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Some see Bryan Johnson as a human guinea pig with the charisma of ChatGPT. Others, meanwhile, see him as a man on a very important mission. He’s not just in it for himself, they say, he’s in it for the betterment of humanity. For the uninitiated, Johnson is officially the world’s most measured human. As per the 46-year-old’s YouTube channel, which boasts 548,000 subscribers, ‘Johnson has achieved metabolic health equal to the top 1.5 per cent of 18 year olds, inflammation 66 per cent lower than the average 10 year old, and reduced his speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years.’ Worth an estimated $400 million, Johnson is,

I always thought drinking cider was a bit lame. But then I did a Camino pilgrimage that took me through Spain’s northern Asturias region. I now think cider is cool.  Cider is a phenomenon in Asturias, where the art of imbibing sidra, as it is called, is elevated to a ceremonial form. We have the Trooping the Colour; they have sidra pouring.  When the barman pours the sidra bottle from above his head, the glass down at knee level, while looking dead ahead with the subsequent mini waterfall hitting the glass through dead reckoning: that’s not lame. The pourer even tilts the glass away from him, dramatically shrinking the ‘aperture’

Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat – a tale of three hapless, hypochondriac London clerks who take a trip along the River Thames in the hope of curing their ailments – became an instant bestseller when it was published in 1889, and hasn’t been out of print since. Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson all owe it to Jerome.  The book’s success meant that in 1895, Walsall-born Jerome (then in his mid thirties) could make a move to a rambling Oxfordshire house, built in the 1820s on the site of an ancient monastery.  Although he clearly had a fondness for the Thames, the home he chose wasn’t