Caribbean

Prince William is turning into his brother

For a tour that should have been an unmitigated success, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to the Caribbean has ended up being surprisingly controversial, described as nothing less than ‘a PR disaster’. Even if some of the negative coverage feels confected, especially in light of the exploits of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, it seems extraordinary that the supposed outrage could not have been anticipated. It has been an inauspicious curtain-raiser to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June: from the unfortunate images of the Duke and Duchess shaking hands with Jamaican children through a chain-link fence to the protests that have greeted their progress from local republicans. There is a sense

Europe’s eye-popping first glimpse of the Americas

Coronavirus has cast a dampener over this year’s Mayflower 400 celebrations due to a hidden enemy with which the Pilgrim Fathers were all too familiar: within months of their arrival in America more than half of them had died of a disease whose principal symptom was violent coughing. There was no official artist on the Mayflower. Its ragtag party of Separatist Puritans had only been granted a charter on condition that their religious affiliation, banned in England, was not formally recognised. So we can only imagine how the New World looked to the cabin-feverish colonists who made landfall at Plymouth in December 1620, lustily shaking ‘the desert’s gloom/With their hymns

The creators of Breeders are locked into a game of How Far Can You Go

Sky One’s Breeders (Thursday) bills itself as an ‘honest and uncompromising comedy’ about parenting. To this end, the opening scene featured Martin Freeman as Paul trying to do some work while his two children under seven made a bit of noise a couple of rooms away. Having given himself a little pep talk about not screaming at them, Paul then screamed at them — bursting in on their blameless fun to yell: ‘Jesus fucking Christ! How many times do I have to tell you to be quiet?’ He further informed them that he was going to leave home and they should ‘tell mummy that daddy’s gone cos he couldn’t stand