after the big reveal. You might be swayed, too.

by Mike McCahill

Retro Pick:

Crown Court (TalkingPicturesTV) Relive school sick days—while spotting the young Richard Wilson, Brian Cox and Ben Kingsley—with this longtime staple of ITV’s lunchtime programming.

King Charles’s Favourite Song

His Royal Majesty is a famously ardent supporter of music—he counts among his patronages the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal College of Music and the English Chamber Orchestra—and his eclectic taste is set to make a centrepiece in his coronation ceremony. Viewers can expect to hear compositions from Baron Lloyd Webber, Patrick Doyle, Shirley J Thompson, and more, all personally handpicked by King Charles III himself.

If you’re compiling your own coronation playlist at home, there’s plenty to go on. When King Charles curated a collection of his top songs for the NHS in 2021, he revealed an impressively diverse list of favourites. Edith Piaf’s devastatingly romantic “La Vie en Rose” appears next to Eighties icons Barbara Streisand (“Don’t Rain On My Parade”) and Diana Ross (“Upside Down”). But it’s the deliciously funky “Givin’ Up Givin’ In” by disco trio The Three Degrees that gives HRH “an irresistible urge to get up and dance”. Leonard Cohen is another favourite for the contemplative king. “He’s remarkable. The orchestration is fantastic and the words, the lyrics and everything,” he told his sons

Prince Charles conducts the orchestra of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden

in a television interview—“Is he a jazz player?” was William’s response (honestly, Will). HRH later chose “Take This Waltz” as his top Cohen song, telling BBC Radio 3, “I find it very moving. The words are so extraordinary, sort of Salvador Dalí-like.”

No King Charles playlist would be complete without a nod to his love for classical. On Classic FM, he shared how much he enjoys being a classical DJ at weddings—he made sure that Sir Hubert Parry’s “I Was Glad” made it into Will and Kate’s setlist. One of his favourite compositions, though, is an impressively obscure opera, Jean-Marie Leclair’s Scylla et Glaucus, about the doomed love between a nymph and a sea god. “Whenever I hear it, it always makes me feel better,” he said. “Do you know those bits of music that put a spring in your step again when you’re feeling a little bit down?”.

By Becca Inglis

May Fiction

One of the world’s biggest film stars turns his considerable talents to a debut novel about film-making

TheMakingofAnotherMajor MotionPictureMasterpiece

by Tom Hanks Hutchinson Heinemann, £22

Glancing at the title and author’s name here, you might think you know exactly what you’re in for: a horse’s-mouth guide to how movies are made. As it turns out, however, you’d only be half-right. Tom Hanks’s debut novel certainly delivers plenty of memorable trade secrets. Among much else, we learn that URST stands for the trusty plot device of “unresolved sexual tension”; and that film-shooting always begins on a Wednesday, giving everybody three days to prove themselves before those who don’t are sacked over the

James Walton is a book reviewer and broadcaster, and has written and presented 17 series of the BBC Radio 4 literary quiz

The Write Stuff

weekend. But there’s also far more to the book than that.

For the first 80-odd pages, in fact, films are barely mentioned. Instead, we get a rather good portrait of late-1940s, small-town California where four-yearold Robby is already showing signs of artistic talent. His mother’s brother then shows up on a motorbike trying hard to be a fond uncle, but clearly traumatised by his wartime experiences. And from there we cut to Robby’s time as a Sixties hippy who transforms his uncle’s sad story into an underground comic book.

Eventually, Hanks does arrive in present-day Hollywood where a seasoned director is using Robby’s book to give a big franchise film more depth than usual. But even then, the

novel pauses for quite a while to provide generous backstories for the cast and crew.

Through all this, Hanks’s storytelling is surprisingly accomplished. But it also feels, if anything, a little over-generous, as yet another make-up artist or extra is given extended narrative attention. Happily, any patience we’re required to show is amply rewarded—because once he moves on to what I suspect most of us are really after, Hanks is able to root his insider’s guide to filmmaking in thoroughly realised characters we’ve come to know, and generally to like.

With, that is, one big exception. In a mostly good-natured book, he has lots of mean fun with the astonishing narcissism of the leading man O K Bailey. And of course, given Hanks’s admission that every character here “does something I’ve experienced while making a movie”, guessing who might have inspired Bailey is fun too. n

Name the character

Can you guess the fictional character from these clues (and, of course, the fewer you need the better)?

1. Her creator’s first names were Pamela Lyndon.

2. She has a friend called Bert.

3. Julie Andrews won an Oscar for playing her.

Answer on p142

Paperbacks

Colditz:PrisonersoftheCastle by Ben Macintyre (Penguin, £10.99). The author of SAS: Rogue Heroes with a riveting and often myth-busting account of surely the most famous prisoner-of-war camp of them all.

TheSatsumaComplex by Bob Mortimer (Gallery UK, £8.99). A fine first novel from a strong candidate for national treasuredom. As funny and slightly weird as you’d expect, but with a strong crime story as well.

FrontlineMidwife by Anna Kent (Bloomsbury, £9.99). Powerful memoir of delivering babies for vulnerable women both in war zones and in Britain.

SunDamage by Sabine Durrant (Hodder, £8.99). Durrant confirms her status as one of Britain’s best thriller writers in a novel that combines sharp observations of family life with a brilliantly constructed plot.

ASpotter’sGuidetothe Countrysideby John Wright (Profile, £12.99). Witty, informative and beautifully illustrated guide to the more curious sights on offer in rural Britain.

RECOMMENDED READ:

From Kid To King

A veteran royal correspondent examines the incredible—and sometimes challenging—journey of King Charles III’s life

As a royal correspondent for 33 years, and the man who broke the news of Charles and Camilla’s engagement, Robert Jobson is well-placed to provide this timely biography of our soon-to-becrowned monarch. Sure enough, his new book—fully updated from an earlier one—is an absorbing, highly informed account of Charles’s life from birth (when his father described him as looking just like “a plum pudding”) to the past few months, when we’ve all had to get used to singing “God Save the King”.

What makes it particularly good, though, is how reliable it feels. Jobson clearly writes from a position of sympathy for Charles. But that doesn’t mean he sidesteps the more difficult elements of the story.

The King’s childhood, for example, certainly wasn’t easy. His parents brought him up according to the upper class methods of the time, ie, they didn’t see him much. His famously grim days at Gordonstoun

school were alleviated only by regular visits to his doting granny, the Queen Mother, in nearby Balmoral.

The slow-motion disaster of the marriage to Diana duly makes for especially painful reading, with both parties spending the days before their “fairytale wedding” wishing there was some way to call it off. More recently, there’s been the rupture with Harry—where, again, Jobson largely shares Charles’s perspective without glossing over his mistakes.

Overall, the King comes across as a fundamentally decent man, who even in the toughest of circumstances has tried to do his best. There seems no doubt either that his relationship

with Prince Philip grew increasingly warm in later life—and that his love and admiration for his mother the Queen never wavered, as we saw in the summer of 2022…

“The celebrations to honour the monarch for her Platinum Jubilee culminated in a four-day bank holiday weekend on June 2-5. It included everything from street parties across the country to Trooping the Colour and a starstudded concert led by Diana Ross, as well as a final balcony appearance by the Queen herself. But she was not strong enough to make them all.

Charles paid tribute to his mother at the BBC’s Platinum Party at the Palace, where he began his address, ‘Your Majesty, Mummy’. Thanking her for a ‘lifetime of selfless service’, he told her during the televised concert, ‘You continue to make history’. Referring to the Queen’s absence from the celebrations, after she was said to have experienced

Charles:Our King:The Manandthe Monarch by Robert Jobson is published by John Blake at £22

‘some discomfort’ during Trooping the Colour two days earlier, he said, ‘We might have been celebrating that Derby winner this evening… next year perhaps?’ Then, addressing the crowd, he added, ‘But I know what really gets my mother up in the morning is all of you—watching at home. Represented here tonight in this great audience’.

Behind the scenes, the Queen had been feeling very frail. Her doctors said the earlier appearances on Thursday, when she took the salute and watched the fly-past during the Trooping the Colour ceremony, and her second appearance later that day as she triggered the lighting of the principal Jubilee beacon at Windsor Castle, had taken their toll. Her Majesty had previously filmed the highly acclaimed TV sketch of a computer-generated Paddington Bear taking afternoon tea with her and thanking her ‘for everything’.

Charles felt it was imperative, for history, that the Queen acknowledge the crowds with a wave from the Buckingham Palace balcony at the end of the jubilee celebrations. He implored her to make the appearance and a military-style exercise was put in place to ensure—on her insistence—that she made it without being seen in public or by the press in the wheelchair she had to use.

Ever the stalwart, and in considerable discomfort, Her Majesty was taken by wheelchair to the

helicopter pad at Windsor and, after it landed at the palace, taken again by wheelchair right to the balcony door, before being helped to her feet so that she could stand alongside the other royals. It took real strength and courage for her to do so. She wore an emerald double crepe wool dress and coat, adorned with the Bow Brooch, finished off with a hat with a black pompom, pearl jewellery and white gloves, so that she could be seen by the cheering crowd.

Bravely holding on to her walking stick, the Queen stood on the balcony alongside Charles and Prince George, flanked by William and Catherine, Charlotte, Louis and Camilla. After the family and the flag-waving crowd packed along The Mall sang ‘God Save the Queen’ enthusiastically, and a display of red, white and blue fireworks was launched from the Victoria Memorial, Queen Elizabeth II smiled with delight.

It was to be her final salute to her people.

”Answer

to Name the Character:

Mary Poppins in the books by PL Travers (who changed her name from Helen Lyndon Goff). Travers originally objected to the casting of Julie Andrews, considering her too attractive.

Robert Jobson’s Choice Of Royal Biographies

ShadowsofaPrincessby PD Jephson (2000). Beautifully written and sympathetic account of Diana by her private secretary, who reveals that the Princess was a complex but also brilliant woman.

ThePrinceofWales:ABiography by Jonathan Dimbleby (1994). Dimbleby had extraordinary access to correspondence and to the Prince himself—which gives this authorised account historic importance.

Revenge:Meghan,Harryandthe WarBetweentheWindsorsby Tom Bower (2022). Bower’s explosive romp of a read certainly takes no prisoners. I’d love to read what he couldn’t include for legal reasons.

TraitorKingby Andrew Lownie (2021). Scrupulous examination of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the grasping American socialite he gave up his crown to marry. Exposes the sad truth about this self-serving couple.

QueenofOurTimes:TheLifeof ElizabethIIby Robert Hardman (2022). The definitive biography, meticulously researched and packed with nuggets of detail. Written in an energetic and easy style, this is a real page-turner.

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Vaseem Khan is a multi award-winning crime novelist. This year he’ll be chairing the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, July 20-23 in Harrogate, Yorkshire. As told to Miriam Sallon

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

I grew up in the UK, but my heritage is from the subcontinent. At the age of 23, I went to India to work. I was puttering around a small bookshop in Mumbai on a rainy day and I came across this book called Midnight’s Children. I’d never heard of it. When I read it, I was instantly taken by the narrative about India’s independence struggle. You would think, as someone with that heritage, I would know, but I didn’t. It gave me a solid grounding in the history I would eventually write about in the Malabar House crime novels, which are set in 1950s India just after independence and partition.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

I was 18 when I came across this book, and it became the start of my love affair with crime fiction. It was fascinating to me, the way Agatha Christie introduces red herrings and alternate suspects. And then the plot twists that come at the end of the book and pull the rug out from under you. For me, this book is a well that I keep going back to for the purposes of craft, seeing how she pulls off misdirection. A couple of years ago, I was invited to speak at the International Agatha Christie festival in Torquay, which is Agatha’s hometown. I also got to visit Agatha’s home and stand next to her typewriter. That was such a wonderful moment.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

By the time I was writing The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, I was 40, and I didn’t think I was going to get published. I’d almost given up on the dream. I wasn’t sure whether the tone was correct for a crime novel, because as well as a murder, it includes a lot of dark aspects of India, but with charm and wit. That’s when I came across this book. It served as a beacon to help me edit my book—it gave me a marker that this kind of story was publishable. That book was picked up in a four-book deal and gave me a career.

The Metaverse

Why are tech people all talking about the "Metaverse" and could it really be the future of the internet and interaction?

BY James O'Malley

Since the internet was first invented in the 1970s, it has changed a lot. In just a few decades, we’ve gone from white text on a black background to the colourful, whizz-bang, interactive apps we enjoy today. But innovation isn’t going to stop. So what comes next?

The answer—if you believe the panglossian tech executives in Silicon Valley—is something called “The Metaverse”, and it sounds almost ridiculous, until you realise that lots of powerful and important people are actually taking it seriously.

So what is the Metaverse? In its simplest form, it’s an imagined version of the internet we’ll one day access by wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset. This is basically a pair of goggles with screens instead of lenses, which tries to trick your brain into thinking it is fully immersed inside another world. When you turn your head, the images on screen move with it, so you can move around in a real-feeling space. Think something like a 3D video game world, but where you feel as though you actually are the character on the screen inside of it.

call, the idea is that in the Metaverse we’ll be able hold business meetings, hang out with our friends and play games together in a shared, virtual 3D space. That’s right—it’s like someone watched The Matrix and thought, This sounds like a great idea!

It’s like someone watched The Matrix and thought “This sounds like a great idea!”

VR itself is not new (I remember trying out a very basic version of such a headset and riding the dodgems at a virtual funfair in the 1990s), but over the last few years the technology has evolved, with screen resolution and computing power catching up with what science-fiction writers may envisage about a technologically advanced, futuristic world.

But what makes the Metaverse different is that fundamental to the idea is that you’re connected to the internet—and to other people, in a social experience. Much like how today we can interact with other people by typing messages on Facebook or even in video on a Zoom

Surprisingly, the idea isn’t entirely hypothetical either. Tech companies big and small are today working on products and technologies that could make the Metaverse work. And Facebook is perhaps the most prominent example. In 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg dramatically announced that he was betting big on the Metaverse becoming the next big thing—and even renamed his company from "Facebook" to "Meta" as a statement of intent.

So far, the results have been limited but point to what the future could look like. Maybe. With the name change announcement, the company unveiled what it calls “Horizon Workrooms''. It’s essentially a virtual

James is a technology writer and journalist. A former editor of tech website Gizmodo UK, James can be found mostly on Twitter posting jokes of variable quality @Psythor

reality app that lets you hold a meeting in a virtual office. You log on, a bit like joining a Zoom, albeit with a headset strapped to your face, and you appear in the virtual room, populated by cartoon avatars representing each person.

And once you’re "inside", you can talk to your colleagues just like on an ordinary call, or you can use a bunch of collaboration tools together, like writing on a virtual whiteboard. And unlike a real meeting, if the room isn’t set out like you want, with a click of the mouse you can rearrange the tables and chairs to suit whatever meeting format you like. And what if you don’t like the view from the virtual window? Well, you can change that too.

But if this is the first glimpse of the Metaverse, there is still a long way to go. The eventual hope from many in

Silicon Valley is that one day the Metaverse will work just like the internet, where anyone can create their own space that can seamlessly integrate with everyone else.

The dream is that one day we’ll make our own, fully immersive 3D worlds that will all be joined together—enabling us to leap with our friends directly from the office, to the football pitch—and then, say, to a volcano to fight a dragon. All from the comfort of our own homes.

It might sound crazy now, and the Metaverse does have its sceptics—but not so long ago YouTube and Instagram might have felt just as impossible and magic to the early pioneers of the internet. Let’s just hope that the people working on the Metaverse today watched The Matrix all the way to the end. n

Ask The Tech Expert

James O'Malley

Q: Why does the picture on my TV look weird and how can I stop it?

- Justin

A: If you’ve bought a new TV in the last six or seven years, you’ve probably noticed something strange: the picture is weirdly… smooth?

This is what most people call “motion smoothing”. It’s an effect that will make Hollywood blockbusters and serious dramas look every bit as cheap and cheerful as a shopping channel. But TV manufacturers seem intent on inflicting it on us, because it makes for more dramatic images on the screen, especially when you’re walking along the TV aisle in a branch of Currys.

The reason it doesn't look quite right is because it’s an attempt to use computer trickery to make smoother pictures: typically, TV is broadcast at 25 frames—or images—per second in the UK. Your TV tries to make it smoother by running at 50 frames per second, and using clever algorithms to guess what the in-between frames might look like.

For example, if a car is driving across the screen, motion smoothing will analyse two frames with the car in a slightly different position on each, and then

it will attempt to generate the inbetween frame, with the car half-way between the two positions. The results are, in my correct opinion, horrible.

How can you fix it?

Annoyingly, each TV brand calls the mode something different. Samsung calls it “Auto Motion Plus”, LG calls it “TruMotion,” and Sony calls it “Motion Flow,” for example.

But if you dig into the picture settings menu on your TV, you should be able to find a button to turn it off. It might be hidden inside a further “Expert Settings” or “Additional Settings” menu if you can’t find it.

Or, if you have a slightly newer TV, there’s a much better way: simply look through your “Picture Mode” options, where you’ll be able to pick different modes like “Sport”, “Movie”, or “Videogames”, and make sure that you pick out “Filmmaker mode”.

The idea with this latter mode is that the TV will switch off any “postprocessing” it performs on images— giving you the picture as the people who made the show or film you’re watching originally intended. Phew! n

Email your tech questions for James to readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

illustration by Daniel Garcia

Using all the letters listed below only once, can you find the name of three wars? a a b c c c d

Win £30 for your true, funny stories!

Go to readersdigest.co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

Several years ago I was teaching in Melbourne. Like most Brits down under, I wanted to make the most of my time in Oz, so I would take every chance to travel around the far corners of Australia.

On one trip, myself and three friends went as far into the Outback as it is possible to go, camping and trekking in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. There were plenty of crocodiles and smaller, deadly critters to make this pom nervous.

After picking up some provisions from an isolated shop near an even more isolated settlement, we reached a creek which had to be forded. It was a likely spot for dangerous salt water crocodiles to be loitering, so all of us were admonished to keep an eye out for any "salties" as our land cruiser entered the water.

At first the water only reached the top of the wheels, but within seconds it was lapping at the windows. My heart was beating fast as I peered

out, searching for any suspicious looking logs floating towards us. Suddenly there was a scream from the back seat. "Ah! Get it off, it hurts!"

I spun round, certain I was about to see a horrifyingly grizzly spectacle. It turned out one of my friends had bought a hot pie in the isolated little store. The contents, hotter than the Arnhem Land sunshine, had spilled onto his bare legs as we bumped through the creek.

We made it to the other side with no salties sighted. Just one passenger with a very sore leg.

NEIL JOPSON, Kent

Recently at work I received a sample umbrella for our business and duly went to open it in the office and see it in all its glory.

A colleague warned me it was bad luck, to which I called them daft.

The umbrella was great, and I closed it and went to sit down at my desk, at which point the back fell off of my chair and I collapsed on the floor with my colleagues laughing.

This was followed an hour later with me picking my (thankfully) lukewarm cup of coffee up and the handle breaking, covering my desk and my trousers in coffee.

I for one will not be opening an umbrella inside again any time soon.

LUKE RUSSELL, Wakefield

When our ageing labrador, Rosie, started to suffer from arthritis, I

"YOU HONESTLY DON'T HAVE TO PROVE IT ANYMORE!"

jokingly suggested we fit a stairlift for her so she could still get upstairs.

My teenage daughter turned to me and said with great relief, "Mummy, what a good idea! And then you’ll have it ready for when you get old. You might even need it before Rosie!"

I was in my early forties!

NICOLA DALEY, Carlisle

My daughter was sick, so I put her to sleep with me in the big bed and my husband slept in the single bed that night. When he woke up, he was very uncomfortable and full of glitter.

I asked my daughter, who was six years old at the time, why she had so much glitter on her bed.

She replied, "I would like Daddy to have a magical night with colourful dreams as a thank you for letting me sleep with Mum."

GISELLE CISTERNA, London

IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power

You know what they say about all work and no play. Take a break and see if you know these terms of employment

BY GEORGE MURRAY

1. merger—A: brainstorming ideas. B: when two or more companies are combined. C: working together on a project with a colleague.

2. benchmarks—A: notes left on desks. B: computer errors. C: standards for measurement.

3. flextime—A: flexible work hours. B: stretch break during a meeting. C: abuse of power.

4. matrix—A: multi-manager structure. B: office printer. C: type of graph paper.

5. delegating—A: deleting sensitive content. B: hiring. C: assigning tasks to others.

6. ergonomics—A: lunchtime aerobics. B: workplace design for health and safety. C: accounting structure of a business.

7. moonlighting—A: defrauding the company of funds. B: working a second job. C: gathering production materials together.

8. turnover—A: rate of staff changes. B: unaddressed problem. C: business lost to competitors.

9. garnishment—A: catering budget. B: court-ordered seizure of pay. C: net earnings.

10. hotelling—A: providing temporary office space to telecommuters. B: meeting in upscale venues. C: staying overnight at work.

11. inpatriate—A: loyal employee. B: insufferable colleague. C: foreign employee working at headquarters.

12. downshifting—A: passing the blame. B: taking a less demanding job for lifestyle reasons. C: economic slowdown.

13. remediation—A: correction of a deficiency. B: repetitive presentation. C: holiday time.

14. nepotism—A: tax evasion. B: stress-related breakdown. C: favouritism shown to relatives.

15. perquisite—A: job requiring pleasant demeanour. B: special employment benefit. C: final paycheque for a job.

Answers

1. merger—[B] when two or more companies are combined; Leo and Savi agreed on a merger to unite their businesses into a single company.

2. benchmarks—[C] standards for measurement; Margot outlined the quarter’s ambitious benchmarks.

3. flextime—[A] flexible work hours; Hamid came in an hour early as part of his flextime plan for picking up the kids from school.

4. matrix—[A] multi-manager structure; Li needed a flow chart to understand her reporting matrix.

5. delegating—[C] assigning tasks to others; Genevieve’s overflowing desk revealed she clearly wasn’t delegating enough work.

6. ergonomics—[B] workplace design for health and safety; The consultant adjusted Joan’s chair, saying her back problems were a result of poor ergonomics.

7. moonlighting—[B] working a second job; Milos’s colleagues were tickled to learn he was moonlighting as an opera singer.

8. turnover—[A] rate of staff changes; Employees were offered a better benefits package in a company effort to reduce turnover.

9. garnishment—[B] court-ordered seizure of pay; The deductions on

John’s pay stub included union dues and child-support garnishment.

10. hotelling—[A] providing temporary office space to telecommuters; Lazlo’s old cubicle was used for hotelling off-site workers.

11. inpatriate—[C] foreign employee working at headquarters; The British engineering team boasts several inpatriates with degrees from the Indian Institutes of Technology.

12. downshifting—[B] taking a less demanding job for lifestyle reasons; With a third child on the way, Sarom downshifted to a position that would allow for more time at home.

13. remediation—[A] correction of a deficiency; Felicia excelled at programming but needed remediation on her customer service skills.

14. nepotism—[C] favouritism shown to relatives; The appointment of the CEO’s inexperienced daughter to head of sales smacks of nepotism.

15. perquisite—[B] special employment benefit; Andrea noted her new job’s perquisites, which included gym membership and a company vehicle.

VOCABULARY RATINGS

7–10: fair 11–12: good 13–15: excellent

Reader’s Digest Competitions –

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Page 88 2-Night stay at Grove Cottage Suite

Page 108 7-Night Danube River Cruise

Page 124 Prize Wordsearch –Ultimate Cheese Hamper

Page 131 Prize Crossword – £200 Gourmet

Page 151 Photo Finder

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Brain GAMES

Sharpen Your Mind

Fun At The Fair

Easy Mira is taking Adam, Bobby, Caroline and Didi to the fairground for a fun trip to celebrate the start of summer. Each child has a favourite food and carnival ride. With the clues below, can you figure out what each child’s choice of snack and ride is? The choices are: roller coasters, the Ferris wheel, bumper cars, merry-go-round, cotton candy, hot dogs, ice cream and candy apples.

1. The one who likes roller coasters also likes cotton candy.

2. The one who likes the Ferris wheel hates hot dogs and ice cream.

3. Adam thinks the Ferris wheel is too slow and the roller coaster is too fast.

4. One child likes bumper cars and hot dogs.

5. Bobby can’t wait to finally get to the merry-go-round.

6. Caroline likes to be high above everyone on the Ferris wheel.

Number Maze

MEdiuM In this maze, start at the 5 in the top-left corner and move horizontally or vertically (but never diagonally) to reach the star in the bottom-right corner. At each move, travel in only one direction the same number of squares as the number in the cell you are currently on. Since you are starting on a cell containing 5, your next move is either 5 squares to the right or 5 squares down. The next move will be based on your new cell’s number. Can you find the path?

Good Luck difficult

Using two simple calculations, each number on the left is transformed to the one on the right. What is the missing number for 7? Hint: If you start with a low number, the second step doesn’t do anything much.

Alterations While You Wait

C C B C A A

Set Free

difficult Place an A, B or C in each empty cell of this grid. No three consecutive cells in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line may contain a set of identical letters (such as B-B-B) or a set of three different letters (such as C-A-B). Can you ensure a set-free grid?

MEdiuM You’re in need of a 20 in a hurry, and all you have is a 1. You can change the number you have into a new number in any of the following ways, but it’s going to cost you:

F Add 5: £15

F Divide by 2: £3

F Subtract 1: £5 1 1 3 9 5 7 7 ? 9 9 11 4

F Subtract 4: £2

F Multiply by 3: £8

F Add 7: £13

FSubtract 6: £4

What’s the cheapest way you can get exactly 20?

For answers, turn to PAGE 155

F Multiply by 5: £24

ACROSS

9 Inverted slow-mover (5)

10 Hyped too high (9)

11 Carton containing other cartons (5)

12 Exciting experience (9)

13 Teetotal (3)

14 Once the subject of a financial bubble (5)

15 House of worship (9)

17 Explode (5)

19 It’s white for a new Pope (5)

22 Construction sites with slipways (9)

24 Informal greeting (3,2)

26 Temporary home for many serious cases (1-1,1)

27 Most employees think this of themselves (9)

29 Goes for gold? (5)

30 Lofty (9)

31 Military subdivisions (5)

Test your general knowledge. Answers on p158

DOWN

1 Dates (7)

2 Backpackers’ stopover (6)

3 Neither you nor me but the other guy (5,5)

4 Sudden attacks (6)

5 Portions (8)

6 Left behind after a cat vanishes (4)

7 Conflict (8)

8 Stuck to a surface with a substance (7)

16 Pleasant mood (4,6)

17 Beneficiary of a Biblical miracle (5,3)

18 Corrida star (8)

20 Soften minced sausage (7)

21 Hold (7)

23 Oscar-winning actor _____ Poitier (6)

25 Advantageous to both sides (3-3)

28 Harassed persistently (4)

SUDOKU

BY Louis-Luc Beaudoin

8 2 4 2 9 7 4 1 5 9 8 3 2 6 7 5 9 6 1 4 1 3 5 1 6 2 8 2 9

To Solve This Puzzle

Put a number from 1 to 9 in each empty square so that:

F every horizontal row and vertical column contains all nine numbers (1-9) without repeating any of them;

F each of the outlined 3 x 3 boxes has all nine numbers, none repeated.

BRAIN GAMES ANSWERS

FROM PAGE 152

Fun At The Fair

Adam likes hot dogs and bumper cars; Bobby likes ice cream and the merrygo-round; Caroline likes candy apples and the Ferris wheel; Didi likes cotton candy and the roller coaster.

Number Maze

The correct sequence of moves is: down 5, right 4, left 2, up 4, left 1, down 3, up 1, right 4, down 2.

Good Luck

7 13. Square the number, then add up the digits in your answer.

Set Free

A C A

C A A

Alterations While You Wait

Add 7 (8, £13), multiply by 3 (24, £21), subtract 4 (20, £23).

Laugh!

WIN £30 for every reader’s joke we publish!

Go to readersdigest.co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

A recent survey shows that only five out of six people actually enjoy Russian roulette.

MAGGIE COBBETT, Yorkshire

Did you hear about the hyena who ate an OXO Cube? He made himself a laughing stock.

RYAN ROSWELL, Norfolk

I was stealing things in the supermarket today while balanced on the shoulders of a couple of vampires. I was charged with shoplifting on two counts!

STEPHEN THOMAS, Denbighshire

Did you hear about the first restaurant to open on the moon? It had great food, but no atmosphere.

JAMIE COOPER, Devon

I had a happy childhood. My dad used to put me inside a tyre wheel and then roll me down the hill. They were the Goodyears.

RYAN AITCHISON, Cheshire

Gran likes the sound of ChatGPT. “Yes, a chat, a cuppa and some doctor’s advice sounds like a great idea for an app.”

FIONA ORD-SHRIMPTON, Glasgow

What do you call a pig with laryngitis? Disgruntled.

JOANNE CAMPBELL,

County Antrim

The Punning Man

Once proclaimed one of the “50 funniest people on Twitter”, Sean Leahy shares some of his favourite puns with us

The reason you’ll never see milkmen wear flip-flops is because they lactose.

I’ve got myself a magic dog. It’s a Labracadabrador.

My wife was angry with me because I was too lazy to put the cat out last night. But in my defence, she was nearer the fire extinguisher.

Don’t worry if you’re too shy to ask someone; you can always KajaGoogle it.

I recently had a job interview at a local restaurant. The first question they asked was why I thought I would make a good waiter. And honestly, I just think I would bring a lot to the table.

You can’t make a sea monster omelette without kraken eggs.

I hid the ladder while my wife was in the loft, and when she said, “Hey, let

me down,” I told her I didn’t get the promotion and I forgot to pick the kids up from school.

I believe that talking in libraries shouldn’t be aloud.

My optician always says that eyesight should be like cricket. Ideally twenty-twenty with a test every couple of years.

My grandad had a pet shop. Which was a silly thing to have as a pet.

Do you know what the temperature inside a beehive is? S’warm.

I’ve seen some gorgeous police officers in my time, but the one that pulled me over this morning was breathtaking.

Dog trainers are expensive, aren’t they? And mine can’t even tie his laces!

The security guard at Ikea told me if they catch me stealing any more kitchen utensils they’ll ban me for life. But that’s a whisk I’m willing to take.

Date: “Do you have any pets?” Me: “Yes, I have two goldfish.”

Date: “Any hobbies?” Me: “Oh yeah, they absolutely love swimming.”

Which horse is the worst at snooker? Mr Ed.

I’ll leave you with a little bit of wisdom… Life is like a box of chocolates. I wish I had one.

Follow Sean on Twitter at @thepunningman

My Dumb Superpower

Twitter users share their funny or weird thing that is their dumb superpower

@elise_millsssss: I can always think of really good comebacks, but only two weeks after the actual argument.

@Brian_Cronin: I can always tell if I’m listening to the opening bass line of “Ice Ice Baby” or “Under Pressure”.

@SomethingPork: The ability to see the numbers on a house or building without turning the volume down in my car.

@JustMyTweet: I can make pizza disappear.

@kansasbradbury: I have the ability to realise when I have overstayed my welcome. I don’t leave, but I sometimes think about it.

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

Across: 9 Sloth, 10 Overrated, 11 Outer, 12 Adventure, 13 Dry, 14 Tulip, 15 Synagogue, 17 Burst, 19 Smoke, 22 Shipyards, 24 How do, 26 I-C U, 27 Underpaid, 29 Mines, 30 Grandiose, 31 Units

Down: 1 Escorts, 2 Hostel, 3 Third party, 4 Forays, 5 Servings, 6 Grin, 7 Struggle, 8 Adhered, 16 Good humour, 17 Blind man, 18 Toreador, 20 Assuage, 21 Possess, 23 Sidney, 25 Win-win, 28 Rode

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 mid-MAY. If your entry gets the most votes, you’ll win £50. Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk by MAY 7. We’ll announce the winner in our July issue.

MARCH WINNER

Our cartoonist’s caption, “We need to go back to work and rebuild the economy post-hibernation” failed to beat our reader Mary Murfin, who won the vote with, “No, I don’t use hair gel. It’s all completely natural!” Congratulations, Mary!

cartoons by Royston Robertson

The definitive guide to tests for every age and sex

From illegal raves and doing time to

A short history of the fascinating private collections that became the first museums

GOOD NEWS

from around the World

A Couple Found A Handwritten Letter

By Charles

III In The Attic

When you think attic, you probably think boxes of Christmas decorations, or dusty photo albums. If you’re on the superstitious side you might even think ghost. You probably don’t think handwritten letter from a member of the royal family… but that’s exactly what one couple found when clearing out their attic!

The couple, from Stratford-uponAvon, were clearing out their loft

when they stumbled across an amazing find: a handwritten letter from Charles III to his granny, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, dating back to March 15, 1955.

The letter read, “Granny, I am sorry that you are ill. I hope you will be better soon. Lots of love from Charles.” It was found among other royal memorabilia including an invitation to a ball at Balmoral Estate.

The couple, who chose to remain anonymous, plan to sell the memorabilia in an auction. The husband explained that the collection originally belonged to his late grandfather, Roland Stockdale.

“My grandad, originally a farm worker from Carlisle, moved to London to find work and got a job with the Metropolitan Police,” he said. “He went on to work for the Queen’s personal protection force during the 1950s. The file includes pictures of him in the Information Room in Scotland Yard in 1952. I was told he was originally involved in helping to protect the Queen Mother but he probably worked with several royals over time.”

The collection of royal memorabilia was passed down after Roland Stockdale’s passing, and went undiscovered for years. If you have an attic or other storage space, this is your cue to have a big clear out— who knows what hidden treasures you might find there!

by Alice GAwthrop

The Queen Mother and Prince Charles on Buckingham Palace’s balcony, 1956

‘I’LL BE THERE TO HELP PROTECT LIFEBOAT VOLUNTEERS AT SEA. WILL YOU?’

‘It was horrendous. For 2 days and 2 nights we were at the mercy of the sea. I was with four friends, sailing from England to France. We were all seasick. Seasick and frightened.

‘We never forgot the relief we felt when the brave Newhaven lifeboat crew came to the rescue. It all happened 50 years ago – and the lifeboat volunteers are still on a mission to save every one today.

By leaving a gift in my Will, I’m helping to ensure they’ll be there tomorrow, with the kit and training they need to save lives and come home safely.

‘I’ll be there, right beside the crew when lives are on the line. And you can be there too.’

6 in 10 lifeboat launches are only possible thanks to gifts in Wills. RNLI volunteers rely on people like you and Chris to keep them safe. When we receive your gift, your name will be added to the side of a lifeboat, so you’ll be by their side on every launch.

Three easy ways to request your free RNLI Gifts in Wills Guide:

To receive a free, no-obligation Gifts in Wills Guide, fill in the form below and send to: ‘Freepost RNLI WILLS’ (no stamp or other address details required)

Title: Full Name:

Address:

Post code:

Email:

Phone:

Privacy Notice: We will always store your personal details securely, and they will only be used by the RNLI, RNLI Shop and RNLI College. Your data may also be used for analysis purposes, to help us provide the best service possible. We will only allow your information to be used by suppliers working on our behalf and we’ll only share it if required to do so by law. For full details see our Privacy Policy at RNLI.org/PrivacyPolicy or contact our Supporter Experience Team on 0300 300 9918.

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The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a charity registered in England and Wales (209603), Scotland (SC037736), the Republic of Ireland (CHY 2678 and 20003326), the Bailiwick of Jersey (14), the Isle of Man (1308 and 006329F), the Bailiwick of Guernsey and Alderney, of West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1HZ

Registered with the Fundraising Regulator

Photos: RNLI/Nigel Millard, Lynda Huxley

LIMITED EDITION

AN EXCLUSIVE, HAND-CRAFTED MOHAIR COLLECTOR BEAR HONOURING KING CHARLES III

“I shall endeavour to serve you with loyalty, respect and love” King Charles III, 10th September 2022

Prince Charles was destined for the throne from the day he was born. When Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully at Balmoral, the throne passed immediately, and without ceremony, to her eldest son, the former Prince of Wales. Charles III was formally proclaimed King at St James’ Palace and his coronation will be held on Saturday 6th May 2023 at Westminster Abbey. With much pageantry and historic ritual, the King will be anointed as sovereign and crowned.

A FUTURE FAMILY HEIRLOOM

To commemorate such a momentous moment in history, Steiff – inventors of the teddy, have crafted a beautiful collector bear to honour the new King. He’s hand-made from the finest ivory-coloured mohair with contrasting velvet paw pads, black boot-button eyes and a delicate hand-stitched nose and mouth. On his right paw pad you’ll see the King’s new cypher “CIIIR”. He’s fully jointed, so you can easily change his pose…from a regal wave to a warm, friendly embrace. Available exclusively from Danbury Mint, the God Save The King bear carries the sought-after Steiff white label reserved especially for limited editions. Only 10,000 of these precious bears can ever be made – ensuring this bear’s permanent rarity as a collector’s piece.

Around the bear’s neck is a speciallycommissioned medallion, plated with layers of precious 22ct gold.

RISK FREE – AFFORDABLE MONTHLY INSTALMENTS

God Save The King can be yours for five interest-free monthly instalments of £55.80 (plus £1.96 postage and handling) – a total price of £279 (plus £9.80 p&h). If you are not completely satisfied, simply return him within 90 days for a FULL refund – including our postage and handling charge! Reserve him now for summer delivery! Go to www.danburymint.co.uk or call 0344 557 1000. Alternatively, post your order form today, to: Danbury Mint, Davis Road,