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With their private jets and gas-guzzling mansions, delegates at Cop26 have been widely criticised for an elitist attitude towards the environment. Nothing better demonstrates the gulf between policymakers and ordinary people than over the charging points for electric cars. It is one thing to install a home charging point for your car if you own a large house up a crunchy gravel driveway – indeed, according to the property website Rightmove, owners of such properties have been fitting charging points with great enthusiasm, with a 541 per cent increase in the number of homes being advertised with such a facility over the past year. But what do you do if you

‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ Father of the Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer once claimed that these words from Hindu scripture’s Bhagavad Gita raced through his mind when he witnessed the first nuclear weapon detonate on July 16, 1945. Much of Oppenheimer’s life and work are seen through the lens of the moral dilemma he faced in leading the Manhattan Project that developed the deadly bombs (dubbed ‘Fatman’ and ‘Little Boy’) which destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month later. Director Christopher Nolan has chosen the scientist as the subject of his next film, the follow-up to the underwhelming Tenet (2020). Nolan regular Cillian Murphy (Inception

Marble cakes are a simple concept, but such a satisfying bake, with that delightful reveal when you cut into the cake and expose the hidden pattern. They are made by dividing the base cake batter, and adding colouring or flavouring to one part of it, and then mottled by dolloping light and dark batter alternately into the same cake tin. They were a feature of my childhood, but feel a little passé now, which is a shame, as they’re well worth your baking energies. I think it’s time to bring them back. Now, many marble cake recipes will simply use a basic pound cake recipe, and introduce a couple of

The heart breaking story of the Luton vicar who had his house recently ‘stolen’ from him by fraudsters has rightly touched a nerve with property owners everywhere. The horror of arriving at your own home to find your keys no longer work in the lock and the house now legally belongs to someone else might seem like a rare experience.  But unfortunately it’s more common than anyone might imagine. Indeed the first time I can remember it happening was in the early 80s and involved a house in one of the most expensive streets in London and a foreign Princess. The major problem with investigating, let alone reporting, this sort of fraud is that victims

Inspiration comes in unusual forms. David Lorenz’s lightbulb moment arrived when his classic Mercedes broke down. His small daughter was in the car, and Lorenz began thinking about ways to make it cleaner, more reliable and give it a long term usable future in a world that is turning its back on the internal combustion engine. This led him to set up Lunaz Design, close to the Silverstone racing circuit in Northamptonshire. It’s high end old car restoration business that fits electric drive systems to sometimes exotic period Jaguars, Rolls-Royces and Aston Martins amongst others. According to commercial director James Warren, giving treasured, collectable old cars electric heart transplants might be

My aunt, Charlotte, had a profound influence on my life. A second mother, a friend and someone who was always there. The thief that took her was the rare disease PSP. It slipped into our lives with no warning and ripped her away from us. The house she lived in was a home to our family. Somewhere we could always go. An anchor in my childhood. Recently her son (my cousin) and my four siblings spent a weekend there. We lit the fire and chatted about the goings on in our lives. Pictures of our aunt and her beautiful treasures which remain in the same place as well as the

One of my favourite off-duty pictures of HM the Queen is this photo taken at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in 1979. I love the look of HM’s long pink tweed cape worn with a matching silk headscarf and leather boots. A simple, understated country casual outfit but she still has an air of superwoman about her from her choice of cover up – the cape.  It is a popular outer garment with the Royal ladies of all generations, demonstrating its timeless and classic appeal. There is something undoubtedly regal about this style of outerwear, reminiscent of the coronation robes. Princess Diana often opted for a long velvet cape in

Birds eye shots of Aston Martins cruising along hairpin roads, steamy scenes on chalk-white beaches: the choice of James Bond filming locations has the power to put new holiday destinations on the map. Here we round up the best places to visit from No Time To Die – and rediscover old favourites from the archive. Puglia, Italy Some of the most nail biting scenes in the latest film involve Bond jumping from an aqueduct into a ravine to escape his pursuers then hurtling round the sidestreets of an ancient Italian town on a motorbike. Most of the scenes are shot around the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Matera in southern

This year is a bumper year for the UK in terms of international summitry; in June Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted the G7 ‘Build Back Better’ conference in Cornwall; and on Sunday he welcomes participating countries to 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. Before the 13-day summit, which perhaps ominously begins on Halloween, the PM jets off to Rome for the G20. International conferences and high-stakes meetings being largely static events, are not inherently cinematic, although movies such as Oslo (2021), The French Minister (2013), Paris 1919 (2009), In the Loop (2009), Conspiracy (2001), and The Name of the Rose (1986) all enjoyed popularity with audiences. Back in 2014, BBC2

Well done, Joanna Lumley. The 75-year-old actress has solved the climate crisis. She proposes a return to wartime rationing when shoppers had to surrender government coupons whenever they bought meat, sugar, petrol, bread and even soap. ‘You’re given a certain amount of points,’ she told the Radio Times, ‘and it’s up to you how to spend them, whether it’s on a bottle of whisky or flying in an aeroplane.’ The rarer the pleasure, the greater the relish. It sounds ideal. We can defeat the climate crisis by tightening our belts and agreeing to a common set of rules. And on Thursday evenings we’ll stand on our doorsteps flapping our ration-books

I couldn’t get to sleep the other night for worrying about the future of liberalism. So I got up and put the telly on. Maybe there would be something soothing on, to help me forget my worries. There was a show on Channel 4 called My First Threesome. The voiceover explained that lockdown had led many of us to be more sexually adventurous, and even to explore ‘what is for many of us the ultimate fantasy’. Before we met some enthusiastic adventurers, a brief historical segment explained that many wise ancient cultures saw sex with more than one person as a perfectly natural desire. ‘Then for centuries religion and shame