Perched above the sparkling waters of Ammoudi Bay, Santo Mine feels like one of Santorini's best-kept secrets. While Oia is known for its bustling streets and sunset crowds, this adults-only hideaway offers a more serene way to experience the island, tucked into the cliffs on the site of a former stone mine.

The newest addition to the Santo Collection portfolio, the all-suite resort combines Cycladic minimalism with luxury touches, all while placing guests just an 11-minute walk from the heart of Oia via a private footpath.

If you're searching for a Santorini escape that balances privacy, exceptional hospitality and some of the island's most spectacular views, look no further than Santo Mine.

The vibes

From the moment you arrive, Santo Mine feels worlds away from the busy corners of Santorini. The resort has been thoughtfully designed to blend into the rugged landscape, with warm, earthy interiors inspired by the island's natural beauty. Stone, wood, marble and handcrafted ceramics create a calming, cocoon-like atmosphere, while the uninterrupted views across the Aegean Sea constantly remind you exactly where you are.

Despite its peaceful setting, the hotel never feels isolated. Oia's boutiques, restaurants and famous viewpoints are within easy reach, making it the ideal base for travellers who want the best of both worlds.

The rooms

The resort's 37 suites are all designed around one key feature: making the most of the extraordinary setting. Every suite comes with either a private pool or jacuzzi, allowing guests to enjoy the panoramic sea views in complete privacy.

The interiors embrace Mediterranean simplicity, with cream and sand-coloured tones, natural textures and minimalist styling creating a sense of calm throughout. Floor-to-ceiling doors flood the rooms with natural light, while private terraces provide the perfect place to unwind with a morning coffee or sunset aperitif.

For many guests, the suite itself becomes a destination. There's something truly special about soaking in your private jacuzzi while watching the sun dip below the horizon, with room service delivering cocktails and meals directly to your terrace.

The food

Food is a genuine highlight of a stay here. While Santo Mine's restaurant Ālme serves beautifully executed Mediterranean dishes and an excellent breakfast spread featuring both familiar favourites and local specialities, it's worth venturing to the nearby restaurant Alios Ilios at sister property Santo Pure at least once during your stay.

Following the recommendation of the staff, I ordered the day's special: a fish version of giouvarlakia, a traditional Greek dish I might otherwise have overlooked. It ended up being one of the standout meals of the trip and a reminder of how rewarding it can be to step outside your comfort zone when travelling.

The cocktail menu is equally impressive, featuring inventive recipes that go beyond the standard spritzes and margaritas found elsewhere on the island. Combined with the sweeping sea views and front-row sunset seats, it quickly becomes one of those places where one drink inevitably turns into several.

The facilities

The resort is designed for slowing down. A visit to the spa is essential, particularly the Tranquility Face and Body Ritual, an aromatherapy-based treatment designed to improve circulation and oxygenation throughout the body. It's deeply relaxing and the perfect antidote to busy schedules back home.

For those who prefer something more active, the outdoor gym overlooks the ocean, making even an early morning workout feel appealing.

Beyond the resort, guests can take the private pathway into Oia to explore the town's winding streets, independent boutiques and local restaurants. It's close enough to enjoy whenever you like, but far enough away that returning to the peace and quiet of Santo Mine feels like a welcome retreat.

The need to knows

Santorini is hardly short of luxury hotels, but Santo Mine manages to stand out thanks to its unique setting, exceptional hospitality and genuinely breathtaking views. It offers all the beauty and atmosphere that visitors come to Santorini for, without sacrificing privacy or tranquillity.

For couples looking for a romantic escape, anyone seeking a slower pace of travel, or simply those wanting to experience Oia from a more peaceful vantage point, Santo Mine delivers exactly the kind of effortless luxury that makes a holiday memorable long after you've returned home.

To book your stay at Santo Mine Oia Suites, Thesi Fanari, Oia, Santorini, head to the Santo Collection website now. Suites start from £345.

When I was about to turn 38, my partner broke up with me. We had been together for five years and had bought our first home together six months previously. Overnight, the future I assumed I would have—marriage, children—imploded, and I was left to pick up the pieces. I might have been devastated, but I was also a millennial woman who had read Eat Pray Love at an impressionable age, so I knew what to do next.

Firstly, I went to Thailand on a yoga and wellness retreat, followed by hours and hours of therapy. Then I decided to do the most terrifying thing imaginable. I decided to get back on the dating apps. I went to Paris for June 2024, changing my Hinge location, and over the next 21 days, I went on 28 dates. I repeated this experiment in London, New York and Rome, and I learned so much about myself, but I also learned a lot about men…

I Went on 28 Dates in 21 Days. Here's What I Learned About Men (And Myself)

1. I had seen the ugly comments online, calling women ‘expired’ and ‘past their prime’ once they hit a certain age. I had been afraid that at 39, I would either be mocked or completely overlooked, but most men never brought it up; the only one who mentioned it as a concern was the one who was older than I was. If you’re in his dating range on Hinge, he doesn’t care, so you shouldn’t either.
2. Some men will make you listen as they recite their poetry to you after you’ve had sex. It will be about his divorce and will include an analogy about swans that you won’t understand. It is very important that you do not stay.
3. French men are obsessed with the Eiffel Tower and will insist on showing it to you. A friend posited that this was the Emily in Paris effect, but by my third week, when man #280 asked if I had seen ‘her’, I wanted to scream.
4. How will you know if you’re dating a billionaire? He’ll tell you, along with photos of the private jet, the penthouse overlooking Central Park, and the estate in Hawaii (no confirmation whether a doomsday bunker was built underneath).
5. But other wealthy men will challenge your assumptions by being both generous and discreet. I dated men from all kinds of backgrounds, with wildly differing jobs, and in the end, their bank balance was the least interesting thing about them.
6. You can’t always tell who you will be attracted to—I did not have high hopes for my date with Theo*, a slight, floppy-haired man who had a great love of classical music. But when he kissed me on the banks of the River Seine, it blew the top of my head off.
7. You should always kiss them, just in case. You’ll know within five seconds if there’s physical chemistry between the two of you (or if they kiss like they’ve just discovered their tongue and are determined to make the most of it).
8. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that chemistry is vanishingly rare; that’s how women get dicktamised. Of the 28 dates I went on in Paris, at least four made me go weak at the knees.
9. The man who gives you butterflies isn’t necessarily the one who is good for your nervous system. I learned this with Rob*, who was so emotionally unavailable that he baulked at being asked his middle name. I would wait for his texts with bated breath until I realised that, as Samantha said to Charlotte in SATC, “If you were 25, that would be adorable, but you're (39) now, so that's just stupid.”
10. 10. French men will look at their phones, realise it’s 10 pm and suggest you go for dinner, and you’re not allowed to shout THAT’S BEDTIME, YOU LUNATIC.
11. Men who say they want a relationship aren’t necessarily ready for it. Intention and emotional capability are two different things, and it’s your job to differentiate between the two.
12. There are kind men out there. Not perfect men, or even your man. But buying into the idea that all men are trash will only become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look for the good men. What you seek, you shall find.
13. Just because they’re not The One doesn’t mean you can’t stay in touch. I met so many interesting people in Paris; I was determined to keep a few. One texts me whenever he is in London so we can have lunch. Another man sends me a 15-minute voice message once a month to update me on his latest dating sagas.
14. I was convinced that my time with Zach* would turn into something more until it turned out that his incredibly demanding job, family commitments and gruelling travel schedule would always take precedence. Know what you deserve and be prepared to walk away if they can’t meet it.
15. Men are just as capable of catfishing as women. Very quickly, I realised that I, a 5’9” woman, was actually six feet tall — who knew? In Paris, I met a man who claimed to be 37, but when a grey-haired pensioner lurched towards me, I knew I’d been fooled.
16. But there are also the men who cannot choose a good photo of themselves. André was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in real life, but he looked like a garden gnome on his Hinge. Why do perfectly attractive men select profile pics like it’s an active campaign of self-sabotage?
17. Men love explaining their niche obsessions to you. I am now an expert in pickling and the workout regimen of a professional boxer, both entirely against my will.
18. The idea that having sex on the first date will make men respect you less is archaic and, in my experience, untrue. The kind of man you want to date is not concerned about what your ‘body count’ is. Nor does he care if you are more successful.
19. Try not to look for villains. I was upset after Oliver ghosted me, but I soon realised that he simply didn’t have the emotional capacity for a difficult conversation. Isn’t that sad? We’re all just people trying not to get hurt again.
20. Trust your instincts. The morning after the first date with Oliver, I wrote in my journal that he was cute, but I had felt slightly uneasy at times. Your body is always trying to talk to you.
21. Dating is so much better when you stop treating every date like an audition for the role of Husband. Prioritise having fun and pour into yourself — your friends, your career, your hobbies — just as much as your love life. Build a life so good that a man has to earn his place there.

As women, we’re often taught to be resilient at work: navigate the difficult boss, adapt to the culture, keep performing, push through. But what if our ability to adapt, accommodate, and keep going is the very thing keeping us stuck? Drawing on three decades of experience spanning the boardroom, the head-hunter’s interview room and the therapy room, psychotherapist and former C-suite head-hunter Kathleen Saxton explores how toxic power is protected and excused — and asks at what point resilience becomes endurance, and whether sometimes the strongest career move is knowing when to walk away.

Is It Time to Quit Your Job? A Psychotherapist Explains How to Know When to Go

Connie is a highly successful executive who moved from New York to Hong Kong for a newly created global role, becoming the only woman on the leadership team. She had been recruited because she was experienced, creative, direct and confident. Instead, she found herself caught between two very different forms of toxic leadership.

One boss was openly aggressive. He had been there for over twenty years; people were frightened of him, and the organisation had learned to work around his Emperor-like behaviour rather than confront it. His number two was almost the inverse: a phantom lieutenant, covert, evasive and difficult to pin down. Questions went unanswered, decisions disappeared, and goalposts moved. Where one created fear through force, the other created uncertainty through absence.

Connie ricocheted between them. One encounter left her braced for impact; the next left her wondering whether anything had actually been agreed. Promised resources failed to materialise and conversations dissolved into silence. Overt aggression at least announces itself. Covert obstruction is more slippery because it leaves you working harder to establish what is real.

Like many capable people, Connie’s response was not to leave but to try harder. She prepared more carefully and began adapting herself to the personalities around her. From the outside, this looked like conscientiousness. Inside, she was becoming disconnected from the instincts and confidence that had helped her succeed.

She later described what happened to her as “forgetting how to be myself”.

Connie is one of the women I write about in my latest book, Sly & Mighty, but her experience speaks to a question I have spent more than thirty years considering as a senior executive, executive head-hunter and now psychotherapist: at what point does resilience become endurance?

We talk a great deal about resilience at work. We are encouraged to manage difficult personalities, navigate office politics, cope with pressure and learn to thrive in demanding environments. Resilience has become such an unquestioned professional virtue that we rarely ask what happens when the thing we are being resilient to is the problem.

Put my three professional perspectives together, and something striking appears. The woman privately wondering whether she has lost her ability to lead may be the same woman a board fought hard to recruit a few years earlier. So what happened in between?

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about the True Self and False Self. In my clinical work, I often think about an Adapted Self that develops when we learn that being entirely ourselves carries a cost. In a healthy workplace, adaptation is flexible and temporary. We adjust without losing contact with who we are.

The danger comes when adaptation becomes a survival strategy. People begin changing how they speak, behave and think to become acceptable to the environment. I see this particularly in conscientious women, because the qualities that helped them succeed can be enlisted against them. They work harder, prepare more, become more agreeable and try to become impossible to criticise. They begin trying to become unassailable.

This is where resilience can become a trap. When colleagues privately sympathise but publicly comply, or an executive team learns to work around one powerful person, silence starts to distort our calibration. We ask why everyone else seems able to cope instead of why everyone has agreed not to name what is happening. Organisations can become remarkably good at normalising behaviour when the person responsible is considered valuable.

Most people do not suddenly collapse under a toxic leader. The change is incremental. Confidence becomes caution, then self-questioning. Someone may still be performing exceptionally well while privately becoming less certain of her own perceptions. This is why Connie’s description of “forgetting how to be myself” stays with me.

Perhaps what we need alongside resilience is fortitude. Resilience is our capacity to recover and retain ourselves through difficulty. Fortitude is the courage to hold onto reality when the group would rather look away. Sometimes that means speaking plainly, finding allies or forcing an organisation to confront what is happening. Sometimes it means accepting that staying would require too great a psychological compromise.

The hidden cost of staying too long

From the headhunting side of my career, I know how frightened people can become about leaving. Women tell me they worry a short tenure will make them look weak, that resignation means they failed, or that walking away from a prestigious company will damage their career.

But careers are often more robust than they feel from inside a difficult job. What concerns me far more is staying until the experience damages the confidence, judgement and appetite for leadership needed for whatever comes next.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons to stay for a time. Mortgages, children, visas and financial obligations are real. Sometimes the wisest thing is to remain while preparing your next move. But there is an important psychological difference between consciously choosing to stay and enduring because you have stopped believing you have a choice.

Eventually, Connie forced the organisation to confront what was happening. She was told the company was no longer ready for the very role it had recruited her to perform, and her employment ended. She left her job, the country and, a year later, her industry.

On paper, it might look disastrous. But she took her severance and took her time. She retrained and eventually re-entered the working world.

That doesn't mean leaving necessarily feels triumphant. People may grieve the job they thought they were taking and the future they imagined there. The experience can follow them into their next role, too: someone may enter a healthy workplace and still brace when a new boss asks for a meeting.

And this is perhaps why we need to interrogate our idea of resilience in the first place. Not every difficult boss or demanding period is toxic. Good work should stretch us, and good leadership will sometimes challenge us. But challenge should enlarge us over time, not steadily diminish us.

Perhaps the better question is not whether we are strong enough to stay, but what staying is gradually asking us to become.

If remaining somewhere requires us to become less trusting of our judgement, less confident in our abilities and less recognisable to ourselves, walking away may have very little to do with failure.

Kathleen Saxton is a psychotherapist, executive coach, author and former global CMO who spent two decades as an executive head-hunter selecting senior leaders for some of the world’s biggest organisations. Her latest book, Sly & Mighty: How to Recognise, Resist and Rise Above Toxic Power, is out on 24 September 2026.

Skin still wet and lightly salted, I pull a loosely shrugged-on towel tighter round my shoulders and sway to the beat of distant drums. The sky is shifting from mauve to pink, an apricot sun dipping further towards the horizon and I’m still deliciously cool from a swim around the bay. My skipper pours a glass of ice-cold Champagne for me and a friend just as the drumming circle on nearby Cala Benirrás beach cranks up a gear. It’s almost sunset and the pebbled cove to our yacht’s bow is awash with local artists and artisans—a set that gathers here regularly to mark the end of another magical day on the White Isle.

It’s Saturday night in Ibiza and there’s not a super club in sight. Instead, I’m here to experience this iconic island’s wild, northern shores and, more specifically, the adults-only luxury offerings at Cala San Miguel Ibiza Resort—a chic five-star retreat nestled in the nature-rich Sant Joan de Labritja, a 30-minute drive from characterful Old Town and just 10 from the heart of the north’s trendy artisan quarter, San Juan. My days of dancing to a high-octane Calvin Harris set til sunrise have slowly given way to a yearning for slow adventures on the water, nourishing food, and a soulful connection to local customs when I travel, so here I am: sipping bubbles on deck, surrounded by bobbing boats in an azure bay, listening to Bohemians joyfully drum their way into dusk.

Cala San Miguel Ibiza review: How this adults-only resort shows the 'other side' of the party island

What's the hotel like?

An elegant blend of natural materials—raffia, wood, linen, stone—clad the light, spacious spaces in an earthy palette without them ever feeling Insta-performative or Soho House-heavy.

Then, there’s the Mares Spa—a peaceful, sun-dappled space that’s home to a vast array of Natura Bissé treatments, including blissful body wraps, oxygenating therapies and remineralising treatments. I enjoy a gloriously relaxing full-body massage during my stay, but I would have happily invested in a Mediterranean Openwork treatment—a flowing, wave-like experience inspired by the sea—if time had allowed, too.

What food and drink is on offer?

Of the seven restaurants, it’s the newly appointed Beach House that pulls everything together perfectly, with its glittering sea views, a daybed-encircled pool and toes-in-sand dining space completing a more-ish menu of coastal plates, including shrimp croquettes, crispy octopus, sea bass ceviche and Bluefin tuna tartare.

I spent a blissful afternoon here indulging in frequent freshwater dips, feasting on crispy calamari and tapping my feet to gentle Balearic beats, book still in hand.

What experiences are on offer at Cala San Miguel Ibiza?

Often referred to as the last bastion of “real Ibiza”, this quiet, rural pocket is as far from the party scene as you can get. Here, hikes into the aromatic, juniper-dusted hills reign over bass-thumping hyperclubs; sound baths replace foam parties; and self-care—not a Harris-like headliner—is king.

Hopping aboard your own private boat for the day (or evening) is an exciting new offering for Cala San Miguel guests this summer thanks to the resort’s partnership with Barcelona-based De Antonio Yachts, which delivers fully tailored island-hops, sunset sails and snorkelling excursions, depending on your party’s preferences. It’s also a welcome addition to a line-up that focuses on championing north Ibiza’s vibrant culture.

Experiences here extend beyond the usual yoga and spa sessions (though these are abundant and excellent, too) and instead hone in on the authentic artisan crafts scene that the resort proudly sits within, uniquely connecting travellers to the island’s wild, Balearic heartbeat. Time here can be as immersive—think Ibicencan spirit workshops, sound-healing classes, artisan-led crafting or guided hikes and wine tastings set to live funk music—or as serene as you need to truly reset and replenish.

Fancy flopping by the pool (there’s three elegant swim spots to choose from) before shopping for handmade ceramics in nearby Santa Gertrudis (the “Notting Hill of Ibiza”) or discovering the hippy heritage and gentle bustle of Las Dalias Market? Just ask reception to book you a ride—and be sure to hit cult-worthy Sluiz for maximalist ceramics, Nino D’Agata for gem-adorned jewellery, and The Rose for beautifully hand-sewn silk pieces. Curious to try your hand at crafting a traditional herbal liqueur under the expert eye of a Balearic botanist? Consider yourself an official trainee thanks to the hotel’s impressive access to under-the-radar artisans.

“From sunrise yoga to guided hikes and art jam sessions, each experience is designed to connect guests to Ibiza’s natural rhythm and carefree spirit,” Carolina Fraga Rua, a manager at the resort, says. “Cala San Miguel is dedicated to preserving this special corner of the island, offering guests a gateway to the true essence of the north,” she adds with a warm, infectious smile while booking me into Pilates.

I may only be here for a long weekend, but I’m already tuning into the north’s “natural rhythm” and letting the demanding daily maelstrom of social media, work and family commitments melt into the periphery.

That’s the thing with doing Ibiza as a grown-up, though: between shopping the stylish, independent wares of eclectic San Juan, diving into secluded turquoise coves from the stern of your own private yacht, or indulging in nourishing Mediterranean fare poolside, there’s no time for hangovers or repeats.

Soaking up the true spirit of Ibiza is a full-time occupation in the north. And honestly? It feels like a soul-restoring break—not a holiday I need a holiday to recover from. My super club days may be behind me, but this pocket of Balearic wilderness proves the White Isle still has plenty to offer travellers in their post-party era. I can’t wait to sway to the beat of the northern shore’s drum again soon.

A stay at Cala San Miguel Ibiza Resort, Curio Collection by Hilton starts from €300/£250 in a superior room on a bed and breakfast basis.

My husband and I both have very busy jobs, which means carving out alone time throughout the year can be a challenge. Whilst we may not have time (or childcare) for regular nights out together, what I’ve come to realise is that quality matters far more than quantity. Instead of trying to squeeze in rushed dinners after work, when we’re both tired, or racing home to relieve our babysitter of her duties, we prioritise special moments together, however brief they may be. Enter Portrait Milano, one of Milan’s most luxurious hotels, arguably with an unbeatable location right in the heart of the city.

Part of the Lungarno Collection, the luxury hotel chain owned by the Ferragamo family, Portrait Milano is the perfect bolthole for a short city break or a special weekend away. If you’re looking for a hotel that feels as much like a destination as a place to sleep, Portrait Milano is hard to beat. Set within a beautifully restored 16th-century former archbishop’s seminary, and just a stone’s throw from Via Montenapoleone, Milan’s most iconic shopping street, it was the perfect base for our two-night stay, mixing design, culture and, of course, some shopping.

The Vibe

With its impressive courtyard, retro-inspired interiors and incredible service, Portrait Milano manages to feel both grand and surprisingly relaxed at the same time.

When you walk through the historic loggia and you arrive in the Piazza, with the impressive architecture and scale of the former seminary, rather than feeling imposing, the hotel has been designed to feel like an impossibly elegant Milanese home, with lots of areas to eat, drink and relax.

The interiors, by designer Michele Bönan, channel mid-century Milan with walnut, brass, rich red velvet and plenty of Italian craftsmanship. There are subtle references to the Ferragamo family heritage throughout, but nothing feels overly branded. Instead, the atmosphere is quietly glamorous and unmistakably Italian.

The Rooms

There are 73 rooms and suites - think warm lacquered woods, marble bathrooms, beautifully rich furnishings and cinematic lighting rather than the stark minimalism you sometimes find in modern five-star hotels. Bathrooms have ample surface space, several mirrors and plenty of wardrobe space.

The details are particularly good: handcrafted leather handles, Carrara marble, rich fabrics and beautifully crafted large wooden wardrobes. Guests can choose from seven different pillow types and rooms overlook the internal gardens and courtyard, which is a welcomed break from the heat and the busy energy of the city.

The Location

This is where Portrait Milano is unbeatable. Set on Corso Venezia, it sits right in the Quadrilatero della Moda, Milan’s legendary fashion district, with the city’s best shopping, restaurants and cultural sights on its doorstep. We were only in Milan for 3 days which meant having everything within walking distance was a real bonus.

The hotel’s own courtyard is also part of the experience. Piazza del Quadrilatero has become a destination in its own right, with regular art installations or fashion events for brands including Moncler, Max Mara and Ferragamo. If you’re feeling lazy you can spend an afternoon shopping, stop for lunch and an aperitivo, then head to the spa with barely any need to venture beyond the hotel’s walls.

The Facilities

For somewhere so centrally located, Portrait Milano offers an impressive amount of reasons to stay in. Set in the basement, the hotel features a relaxing swimming pool and longevity spa which was perfect after a morning of sightseeing in the heat. I tried the Cryosuite and Dry Float Therapy, a treatment that is used to improve circulation and relieve muscle and joint pain. The treatment allows the body and mind to regain energy, strengthen the immune system, stimulate new collagen growth and improve skin elasticity - perfect after a long-haul flight or busy working week.

For food and drink, 10_11 is the hotel's all-day Italian restaurant, while the Beefbar Milano is a more glamorous dinner option. The hotel also has Rumore, a retro-inspired cocktail bar, that is open to the public and is a popular destination after dark.

And then there’s the service. Staff are polished without being stiff, with a warm, personal approach that makes the hotel feel considerably more relaxed than its grand surroundings might suggest. The concierge can also help arrange everything from restaurant reservations to cultural experiences around the city should you wish.

The Verdict

Portrait Milano is a hotel that understands exactly what makes Milan special: impeccable design, incredible architecture, the very best fashion brands on your doorstep and delicious food. It’s undeniably expensive, but unlike some ultra-luxury hotels, it feels like you are absolutely getting your moneys worth, and for a short 2 night stay it feels like its worth every penny.

It won’t be the right choice if you’re looking for a small, intimate boutique hotel or somewhere removed from the city buzz. But if shopping, design and eating well are high on the agenda, Portrait Milano is the ultimate destination.

Marie Claire verdict: A seriously chic Milanese escape that turns a historic landmark into one of the city’s most desirable places to stay – book a room overlooking the garden for a more relaxing view.

Book via lungarnocollection.com.

Editor's Note: This article discusses child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including the use of AI to manipulate images of children.

I was pretty blasé about sharing photos of my daughter online for the first 14 months of her life. I'd ticked the box giving her nursery consent to use photographs of her without a second thought. I'd proudly announced her arrival on Instagram, then shared holiday snaps and photos from her first birthday.

I was far from alone. Abi*, 31, a mum of two toddlers, posted monthly photo updates of both children until they turned one, creating a record of their development as so many Millennial mums do. Charis*, 30, who also has two toddlers, began by sharing her pregnancy journey; "sharenting" — sharing photos of your children online — felt like a natural extension of that. "It was an innocent way to connect with other mums, and we enjoyed watching each other's kids grow up," she says. I get it completely.

But that innocence tips into naivety when you learn that in 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation identified 8,029 AI-generated child sexual abuse images and videos, which included 3,443 videos compared to just 13 in 2024. Of the 2025 videos, roughly 65% fell into what UK law enforcement classifies as Category A — the most severe classification reserved for the worst child sexual abuse content. And the rapid growth in cases continues. In the first six months of this year, there have been more reports of sexualised “deepfakes” than in the whole of 2025. Meanwhile, technology has become more sophisticated, and the content is so convincing that even IWF analysts can no longer reliably tell AI-generated imagery from the real thing.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) like this is illegal, but it often begins as everyday images of a child, taken from social media or websites, and then manipulated into sexualised or abusive imagery. The IWFs research states that realistic deepfakes of specific children can be made using freely available tools and as few as 20 images, in 15 minutes.

This May, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) advised UK schools to pull identifiable student photos from their websites, or not use them at all, after blackmailers created AI-generated CSAM from scraped images and demanded money in sextortion cases. Behind every story like this is a real child and their family. It's horrifying. And something that really stuck with Abi, as a former Primary teacher whose eldest is due to start school this month.

“My children deserve to enjoy a 90s childhood as we did. I won’t be giving the school consent to use their photographs, and I’m now only sharing ‘faceless’ images on social media.” Incidents like these are prompting a sharp rethink of sharenting across the world. France passed a law in 2024 giving children legal image rights; Italy has a similar bill under consideration.

To understand if responsible sharenting is possible in 2026, I spoke to Tom Dyson, Head of Marketing at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK charity that tracks down and removes CSAM. He has a seven-year-old son himself, and chooses not to share images of him on social media. “I’m in a position where I have a lot of proof and information at my fingertips. But that doesn't mean it’s the right choice for everyone.” The IWF wants parents to be “armed with the facts”, because the risk, unlike most other parenting hazards, is invisible until it isn't.

Asking: does this actually need to be on social media? Is IWF’s advice. Objectively, the answer might seem simple. In practice, sharing our lives online is so ingrained that not sharing can feel more unusual.

But normal and safe aren’t necessarily the same thing. AI has changed the risk, and if that risk feels uncomfortable for your family, there are ways to reduce it.

Start with your privacy settings. A public account with 500 followers is still public: anyone can access those images, whether five hundred people follow you or five million. Switching to a private account, or sharing with a smaller “close friends” list, reduces that exposure — and the smaller the circle, the better.

“But private accounts aren’t completely risk-free — you're still trusting that everyone in that group is who they say they are,” says Dyson. “There's nothing within most social media platforms that IDs an individual when they sign up for an account. An account can look like one thing, but be something — or someone — completely different.”

Accounts can be hacked, too. Ultimately, once an image has been shared, it only takes one person to take it beyond the audience you intended.

When Charis learned that someone she and her partner had known as teenagers had been convicted of possessing indecent images, she went through her Facebook friends list. “I had 1,500 followers and I got rid of most of them. Unfortunately, that included the guy who’d been convicted.”

My own accounts are private, but like Charis, I joined social media as a teenager. When I actually look at who follows me on Instagram now, I feel intense unease at finding close to 200 unknown or business accounts that I couldn’t put a name or face to.

For parents who want to keep documenting their lives publicly, blurring children’s faces or covering them with emojis has become a common compromise. It’s what Charis does now. “I’m not sharing my children’s faces anymore. What happened was just so close to home,” she says.

“An emoji is probably better than nothing,” Dyson agrees, “but it's important it doesn’t give us a false sense of security.” There’s everything else in the frame to consider: a school uniform, house number, recognisable street or local landmark. And while AI may sometimes be able to remove a blur or covering, it doesn’t necessarily need to. It can generate a convincing approximation of a child’s face from scratch, or draw on previously shared images of the same child.

There’s another reassuring idea that circulates among parents online: photos shared before a child turns one are somehow safer because babies are less recognisable. Unfortunately, that logic doesn’t hold up either.

“There isn't a particular age at which sharing a child's image is safer,” Dyson says. More sickening still, the IWF sees CSAM involving children of all ages.

Nor does deleting a photograph necessarily undo the decision to post it. Once something has been shared publicly — even briefly — it may already have been copied, cached or archived elsewhere online, Dyson explains.

By this point, protecting your child online can start to feel like a losing battle.

Dyson reminds me that the responsibility for safer sharenting doesn’t sit with parents alone. “Tech companies, regulators, governments and charities like the IWF are here to help solve this problem too.” It’s unfair that parents have to think about any of this. But the technology — and the threat it poses — is evolving all the time.

For now, I’m going back to my daughter’s nursery to withdraw that consent. I’ve locked down my accounts, cut my follower count in half and now share photos of her only with my “close friends” list on Instagram Stories. There’s a conversation to be had with her aunties and uncles, too.

But I feel much more comfortable with what — and how — I’m sharing. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. And as my daughter grows and changes, so might my decisions.

Next time my knee-jerk reaction to a cute photo or video is to post it, I’ll ask myself: does this really need to be on social media? Or could I just send it to family and friends on WhatsApp? Most of the time, I suspect, my overwhelming love, pride and joy in sharing my daughter is better served there.

*Names have been changed

Worried about your child’s images online? Here’s where to get help

Report Remove
A free, confidential service from Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) that helps under-18s report sexual images or videos of themselves online and have them removed where possible. It also covers images that have been manipulated or generated using AI.
Visit Report Remove

Check your social media privacy settings
Internet Matters has step-by-step guides for tightening privacy, blocking and reporting across platforms including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat.
Read the social media privacy guides

Read the IWF’s guidance for parents
The Internet Watch Foundation has specific advice for parents and carers on reducing the risk of children’s photographs being manipulated using AI.
Read the IWF guidance

“Evelyn has spoken,” my fiancé texted my dad after I had made yet another wedding decision, as though I’d issued a royal decree.

It was harmless, but it struck a nerve. Somewhere between getting engaged and getting married, I had become the default decision-maker for our wedding – not only with my fiancé, but for family, friends and suppliers too. If everyone was waiting for my final answer, was it fair that I was then characterised as the one ‘laying down the law’?

It’s the “bridezilla” paradox: brides are expected to care about every detail, keep track of every invoice and ultimately make the decisions. But be too decisive, and suddenly you’re controlling, demanding or taking your big day far too seriously. Funny how rarely we hear the term “groomzilla”.

“Bridezilla” dates back to at least 1995, when someone decided the natural comparison for a woman taking ownership of her wedding was, apparently, Godzilla. Wedding culture expects brides to be beautiful, gracious and effortlessly feminine; express a firm opinion, and you’re recast as a rampaging monster.

I’m getting married next month, and while I cannot wait, I hadn’t anticipated that getting engaged would come with an unwanted promotion. Somewhere along the way, I was appointed Head of Nuptials, family liaison and resident expert on matters I had previously given precisely zero thought to.

What exact shade of tie should my father-in-law wear? Should our napkins have raw or hemmed edging? How many trestle tables are “too many”? Do we want goblets or wine glasses?

I made it through almost three decades without strong feelings about the relative merits of drinking vessels. Yet here I was, apparently uniquely qualified to make the call.

When did our equal relationship acquire a project manager?

My fiancé does help, after we spoke about the imbalance, he became much better at liaising with suppliers and taking practical jobs off my list. But almost every question requiring an actual decision still comes to me.

He can follow up on things, but I’m still expected to determine what we want. When I ask for his opinion, he will often say: “But I don’t mind.”

The problem is, neither do I. But a decision still has to be made, and “I don’t mind” transfers responsibility for making it to me.

There’s a difference between sharing tasks and sharing the mental load. One person can book a supplier; someone still has to anticipate what needs doing, remember the details and know what comes next.

That’s how an otherwise equal, modern relationship can suddenly begin to look traditional. This isn’t unique to us. A study of recently married and engaged Norwegian millennials found that, even within a generation raised with greater expectations of equality, women often undertook most of the wedding work and were treated as the people who should know what was required.

In her book Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience, sociologist Sharon Boden suggests that women may come to see men as less competent at wedding planning, while men accept a “sign-off” role because weddings are perceived as a feminine domain. His passivity can then be taken as proof that she naturally cares more, rather than evidence that only one of them has been expected to develop an opinion.

Therapist and author Marisa Peer says dividing tasks doesn’t necessarily divide that underlying responsibility. “If you then have to remind [your partner], check what they’ve done or tell them how you want it done, you haven’t really handed over the mental load; you’ve simply become their manager.”

Apparently, it’s the bride’s job to know everything

It isn’t only partners who reinforce these roles. *Sophie, who is getting married next year, noticed this when her wedding planner created a group chat named “Sophie’s wedding 2027”.

Yet while the wedding industry automatically positions Sophie as the authority, that same authority is treated differently elsewhere. At work, colleagues frequently ask whether she has become a bridezilla.

“When I plan, manage and execute tasks at work, I’m seen as a ‘top performer’ who’s ‘highly organised’, but when brides apply the same standard to their weddings, it’s somehow ridiculed,” she says.

Therein lies the unwinnable logic: appoint the bride project manager, direct every enquiry to her and expect her to have an answer. Then, once she behaves suspiciously like a project manager, accuse her of becoming a bridezilla.

Sociologist Dr Julia Carter argues that this “bridezilla” label helps police how women exercise the temporary authority afforded to them as brides. Her research suggests that wedding culture demands extreme organisation alongside perfectly controlled emotion.

You can’t win the ‘bridezilla’ game

Declining the role doesn’t necessarily help.

Before her wedding in 2024, *Nadia’s future mother-in-law sent her pictures of 13 potential hats and fascinators, demanding her opinion on each. Nadia didn’t care what she wore, so she repeatedly said they looked nice in the hope that she would simply choose one.

Her fiancé then received a call from his mother complaining that Nadia was being “far too picky” and “bossy”.

“The accusation came out of left field, as I was actually being the opposite,” Nadia says. “‘Bossy’ is a really charged term, and I felt hurt by it.”

Marisa says women are expected to care enormously and ensure every detail is right, but when that responsibility manifests as “stress, decisiveness or frustration”, they can suddenly be labelled demanding or controlling.

“But we don’t tend to use the same language when a man is highly invested in an event he is helping to organise,” she says.

I don’t resent my fiancé, but I do resent that he has been allowed to become my deputy while I’ve been cast as our wedding’s chief executive. I resent that “I don’t mind” is a valid answer for him, while I’m expected to form an opinion. Most of all, I resent how naturally our equal relationship slipped into roles neither of us consciously chose.

“Evelyn has spoken” was a joke, but somebody did have to speak. Everyone was waiting for an answer and, as usual, they were waiting for it from the bride.

I don’t believe brides inherently care more about napkins or tablecloths; I think we’re just not allowed to be the one to say: “I don’t mind.”

*Names changed

Shop Couples' Wedding Planning Essentials

Like most millennials, I’ve watched Mykonos, Santorini and Italy’s Amalfi Coast go from aspirational destinations to Euro Summer rites of passage. But with their soaring popularity come the crowds, €30 Aperols and the realisation that you’re holidaying somewhere you’ve already experienced parasocially; all of which I’ve written about. At length.

Obsessed, as I was, with The Odyssey this summer, though, I still wanted the fantasy — with less turmoil and fewer “deathless gods” (yes, I’ve read the book, too) — of days spent coursing along an impossibly blue coastline.

Enter Türkiye’s Turquoise Coast. Stretching along the country’s south-western edge, it offers much of what draws the hordes to the Mediterranean’s more famous playgrounds: ancient ruins, crystalline water, excellent food and glamorous hotels, but with stretches of untouched coastline and rugged, forested terrain.

In fact, as we wound our way down the mountain from our first stay at Perdue — a clifftop bolthole perfect for honeymooners or, in my case, the newly engaged — I realised the glistening waters below were disappearing beneath great umber plumes. A wildfire was burning through the landscape, one of more than 1,600 to have blazed across Europe and the UK this summer.

It was a sobering puncture to the Mediterranean idyll. Helicopters carrying Bambi Buckets hovered overhead as we left the forested mountains behind and headed towards Homer’s “wine-dark sea” — a reminder, too, of how precious the landscape is; how much it needs protecting.

Further along the coast, secluded bays house a new generation of design-led hotels making the area a serious alternative to the usual Mediterranean circuit.

One such hotel is Yazz Collective, an Ibiza-meets-Turquoise-Coast retreat accessible only by boat and almost invisible from the sea until you enter its private bay, it feels less like a resort and more like a Bond lair.

The Vibe

As part of a new, slower approach to travel I’ve been trying to adopt (to middling success), I avoided researching Yazz Collective. But on the occasions I did have to search something, I’d invariably clock those all-too-ubiquitous travel buzzwords — ones I’m equally guilty of using — like ‘barefoot luxury’ and ‘polished ease’. Both felt slightly incongruous with an arrival that saw us chauffeur-driven from our hotel, ferried to a waiting port and deposited by yacht at what is essentially a private island. Barefoot, sure, but understated?

And yet, as I weaved past the outdoor watersports centre and art therapy area, I kinda understood what everyone was getting at. The aesthetic is barefoot but considered: natural materials and earthy tones against pine forest and dazzlingly blue sea, while just 16 guest houses keep things intimate (read: exclusive) rather than resort-like.

By day, the pace is slow: swims in the bay, long, wine-soaked lunches and afternoons on sunbeds as superyachts drift in and out of view. Suffice to say, the people-watching is excellent. Then, as the afternoon sun slips towards the horizon, things become more convivial, as those aboard the yachts — freshly gussied up after a hard day sunning themselves — come ashore for dinner.

Yazz began life as a beach club, and occasionally would-be revellers pull into harbour, ruddy-skinned, and ready to party. I witnessed as much on my first night. As I was twirling a forkful of linguine vongole and not feeling particularly glamorous (blame the day drinking), three women in matching white outfits tumbled off a docked boat, joined by a single man, trim, tanned, and with an appetite for rakı. The quartet seemed to know their way around the restaurant, so perhaps they knew precisely what they were doing. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling they were chasing a night Yazz wasn’t particularly interested in giving them.

For the most part, though, the crowd is more relaxed: well-heeled couples, Turkish families and yacht-dwellers are happy to let lunch bleed into dinner rather than dance around the DJ booth.

The Rooms

The same aesthetic runs inside: earthy tones, linen, wood, stone, and huge picture windows. All suites come with king-size beds, private outdoor space and walk-in rain showers. Mine also had an added outdoor shower and a private chill-out pool, though the ocean was within skipping distance.

Early mornings were for coffee on the terrace, or, if I was really early, on a lounger, letting my toes tap the pool like a piano before the sun beat down too heavily.

There are thoughtful details, too: a pillow menu, yoga mats and widescreen TVs with Netflix and YouTube (we watched Jason and the Argonauts while unpacking, which was pleasingly campier than I remembered). The bathrooms are cool and spacious, stacked with Le Labo products.

Food & Drink

Breakfast is quite the undertaking. The options are dizzying and we dedicated ourselves to exploring them (it’s a tough job etc, etc.) The Turkish breakfast was a table-swallowing spread of freshly baked bread, cheeses, dips, fruit, sucuk and great slabs of honeycomb. Then, we’d order from the hot menu, too. Menemen one day; meats and eggs the next.

The wider menu is mainly Mediterranean. At lunch, we ate ceviche and crab crudo with a crisp local white; for dinner, I found myself eating more pasta than I’d expected on a trip to Türkiye. Not that I was complaining.

There are, however, moments when Yazz’s superyacht clientele makes itself known. One evening, I almost ordered the lobster linguine before doing the currency conversion and realising it hit around the £250 mark.

Though we rarely had room, sütlaç, Türkiye’s creamy rice pudding, was a favourite.

The Facilities

There is plenty to do at Yazz, though the longer I stayed, the less inclined I felt to do it. I enjoyed a gentle hatha yoga class beachside and signed myself up for paddleboard yoga. Then, I fell victim to the aforementioned breakfast, lay down under the shade of a pine tree and slept through the hour-long session.

I was, in theory, equally tempted by everything from canoes (especially the glass-bottomed ones), waterskiing and wakeboarding to SeaBobs, wakesurfing and E-Foiling; you know the watersport famously loved by Mark Zuckerberg, if you want to go full billionaire cosplay. All come at an expense, but the main cost I wasn’t willing to fork out for was losing snoozing time, and so I skipped the water hoverboard (and most everything else).

Back on dry land, there’s an outdoor gym and personal training, plus pickleball, badminton, beach volleyball, and table tennis. There’s workshops aplenty: ceramics, candle-making and, on the day I arrived, straw hat painting. Everything is outdoors and open, including the spa where treatments are performed by Balinese therapists overlooking the ocean in secluded treatment rooms seemingly carved into the rockface.

But the best facility is arguably the bay itself. With nowhere you need to be and almost everything arranged within a few minutes of the water, Yazz makes it all-too-easy to build a full itinerary only to abandon it completely.

Don’t Miss

Contrary to everything I’ve just said about relinquishing plans to Yazz’s slower pace, the standout moment of our stay did, in fact, involve one such plan.

On our penultimate evening, we stepped aboard Moonday for a private sunset cruise. Yes, we went full Bond. As we pulled away from the bay, champagne was poured (and quickly quaffed), and cherries and pistachios were nibbled at as we cruised along the coastline to watch the sun slink into the Mediterranean.

How to book

Rates at Yazz Collective start from £500 per night for a Deluxe Room on a bed-and-breakfast basis, with a minimum two-night stay. Boat transfers to and from the hotel are included in the room rate.

Private sunset boat trips start from £380, while non-motorised watersports start from £60 and motorised options from £80.

What to pack

I’ve always been a mountain lover. I’m lucky to have family who live in Switzerland, which meant I spent winters skiing and summers hiking the many mountain routes from their chalet, enjoying local Valais cheese sandwiches for lunch and the ever-changing watercolours of the sunset as entertainment come nightfall.

Sharp, pine-scented air, the distant clang of cowbells, and jagged mountain peaks set to a background so breathtakingly beautiful your brain can’t quite compute it’s real are my idea of a truly perfect holiday. There’s something about being in the mountains that’s unlike anything else—to me, it's the ultimate spiritual and physical reset.

Which is why I’ve been absolutely chomping at the bit to visit the Dolomites, a mountain range in northern Italy that sits across the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. You’ll likely have noticed the influx of holidaymakers hiking in this European destination this year—Google searches for the destination are up +5,000%, and the mountain range has become an undeniable hotspot thanks to the many TikToks bringing the sheer beauty of the destination online.

So when an invite to Sensoria Dolomites, an adults-only, all-inclusive, design-led wellness destination in the mountains, landed in my inbox, I couldn’t wait to try. With an extensive spa offering, breathtaking mountain views, and a focus on ensuring you leave feeling refreshed, revitalised, and rested, it ticked all the right boxes.

If the above sounds like your kind of break, then you’ll want to add Sensoria Dolomites to your bucket list. We spent two nights there in May, chasing that particular Dolomite quiet, and it was so good, I'm already planning my trip back.

Inside Sensoria Dolomites, the Alpine Hotel Capturing the Wellness Zeitgeist

The vibes

I know we're in for a treat from the second we step out of the car. Sitting in Seis am Schlern, right by the Alpe di Siusi, pine trees, wildflower meadows, and the Sciliar mountain provide an undeniably beautiful and relaxing backdrop.

Paired back, minimalist decor echoes the nature outside, and the hotel’s interiors are basic yet considered; think plenty of Alpine natural wood, muted colours, and stacked bookshelves for you to peruse. It’s not grand or showy in the way you might expect a luxury Alpine hotel to be; rather, the design team has crafted a lobby that feels like a design-conscious, intimate living room. Pale spruce, natural stone and tactile fabrics make you feel like you should enjoy the space with a glass of natural wine or a good book, and the atmosphere is calm, intimate, and unhurried—it feels like a retreat destination, rather than a hotel.

Every element has been considered; floor-to-ceiling windows immediately invite nature in and draw your eye to the stunning mountain panoramas just behind you; piano music drifts through the lobby; and each area has a distinct scent, designed to help you unwind. The lobby smells unbelievable: a heady mix of bergamot and cedarwood, which reminds me of one of my favourite Aromatherapy Associates essential oils.

Staff are attentive but never overbearing; many are happy to chat about the local area and things to do, switching from German to Italian to English with ease. From the get-go, I can tell that this is going to be an experience centred around feeling present; of seeing, feeling, and switching off.

The rooms

With 47 rooms and suites to choose from, the hotel errs on the intimate side, reaffirming its ethos of quiet luxury, personal connection and space to slow down and switch off.

On the design front, the rooms mirror the calm of the rest of the hotel and prioritise natural, tactile materials like local wood throughout. The king-size beds are spacious and comfortable, the minibar is stocked with local essentials, and the bathrooms are kitted out with rainfall showers and Aesop products.

The mountain views are, of course, the main attraction; our room has a balcony overlooking Schlern, making the landscape feel like part of the room.

If you want to go all out, be sure to book The Suite—a 125m² space with its own private spa, Finnish sauna, freestanding bath, outdoor whirlpool and terrace.

The food

One of the main USP’s at Sensoria Dolomites is its all-inclusive offering; something which I usually steer well clear of, but that’s done really well at this location. Rather than it feeling like a traditional resort-style all-inclusive or package holiday, it feels like a thoughtful add-on to ensure you fully switch off for your stay.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all included, with a “snack” bar open during the afternoon for when you're feeling peckish. Breakfast was a standout for us—choose from fresh local breads, honeys from the valley, cheeses, meats, salads, cakes and more or order off the menu. I had an omelette both days, with fresh rye and local salted butter, and it was divine.

The star of the show is the six-course gourmet dinner, with the menus changing daily and taking inspiration from the Alps, Mediterranean and French cuisine. Local produce is prioritised, as are regional dishes. Each of the courses is delicious, but our standout favourite was the Schlutzkrapfen, a traditional South Tyrolean half-moon pasta filled with spinach and ricotta and served with melted butter and Parmesan.

Drinks are included, too, and you can choose from South Tyrolean wines, beers, spirits, aperitifs, local soft drinks and spring water. We loved the Kerner wine, a crisp, aromatic white wine from South Tyrol, but also the freedom to try so many local drinks as part of the package.

The facilities

This is where Sensoria Dolomites really comes into its own, with an extensive spa offering that’d relax even the most uptight of people. There’s ample to choose from, including an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, and a pine bath house with some of the best views of the mountains.

The spa is extensive, and a cosy rabbit warren of offerings. Head to enjoy a large Finnish event sauna, an organic sauna, and a steam sauna, plus dedicated relaxation spaces and plenty of treatments, if you'd like to add them on.

They also offer guided hiking tours, mountain biking, and other activities for during your stay. We hiked to the Alpe di Siusi, taking the cable car (around a 5-minute walk from the hotel) with the hotel's tour guide Patrick, and it was a really memorable day out. The hiking trails are breathtaking, and you wind past sheer rock faces, turquoise lakes, and sweeping alpine meadows. Don’t miss Antonio’s Sauna Shows, either—a traditional Aufguss ritual that he guides you through (he's one of only a handful of trained Aufgussmeisters in the whole of Italy). He themes each night, making it entertaining, relaxing, and undoubtedly unique.

Sensoria isn't just a hotel with a spa attached—it's a genuine wellness philosophy, built around the kind of stillness that's almost impossible to manufacture back home.

Your need to knows:

Stay at Sensoria Dolomites from £408 per night. 39040 Seiser Alm, South Tyrol, Italy, sensoria-dolomites.com. Flights with SKY ALPS go direct from London Gatwick to Bolzano, which is a short 25-minute taxi ride from the hotel.

I’m a big advocate for reading; persuading people to pick up a book is a hill I would die on. Research proves that reading is good for your mental health, education and empathy development; plus, it's simply fun. However, I think there’s an insidious aspect of literary tradition which might be doing us a disservice as women. What am I talking about? The glamourisation of emotionally unavailable men.

Since the brooding Byronic hero, we’ve digested a catalogue of literary male protagonists defined by distance, hidden trauma and a reluctance to connect, who are marketed as the ultimate romantic hero. But are they? Mr Darcy (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice) is cold and proud to the point of arrogance. Mr Rochester (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre) is the definition of secretive; he hides a wife locked in his attic! Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë) is, in fact, a cruel, angry and unreachable man.

These tropes continued into the 20th century. The idea that unavailable equals desirable was cemented, often by male writers too, and not just in the UK. Think Albert Camus’s novel The Outsider: the protagonist, Meursault’s, emotional detachment is entrenched, but as he is radically honest about his lack of conventional feelings—his indifference to his mother’s death and his girlfriend’s love—he is considered attractive and compelling. Maxim de Winter (Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca) is completely emotionally unreachable to his new, young wife because he is utterly consumed by the dark secrets and memory of his deceased first wife. What’s going on? Why can’t they just be loved and love in return? Why do we continue to think they are romantic, even when they are basically horrid?

Despite our 21st-century developed emotional intelligence, I can still find numerous examples where we seem to idolise the unavailable, perpetuating the trope that tells us inaccessible is attractive. Christian Grey (Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James) uses extreme control and a specialised BDSM contract to avoid genuine emotional and physical vulnerability. Nick Dunne (Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn) is emotionally checked out, deceitful and completely disengaged from his marriage long before his wife's disappearance. Connell Waldron (Normal People, Sally Rooney) is crippled by anxiety and social pressure, and so constantly fails to articulate his love or commit to Marianne despite their deep connection. And yet these men are so wanted.

Many of these ‘heroes’ are written by women. It’s natural and understandable that we were/are writing out our experiences, but somehow literary and popular culture has perpetuated the myth that this unavailability is desirable, expected and acceptable. Surely, Mr Darcy, the proud, unknowable and impenetrable, was not supposed to be held up as the ideal; Jane Austen was team communication. Yet somehow, popular culture did not absorb these books as warnings, but instead we continue to associate dark and dangerous with sexy and desirable. How is it that men with a profound lack of empathy, a flagrant disregard for the rights of others, extreme distrust or disrespect of partners, even violent behavioural patterns directed at people and animals become our heroes?

If we acknowledge that there is an enduring appeal of emotionally unavailable literary males, where does that leave the female protagonists? Well, she has no choice other than to carry the emotional load for them both. She must diligently work to second-guess what isn’t being communicated. She endures his snubs, his outbursts, his remoteness. I’m not sure I like the sound of that.

We often read that she must earn his trust, respect and love through her long-suffering; she might eventually be rewarded with reciprocal emotion and/or a fortune. Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Ana Steele and the second Mrs de Winter all win the rich man after persevering, by being the most witty, virtuous or sexy. Goodness, are we absorbing a model that tells us that these tricky men are desirable and complex puzzles which must be solved? I’m concerned that we’re hearing that the cleverest woman in the room wins the dysfunctional man. Whoop, what a prize! The emotional needs of the female protagonist are rarely met.

There is evidence in the texts to argue that if we met these guys in real life, we’d identify an assortment of complex disorders, including—but not limited to—Antisocial Personality Disorder, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder and Intermittent Explosive Disorder. The question is, would we then identify this behaviour as red flags and insist he attend therapy or end the relationship? Or has literature taught us to note that inaccessible men hide deep pain behind a harsh exterior? Would we think we alone could fix him, as our female literary heroines do?

Personally, I don’t believe writers ought to feel responsible for causing a dysfunctional dynamic between impressive women and distant men. I believe that it is frequently written about because it reflects a dynamic that happens all too often in real life. Psychologists and therapists tell us that finding ourselves attracted to emotionally unavailable guys usually isn't bad luck; it's a subconscious attachment pattern. It occurs when the nervous system mistakes the intense anxiety and unpredictability of an unavailable partner for "sparks" or chemistry.

I was aware of all of this when I constructed Amy and Oliver in my novel Eyes on You. Oli is the ultimate in emotionally unavailable, and Amy, as a brilliantly clever but traumatised being, does view him as a challenge that she wants to conquer, a prize she wants to win. The problem for them is that weak communication leads not just to a broken heart but to a life-threatening situation. Does Amy even know Oli, or is she obsessively filling in the gaps where actual knowledge is missing?

There is a contemporary shift: modern writers’ books increasingly critique the toxic nature of chasing distant partners, moving away from rewarding poor communication towards seeing it for what it is: at best unfulfilling, at worst dangerous. Remember, readers, unknowable does not necessarily mean desirable; it might mean plonker.

Eyes on You, published by HQ HarperCollins, is out 27th August 2026. You can pre-order it now.

It’s an image Brits have gotten used to this summer: our once “green and pleasant land” reduced to a crisp, arid vista. The verdant grass of England’s parks and commons scorched yellow and brown after weeks of heat and barely any rain.

The Evening Standard recently posted a carousel of photographs showing the impact of England’s exceptionally dry summer on London. I left a fairly flippant comment underneath: “But by all means, build a massive data centre in east London.”

More than 6,000 people liked it, so apparently I wasn’t the only person thinking about the curious clash between the UK’s hottest summer on record and the AI boom.

Since then, the situation has become even starker. England and Wales officially recorded their driest July since records began in 1836, while those of us in southern England experienced the driest month of any kind on record. As of 10th August, 71.3% of England was officially in drought, affecting 45 million people, while 27 million were living under water-use restrictions.

Temporary-use water bans have meant paddling pools being relegated back to the garage, cars going uncleaned and gardens unwatered. And don’t even think about a BBQ: the dehydrated earth is primed for wildfire. I’d hazard a guess that most of us are willing to forgo these favoured summer pastimes for the sake of saving water and staying safe.

But it does seem strange that, as bans are introduced across parts of the country and water companies implement drought plans and ask customers to curb demand, Britain is racing to build the infrastructure required to turn England into an AI powerhouse.

It made me wonder whether my snarky Instagram comment was actually fair. Just how thirsty is AI? And should we be thinking more seriously about what our increasingly ubiquitous use of it is costing? I decided to find out.

AI Water Use: Wait, Just How Thirsty Is AI?

I think part of the problem is that our relationship with AI feels almost entirely intangible. I can type a question into ChatGPT, ask it to summarise a document or generate an image and, seconds later, an answer appears on my screen, as if by magic. What I don't see, and you don't either, is the enormous physical infrastructure needed to make that exchange possible.

Every prompt has to be processed somewhere. Data centres house thousands of servers which generate heat as they work, requiring extensive cooling systems to keep them operating safely. Depending on the location and cooling system used, that can require water — sometimes vast quantities of it. A House of Commons Library briefing notes that there aren't even official figures for how much water UK data centres collectively consume, because they aren't required to report it.

"Water is mostly used to cool the data centres. That is, to remove the heat from the computers (mostly GPU's) used to compute the responses to queries for ChatGPT," explains Andrew A. Chien, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago.

He explains that generative AI is also more resource-intensive than many of the digital activities we're used to. "The main reason to worry about AI is that each request consumes much more power (vs traditional email, Snapchat, or Facebook feed). This means it consumes correspondingly more water."

What then, about all those viral claims translating ChatGPT prompts into bottles of water? Chien says it's complicated. "This is difficult because it depends on exactly which datacenter is used, and a lot of technical detail about the exact AI models." However, he adds: "I've seen good estimates as high as 50 ml of water per prompt."

That doesn't mean every inane ChatGPT query is draining a reservoir somewhere. Water consumption varies enormously according to where a data centre is located and how it is cooled. Yet despite AI increasingly infiltrating our daily lives, most of us have precious little idea what it takes to keep it running. Chien notes that AI is now "being embedded in nearly every computing activity" and warns that, while efficiency is improving, "we're still likely to see increasing total water consumption by AI."

And we're building more of them?

At the same time, Britain is going all-in on AI. The government has made becoming an “AI maker, not an AI taker” a central ambition and has identified data centres as critical national infrastructure. LinkedIn data shows that more than 95,000 AI related jobs were created across the UK between 2023 and 2025. But the AI boom needs somewhere physical to happen, which means building more — and bigger — data centres.

Including in London. Earlier this year, plans were approved to transform part of the Old Truman Brewery site on Brick Lane — where, just a few weeks ago, I met emerging designers as part of Graduate Fashion Week — into a large data centre, despite objections from some residents and campaigners. The proposed development would demolish and redevelop buildings on the site to create around 5,200 square metres of data-centre floorspace, alongside offices.

A large data centre doesn't automatically mean enormous water consumption — how thirsty a facility is depends heavily on where it is built and how it is cooled — but the concentration of new developments in and around London is still significant.

“The concern isn't that data centres as a whole are big water users today; most aren't. It's that we're approving a wave of new capacity in exactly the wrong places without properly planning for it,” says Stephen Slessor, Chair of British Water. “Around 84% of new UK data centre developments are earmarked for areas already water stressed or projected to be by 2040, and the majority of existing and planned sites cluster around London and the South East, the most water stressed part of the country.”

And the potential scale of that demand is not to be scoffed at. According to Slessor, “Thames Water estimates data centres could drive around 30% of all new water demand in its region. A single hyperscale facility can use as much water in a day as around 10,000 people.” The timing matters too: “the hybrid cooling systems many data centres rely on draw the most water on hot, dry days, which is exactly when household demand also peaks and rivers and reservoirs are under the most strain.”

Dr Eduardo Rico Carranza, an environmental engineer at Imperial College London,whose work on the water-system impacts of data centres was submitted to Parliament, is also concerned. Asked whether we should worry about expanding data-centre capacity in water-stressed areas such as London and the South East, his answer is clear: “Very. Our numbers indicate that the future demand cannot be met by the existing water infrastructure in place, especially during hot seasons.”

That doesn't mean AI is about to make water stop coming out of Londoners' taps. Carranza says domestic supply is likely to be prioritised. But he warns that there could be other consequences: future housing developments struggling to secure sufficient water, more frequent hosepipe bans and new infrastructure being required to meet data-centre demand — the cost of which could ultimately find its way onto consumer bills.

Why are we the ones being asked to cut back?

The thing which confuses me isn't just that AI uses water. Almost everything we do has an environmental cost. It's the seemingly odd imbalance in who is expected to think about it.

As citizens, we're constantly reminded to monitor our own consumption. Take shorter showers, turn off the tap when brushing your teeth, don’t ask for fresh towels on holiday; so reads the sign in the hotel bathroom. These aren't unreasonable requests, but they do make the speed at which AI is being rolled into our lives feel jarring.

Sini Matikainen, Economic and Fiscal Policy Director at LSE’s Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, thinks the conversation between private and public costs is overdue. “We should be having a transparent conversation as a society about the costs associated with this infrastructure, instead of letting large private companies dictate the pace of development.”

Matikainen explains that data centres are voracious consumers of electricity, too. To power even a mid-range estimate of Britain's future data-centre demand entirely with onshore wind would require around 600,000 hectares of wind farms — enough land to cover Luxembourg two-and-a-half times over. Meanwhile, in the US, 11 planned data-centre campuses are expected to produce more greenhouse-gas emissions than the entire country of Morocco.

She questions, too, what the AI boom might look like if those costs weren't so easily externalised. “If these companies actually had to bear the full costs — including paying for the cost of emissions and other environmental impacts — I think we’d see AI being rolled out much more selectively.”

Slessor argues that this isn't simply an environmental issue, but one of fairness. “This is the fairness question, and it's the single biggest risk to public support for conservation. Research at the Environment Agency has consistently found that people back hosepipe bans and are willing to do their bit, but that trust collapses if they don't see companies fixing leaks and cutting their own and other big users' non-essential use first.”

There’s an understandable excitement (and apprehension) about what AI might allow us to do, yet its environmental cost doesn’t crop up as much as we might hope. As Slessor puts it: “Asking households to conserve while a fast-growing, largely unregulated industrial sector expands unchecked in the same water-stressed catchments isn't a sustainable message. If we want the public to keep buying into water efficiency, and we need them to, industrial users including data centres need to be seen visibly pulling their weight too.”

Leslie Morris-Iveson, international water expert and Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House, argues that government therefore needs to establish “clear environmental and social guardrails” around its AI plans. As she puts it: “There are going to be tradeoffs, and I think we as a society need to start defining what uses of AI are important to us, and where AI will move us to a more prosperous future for all, based on the evidence and realistic planning and forecasting.”

I'm not suggesting we stop taking shorter showers or start watering our lawns with wild abandon. But if water is becoming scarce enough that ordinary people are being asked to change their behaviour, shouldn't the companies building the technology transforming our lives — and the governments encouraging them — be expected to account for their consumption just as visibly?

So, was my snarky comment right?

Not exactly. AI didn't cause London's drought, and not all data centres are equally thirsty. Where they're built, how they're cooled and the technology they use can massively change their water footprint.

As Leslie Morris-Iveson puts it, “What gets lost in these debates is that water is entirely local. A data centre in an area with abundant water might not be a problem, but placing high-volume cooling in an already water-stressed catchment during a summer drought puts AI use directly in competition with local homes and farmers.”

So, no, my comment didn't tell the whole story; after all, it was an Instagram comment that, as another commenter put it: “You’re posting on a page that’s owned by a company that owns the biggest data centres on the planet!” The irony was not lost on me, but I don't think that makes the 6,000 people who liked it wrong, either.

What I wanted to highlight — and what I think 6,000+ people resonated with — was the contradiction. We're being warned that resources are becoming scarcer and asked to change our individual behaviour accordingly, all the while watching governments race to accommodate the rapid expansion of AI, the technology for which, and its physical footprint, most of us barely understand.

Sini Matikainen puts the hierarchy of priorities plainly: “Access to water is a fundamental right for human beings, not data centres.”

I'm not about to stop turning the tap off while I brush my teeth. Nor am I about to stop using AI altogether; it’s already embedded into so many of the apps I use. But I think before we ask AI another question, we should be asking a few more questions about AI.

Less than 24 hours after an astrologer read my birth chart at a secluded retreat on Türkiye's Turquoise Coast, I got engaged. It's the kind of life-altering event I’d hoped to have written in the stars, but it wasn't.

Admittedly, there was a bit of a language barrier. But as someone who’s spent an increasing amount of time writing about astrology — from travelling according to my astrocartography chart to interviewing couples using the stars to choose their wedding dates — I wondered if I'd misunderstood what astrology could offer.

I'd come to Faralya, a tiny village clinging to Türkiye's southwestern coast, to stay at Perdue, an adults-only retreat from boutique hospitality group Soulsetters. Hidden among olive groves and orange trees, with the mountains rising behind it and the Aegean stretching endlessly ahead, the property describes itself as "barefoot luxury". Its safari-style tents are peppered along the coastline, with private terraces and jacuzzis overlooking water the exact shade of the blue lagoon cocktails I used to drink by the pitcher at uni.

Soulsetters has launched its Stay Written in the Stars experience, which takes the idea of a personalised holiday to its logical — or, depending on your persuasion, illogical — conclusion. On arrival, guests hand over their birth date, time, and location to the property's resident astrologer. Your chart is interpreted, and an itinerary is recommended from it.

Depending on what the stars think you need, that might mean yoga overlooking the sea, trekking a stretch of the ancient Lycian Way, art therapy, learning the traditional craft of Turkish carpet weaving or watching a film beneath the night sky. The recommendations aren't compulsory; rather than spending weeks researching, saving TikToks and devising the perfect itinerary, you can let the universe decide. After all, isn’t that what a holiday is about: absolving yourself of responsibility?

Letting the stars take over

If surrender was the assignment, Perdue makes a compelling case for it. The property tumbles down towards the water, citrus trees dappling the light on the wooden pathways between canvas tents and decks.

My tent — though really it was closer to a suite — came with a private terrace, sea pool and a sprawling sea vista. Elsewhere, Bali beds invite horizontal afternoons with a book you never crack open (in my case, The Odyssey), while ladders lead directly into the ocean.

It’s an environment designed to make your phone feel redundant. Soulsetters encourages guests to go analogue where possible, swapping screens for landscapes and activities that use your hands, body, and untapped sections of your birth chart.

Before any of that could begin, though, I needed to find out what the universe had prescribed.

The reading highlights characteristics and energies that might benefit from being encouraged during your stay, with activities recommended accordingly.

There was talk of the Leo in my chart and the need to bring out a more energetic side of myself: to move, expend energy and start the day actively. Starting your day exercising is hardly a novel concept, but one nugget rang especially true: Drew, my partner, could help bring out my playful Leo side; it’s a role he’s been playing for the past 10 years. So, the stars weren’t exactly predicting my future; mainly they were saying to get out of bed and have more fun.

The big thing the stars didn't predict

The following morning, Drew, true to our dynamic, encouraged me to do something I’d never done before: jump into the sea. Despite growing up on the coast, I’d been a shy child, inclined to stay indoors. As I tucked my knees into my body and dropped into the water (from no great height), I thought the part of my reading where I was encouraged to let Drew bring out my Leo side had been true. It was also our 10th anniversary, and I liked the idea of using that as a launchpad — literally — for a new version of myself, one less weighed down by fear.

I find anniversaries of all kinds encourage reflection and a kind of retroactive narrative building. The symmetry of ten years was particularly irresistible: a neat decade I could arrange all the details of our life into.

Later in the trip, we'd take a sunset cruise on a boat called Moon Day. I didn't know at the time, but Drew had planned to propose there. This seems an entirely inconsequential detail were the moon not a recurring symbol in our relationship. Neil Young's Harvest Moon is, perhaps, clichédly, "our" song. Over the years, Drew has given me moon-shaped and moon-inspired presents, including a floating planet lamp from Etsy that sits on my work desk.

And 27 July 2026 was a Monday — Moon day, explained astrologer Clarisse Monahan when I got back home.

This sounds like I’m scrabbling to arrange a collection of coincidences into a destiny, and maybe I am — that's the funny thing about looking for meaning: once you start, it appears everywhere.

Drew didn't propose on the boat as planned. As soon as we set foot on the craggy terrain of Perdue, with its winding, tealight-strewn walkways weaving towards the ocean and tucked-away tents, he knew this was the place.

That night, in Perdue’s private dining, an area carved into the cliff face and hidden from prying eyes by wispy white drapes, we watched as the sun burned a bright pink before melting into the Aegean. Later, soppy emotion having morphed into elation, we got royally drunk on local wine and punchy martinis. The food — butter shrimp, tangy chicken, an especially vibrant tomato and caper salad — played second fiddle to both our engagement and the alcohol now flowing freely as if at a Dionysian banquet. The head chef had wanted to congratulate us and could he send something to the table? Why, yes, of course, how kind. Then came guest relations, and another visiting chef for the hotel’s monthly supper club, more cheers, more booze. Rarely are the staff unaware when an engagement is going to take place, and it felt like we were united in our surprise.

Why are we all looking up?

Soulsetters' Stay Written in the Stars might sound niche, but it arrives at an interesting moment for travel.

Astrology has been moving beyond horoscopes and into the places we go and decisions we make when we get there. lastminute.com has even matched the 12 zodiac signs with European destinations based on their supposed travel personalities, while astrotourism — travelling specifically to experience dark skies, eclipses and other celestial events — is moving further into the mainstream, according to Unplugged, the UK’s first digital detox cabin.

Just take the recent partial solar eclipse, which saw Google searches spike 300% for the term in the week prior. Across the world, people gathered with makeshift viewers fashioned from cardboard, colanders, and, for the fortunate few, those coveted eclipse glasses. Strangers stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at the same thing; a rarity in an age when every family member can watch a different show at the same time under the same roof.

Writer Jade Angeles Fitton, author of the upcoming When the Sky Falls, describes our renewed fascination with the heavens as arising from "a longing to experience rapture in an age where logic and pragmatism have ruled for perhaps a little too long".

Societally, we’ve gotten used to knowing things before we experience them. Before boarding the plane, we can see the hotel room, inspect the breakfast, find out which cocktail to order when we arrive. We can build such detailed pictures of a destination that the only thing left to do is physically turn up.

There are obvious advantages to this, but there is also very little mystery; through astrology, Soulsetters introduces some back in.

Hand over your birth details, put down your phone, and let someone else suggest what you might need. Walk somewhere without researching what the view will look like when you arrive. Look at a night sky you haven't already seen through someone else's camera.

Whether the planets genuinely know what I need from a holiday is up for debate, but after spending years trying to perfect the way I travel, perfect the way I do everything, really, I found something luxurious in not knowing what came next. I wonder whether the astrologer had any idea what would unfurl the next day; if she did, I’m glad she kept it back.

How to book

Rates at Perdue start from £267 per night, based on two people sharing. Airport transfers cost an additional €85.

British Airways flies to Dalaman from London Gatwick and London Heathrow up to 10 times per week during the summer season.

Return fares from London Gatwick start from £183, including a generous hand baggage allowance.

What to pack

Editor's Note: This article contains personal accounts of mental health issues and a suicide attempt. If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call CALM’s suicide prevention helpline, open daily from 5pm to midnight, or find support via its free CALMzone app. If you’re worried about someone, CALM also offers tools to help you check in, plus a conversation coach to help you navigate difficult conversations.

I woke up, disappointment flooding me after realising I was still here, followed by a small, shaky sigh of relief. I crawled out of bed and debated going into school as normal: a mock drama A-Level looming. But, growing concerned about the impact what I’d taken could have on my system, I got up, found my mum and told her.

My mum, a nurse, barely said anything. Anger, confusion and disappointment flitted across her face before she picked up the car keys and drove me to A&E in silence. After a hushed conversation with a nurse, embarrassment slowly creeping into my cheeks, I was shown to the kids’ ward. At 17, I was legally still a child. My mum and I sat alone on a low, squidgy foam bench in a painted room adorned with flowers and animal pictures. I felt like I’d been put in Teletubby jail. When the nurse came to take my bloods, the needle was tiny, and the plaster left behind bore a teddy bear. I was put on fluids to flush my system, no words exchanged, and sent away.

My mum drove me into school. I walked into the drama rehearsal late but carried on with my day. A CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) appointment followed in the weeks after — a checklist system culminating in the question: “Are you going to do it again?” I swiftly answered no. Honestly? I was thinking that if I did try again, I wouldn’t risk this rigmarole a second time. No one even seemed relieved my attempt hadn’t gone the way I’d planned. Embarrassed, feeling like an inconvenience, I felt more alone than ever.

Andy Burnham’s £343 million investment isn’t just the 100 new community mental health centres many reports have focused on. It’s also 59 dedicated mental health emergency departments, giving people in crisis specialist care in a place designed for them. “A busy, bright-lit NHS A&E in the middle of a suicidal crisis can be brutal,” notes Simon Gunning, CEO of suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). These new spaces sound exactly like what I needed. But support that doesn’t feel genuinely caring can be just as soul-destroying in a nicer building — is expanding access enough if the experience of care still leaves people feeling unheard, ashamed and unsupported?

Psychotherapist and Counselling Directory member Jessica Haynes and CALM Director of Services Wendy Robinson are united in their views on what people in crisis need immediately. They recommend one consistent staff member, a safe and quiet place, a feeling of being heard without judgement, a “clear next step”, help finding the right sources of support and not being left to navigate services alone. I don’t know if my mum being there — and being a nurse — changed the approach. If it did, it shouldn’t have, particularly given our turbulent relationship was a factor that weighed on my mental health. Either way, I certainly didn’t receive this nuance of support. And this set the tone for my aftercare too.

Haynes says that because crisis teams are “understaffed and underfunded”, it’s usually left to the community mental health team and NHS therapy services to focus on recovery. “The crisis teams are full of wonderful people who are trained to help with and assess risk — but they can only do as much as the system allows,” adds Haynes.

After A&E and CAMHS, I was sent to the school’s therapist every week. In the first session, she sat me in front of a blank piece of paper and some pens, and said nothing. Five minutes later, I splattered the page with hot tears. I felt stifled. I’ve seen eight therapists across my life; a mixture of private and free. Six out of eight made me feel worse, not better. Simply more misunderstood and more unheard. In the UK, “therapist” is not a protected title and training can differ vastly. Voluntary regulatory bodies exist, and the NHS has “stricter requirements”, but Haynes — who has NHS, Papyrus and HOPELINEUK training — says: “We need better training and a better evidence base for understanding how to respond and support these situations in general.”

What could make new mental health centres genuinely transformative? “If funding wasn’t a question, I’d prioritise staff training, support and minimising caseloads — burnt-out staff often leads to an impact on those they’re supporting,” Haynes says. This is echoed by Robinson, who adds: “It’s vital that those expected to run these new services are given suitable training and that they are staffed adequately to meet the demand we know there will ultimately be.”

In the NHS specifically, Haynes points to “huge understaffing” and “underfunding”, which make it hard for staff to take the time to listen without rushing. “The suing culture also makes people wary of deviating from strict, clinical (and often cold) questions in case something happens and they end up in coroner’s court.”

Since my last — and hopefully final — attempt, I’ve worked hard and been lucky. I got into a university which gave me space from factors negatively impacting my mental wellbeing. I found a therapist who, as Burnham hopes for the centres, offered the “right support” at the “right time”. I’ve learnt how to manage my highs and lows far more steadily. How did I get here? Hard work, but mostly luck — extreme luck, too, that the attempt didn’t go the way I’d planned.

I’ve realised it’s not that I didn’t want to live; I just didn’t want to keep living the life I was. I know now that every new day offers the possibility of change, and even if I don't feel it at the time, I can never rule out experiencing happiness again. As Haynes notes: “There is nothing urgent that says that you need to die right now. I'm sure it feels that way — but dying right now is a pretty big deal (no matter how it feels) and nobody can take this emergency exit away from you, so why not keep it in reserve and see if you can try just one more thing to help yourself (or let someone help you) first?”

I’m clinging onto this hope when it comes to Burnham’s plan. Robinson says it’s “a really great start” that the mental health sector has been desperately calling for, but it’s just that — a start. The £343 million is amazing, but not enough. Gunning notes that mental health accounts for 20% of the UK's total disease burden, yet receives less than 9% of NHS spending, and no amount of money guarantees improvement either.

Burnham's 59 emergency departments and 100 centres offer the infrastructure, but it's what happens behind closed doors that matters most: proper staffing, capping caseloads and giving professionals the nuanced training and time it takes to help people not just survive a crisis, but carry on; to not only live after, but, as Burnham says, to “live well”.

I don’t blame the mental health professionals or my mum. I know how despairingly helpless it feels to love someone but feel unable to help patch them back together again. But to say something is always better than saying nothing. Often, words aren’t even necessary. Acknowledging someone’s pain, offering to listen or simply holding them gives them more than enough of a thread of hope to cling onto — to pull through one more dark day. I would know; I’ve not only learnt how to better survive them, but how to wake up each day without disappointment, but instead, gratitude to be alive.

If you’re struggling, call CALM’s suicide prevention helpline, open daily from 5pm to midnight, or find support via its free CALMzone app. If you’re worried about someone, CALM also offers tools to help you check in, plus a conversation coach to help you navigate difficult conversations.

Travelling to Lake Garda has long been on my bucket list. Dreamy scenes of sun-dappled lemon groves, Aperitivo by the shore front, and cooling dips as boats glide across the water in the distance have filled my daydreams with scary regularity in recent years.

Still, I’d never found the chance to explore Italy as much as I’d have liked. That was until my husband and I were invited to stay at Cape of Senses, a fairly new but by no means to be slept on five-star hotel nestled in the hills of Northern Italy overlooking Lake Garda.

Needless to say, I didn’t take much convincing, and we were boarding our flight to Italy a few months later, swimwear packed, ready for our lakeside adventure. If Garda has been a must-try travel destination for you for as long as you can remember, too, I can’t think of a more relaxing, luxurious destination to consider than Cape of Senses.

For my full review, keep scrolling.

Inside One of Lake Garda's Most Beautiful Hotels, Cape of Senses

The vibes

Tucked away in the hills a short drive from Garda and the surrounding Italian lakeside towns, Cape of Senses offers total tranquillity in an indisputably breathtaking location. Just a short 45-minute drive from Verona airport, you’re at the hotel before you know it, met by two decorative Vespas in the driveway, immediately welcoming front-of-house staff and a much-needed welcome Spritz overlooking the lake.

Olive trees sway in the breeze, the smell of grass fills the air, and the soft hum of conversation reverberates from the pools below. The resort, which is adult-only, feels instantly relaxing; there’s a laid-back, sophisticated feel to the place which instantly signals to your brain to switch off.

Interior touches are stylish, but subtle; floor-to-ceiling glass windows sit next to an interior palette of soft neutral tones, wood, and stone. All 55 of the suites have panoramic lake views, plus access to the 2,000m² wellness spa and two fine-dining restaurants.

Everything centres around the backdrop of the cerulean blue lakes below and the mountains above, the unmistakable stars of the show.

The rooms

Spacious, inviting, and comfortable, the rooms are decorated with warm olive tones, natural wooden furniture and grey marble countertops. Architects Hugo and Alessia Demetz pair grasses in tall vases with plush, tonal sofas, and wicker mesh lamps with local stone features to make the space feel like a continuation of the nature outside. Our room backs onto the leafy pool area, which makes this all the more apparent, the room echoing the olive, ivy and sand colours of nature.

Our room has instant access to both pools and a great route through the gardens to the state-of-the-art gym, too. Even visiting in winter promises to be a delight, as the hotel offers a hybrid indoor-outdoor pool which you can swim between, regulating the temperatures to make it enjoyable any month of the year.

Art is minimal, but the vast windows perfectly frame the greenery, pool, and mountains beyond; you could argue, art at its finest.

The food

Two top-floor restaurants with panoramic views of the lake below you mean you're spoilt for choice. Restaurant Al Tramonto is our dinner go-to, offering elevated, gourmet tasting menus and seasonal à la carte dishes. The menu reads: “Be immersed in a world of flavourful, aromatic compositions to awaken your senses,” followed by the Italian “Dolce far niente,” which translates to “the sweetness of doing nothing." That, we do.

Dishes centre around fresh-as-anything tomatoes, decadent, deep bowls of olive oil, and local produce; we enjoy zucchini fritti, homemade pasta, and fresh seafood every day, and nothing disappoints. Local Lugana wine is crisp and mineral-rich; the staff attentive and welcoming; and the food, top-notch.

Attention to detail is second to none, from the wine pairings to the crockery on the table (the hand-blown glasses are so beautiful, I joke at least once that I want to take them home with me).

Their other restaurant offering, Osteria La Pergola, is more relaxed and a great lunch option. Enjoy fresh daily selections straight from local markets and the hotel’s own herb garden.

One of the standout highlights of our trip was the evening sunsets; breathtaking kaleidoscopes of yellow, amber, coral and lilac filling the entire skyline as we enjoyed our main courses. Staff had mentioned that the sunsets from Cape of Senses were some of the best they’d ever seen - I was initially doubtful, but can confirm they are monumental.

The facilities

As a Health Editor who tests spa destinations for a living, I’m rarely blown away, but Cape of Senses’ extensive wellness programme was seriously noteworthy, helping explain how this 2023 newcomer has rapidly earned recognition including a MICHELIN Key and membership of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.

As well as an airy, spacious and well-equipped gym, each week, you can choose from a wide variety of activities, from your more standard Pilates, yoga, or meditation to the more unique Qi Gong, “Deep Sound Rest,” or “Morning Serenity” sessions in the gym.

Over in their spa area, they have three spacious saunas - an 80- to 90-degree space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake, a gentler bio sauna and a steam bath, too. If you’re looking to book a session, you can enjoy scrubs, sauna sound baths, and smoke rituals, all designed to leave you feeling revitalised, relaxed, and recharged and included in the price of your stay.

It’s worth mentioning their verging-on-spiritual Aufguss sessions, too, all led by their Aufgussmeister. A sauna ritual where a trained sauna expert utilises ice and essential oils to heighten the experience, our Aufguss was without a doubt one of the standouts of our trip; ever British, we’d never tried one before, and came out feeling like floaty clouds.

There’s also soothing live music several nights of the week at the lobby bar, or an e-bike wine tour, if cardio is more your thing. If you choose to hike the lakeside trail, as we did, do take advantage of their in-house driver, who is on hand for local journeys. We’d recommend arranging pick-up for the last leg of the walk from Garda - it’s around 7km uphill on a main road, so being picked up is a total treat after a long day of walking.

Need to knows

Stay at Cape of Senses hotel from €470 per night for a Junior Suite. 37010 Torri del Benaco, Lake Garda, Italy, capeofsenses.com.

Do we switch to fully electric or not? That is the question my husband and I have been asking ourselves for the past six months. As I write this, I am sitting on an aeroplane on my way to Puglia in southern Italy, where I spend every summer holiday with my family. To date, we have always preferred to fly, especially with a young child. However, with the ever-rising cost of travel — not to mention expensive car hire fees — we have started to consider upgrading our family car to a fully electric vehicle and driving to Italy each summer instead. Now that my daughter is seven years old, we finally feel bold enough to attempt the journey, which totals approximately 24 hours of driving. The plan would be to break it up with a couple of overnight stops along the way, giving us time not only to recharge the car but also to discover some of the many beautiful places in Europe and Italy that we have yet to explore.

Enter the Volvo ES90, the Swedish manufacturer's latest all-electric saloon, which I was invited to test drive for a weekend in North Yorkshire while staying at Saltmoore Hotel in Whitby.

I'll admit, I had never driven — or charged — an electric car before getting behind the wheel of the ES90. I was slightly sceptical, not only about its quoted range of up to 435 miles but also about whether stopping to charge it would become an inconvenience on long journeys. That said, any seven-hour drive, electric or otherwise, usually requires at least one comfort break, so perhaps charging wouldn't be as disruptive as I'd imagined.

One of our biggest priorities when choosing a new family car is space. If we really are going to drive across Europe every summer, generous leg room and a sizeable boot are essential — the Russo-Bah family certainly don't travel light.

Although our trip to Yorkshire was only for two nights, the drive took place during one of the hottest weekends of the year, with temperatures reaching almost 40°C. The ES90's spacious cabin, luxurious leather seats and panoramic glass roof, which can instantly shade itself at the touch of a button, were all very welcome features.

While I had naturally been looking at SUVs like the Volvo EX60, the Volvo ES90 offers something that few cars in its class can match: exceptional space for both front and rear passengers. Rear leg room is particularly impressive and quickly became one of the car's biggest selling points for me. Another unexpected highlight was the fully reclining front seats. After five hours on the road, being able to properly stretch out whilst my husband took over at the wheel, was such a treat and would be a real win when taking turns driving all the way to Italy.

The Bowers & Wilkins sound system is another standout feature, transforming long motorway miles into a fun family experience singing along to our favourite songs, while the large central touchscreen controls virtually every function in the car. I had read one review describing the interior as too minimalist, but for me, that simplicity is exactly what makes it so appealing. The clean, uncluttered design immediately stood out and feels both modern and timeless.

In terms of the driving experience itself, I genuinely didn't know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by how intuitive everything felt. On the motorway, its adaptive cruise control and driver assistance systems monitored the traffic ahead, maintaining a safe distance by gently slowing the car when needed and making long stretches of driving noticeably more relaxing. Rather than taking over, the technology makes the car adapt to what is on the road in front and helps you understand when you’re distracted, or tired, prompting you to have a rest.

Of course, one of the biggest questions surrounding any electric car is charging. While it did require a little more planning than simply pulling into a petrol station, I quickly realised that charging slots naturally fitted into the breaks we would have been taking anyway and are actually far more present that I realised. 20 minutes later, after a quick lunch stop to eat and stretch our legs and we were ready to continue the journey. It certainly challenged many of the assumptions I had about owning an electric vehicle.

The ES90 is longer than many of the SUVs I had been considering, and that extra length would undoubtedly take a little getting used to when manoeuvring or parking. However, the payoff is the generous interior space, exceptional comfort and smooth driving experience that few rivals can offer.

By the time I returned the car to Volvo, it had firmly established itself as one of the front-runners on our shortlist. More importantly, it answered the question I had been asking myself before the weekend began: could I realistically drive an electric car all the way to Italy every summer? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. The Volvo ES90 didn't just convince me that driving across Europe in an electric vehicle is possible — it made me wonder why we hadn't considered making the switch sooner.

Click here to find out more about the Volvo ES90 Electric

The dream man? Well, he's tall, dark, handsome, and...wicker. In case you hadn't heard, having a boyfriend is kind of embarrassing now; they ruin your birthday, and can behave appallingly. No wonder, more women today are "chronically single" and would rather date a basket than a man.

​Ok, obviously not really. But the new trailer for Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's comedy Wicker suggests that, at this point, we're not too far off from pining after men made of rattan.

​In case you haven't seen it, the trailer teases a film in which Olivia Coleman, playing a grimy fisherwoman, asks Peter Dinklage, playing the local basket weaver, to fashion her a husband of wicker. He weaves up a storm and produces a woven creation that looks an awful lot like Alexander Skarsgård in sexy basket form, complete with entwined plaited wooden abs and a thick head of raffia hair.

He and a rather giddy Coleman quickly tie the knot and proceed to have a lot of raunchy sex. (Don't think too much about the splinters.) In between all of the sex, he is sweet, stoic, and utterly besotted, saying things like, "You are the reason I live and breathe." The local women watch on in part-horror, part-awe, part-envy — "I heard that he's as strong as a tree and just as hard!" — while their male partners scoff and guffaw, complaining that "men are not like that!"

The girls that get it, get it. "TikTok fyp (for you page) is full of women thirsting over wicker baskets ??" someone wrote on X. "I didn't have me thirsting over a hot fictional man made of wicker on my bingo card, but here we are!" another TikTok video was captioned. Even IKEA has gotten in on the action, while Etsy has seen searches for 'personalised/custom wicker baskets' skyrocketing by +2,664% in July. "Pop culture has a way of giving us unexpected new design cues, and the buzz around this fall’s most talked-about movie trailer has already given ‘husband material’ a whole new meaning," says Etsy’s Trend Expert Dayna Isom Johnson.

And this sexy basket isn't the only homemade man getting women worked up. Last year's Frankenstein saw Jacob Elordi playing Frankenstein's creature. Instead of wicker, he was fashioned of a sickly blue patchwork of off cuts from decaying corpses, but, nonetheless, people were into it. “Somebody sedate me," one TikTok video caption read. "It's not a hear me out, it's a hold me back," another fan wrote. Wicked Part II also saw Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba transforming her boyfriend into a man of straw. He wasn't an immediate hit—and initially drew comparisons to Ryan Reynolds—but a subsection of the internet still found themselves drawn to him. "I personally think that Jonathan’s Fiyero looks WAY HOTTER as his Scarecrow form than he did as a human!" one wrote on Reddit. Another added a gif that simply said: "Would."

Why Are Women Getting Horny For The Homemade Man?

It's no secret that heterosexual women are becoming disillusioned. The disappointing reality is that being in a relationship with a (human) man comes with a host of practical and emotional drawbacks.

Romance aside, coupling up with a man often means taking on extra labour, both domestically and emotionally. Working women take home an average of £631 less than their male counterparts each month. Meanwhile, the division of domestic labour remains heavily imbalanced, with women undertaking an average of 26 hours of unpaid work per week compared to 16 hours for men. Add to this the fact that women tend to be saddled with the bulk of the mental load in their heterosexual relationships, tasked with remembering dates, chores and just about everything else. How many women do you know who remember to call their male partner's mum on her birthday, because he's never had to?

All of this can lead to resentment, and even to women falling out of love with their partners. During a long relationship, women reportedly fall out of love at a rate of 55.2%, while only 9.2% of men experience the same decline in affection, according to a 2024 study. “Women more often express frustration about communication and the division of labour,” the study leader said at the time. “And men more often are concerned about a sexual relationship and wanting less frustration from their partner.”

As dating men becomes more disheartening and, at times, disempowering, many progressive women are starting to feel not only pessimistic, but self-conscious about admitting to their romantic preference for men. It's a phenomenon known as "heteropessimism", coined by Asa Seresin in a New Inquiry piece.

Heteropessimism describes a "vocal rejection of heterosexual culture and the heterosexual experience by people who find themselves in heterosexual relationships or desiring people of the opposite sex and gender," says Dr. Luke Brunning, a philosopher specialising in intimacy, love, and relationships and Associate Professor in Applied Ethics at the IDEA ethics centre in the University of Leeds. "They might express frustration, embarrassment, or regret that they are straight in an attempt to distance themselves from these structures and experiences and the expectations [that come with them]."

The fact of the matter is, patriarchal rhetoric and patterns are hard-wired into our culture. It's impossible to find men who have managed to avoid soaking it up just a little. Even men who take pride in being feminists, men who actively try to extricate themselves from the deep-seated patriarchal model, often find that the biases, habits, and thought processes are too deeply encoded to shift. The problem with so many straight men in the dating world is that, whether they like it or not, they grew up in a world that upheld patriarchal values: a world that taught them time and time again that being in a heterosexual relationship was inherently imbalanced.

"I think the problem is that there can very often be a big disconnect between the changes in superficial things like attitude and belief versus the actual changes in behaviour and sentiment and feeling," Brunning says. "It's easy for people to think about how they're showing up in relationships, to think about things like equal distribution of housework or the way that they treat each other. But actually, evidence shows that even those couples that are self-avowed feminists, that are striving for equal distribution, it's not equal. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's avowedly feminist, but also you sense they're subtly not pulling their weight, then that little bit of dissonance can creep in."

The Ultimate Fantasy

In the real world, a straight woman's best hope is a man who is doing his best to unlearn his encoded patterns; to show up and work on it. But in the fantasy world? What better than a man who was never exposed to them in the first place? A man who was literally made from scratch and plopped onto the world with zero assumptions about his supposed superiority and no expectations about what he should contribute to a relationship?

"It's the ultimate fantasy, isn't it?" says Brunning. "To have the features that you want without the social imprinting. To have a romantic sexual experience that meets your needs, satisfies you, but isn't accompanied by the baggage that often goes with it. It's playing with these ideas of desocialised masculinity."

These stories also provide a "safe space" for exploring the seemingly incongruent tension between the attraction to men and how it butts up against our dissatisfaction with modern masculinity. "There are aspects of masculinity that people find very desirable—that they want incorporated into their sexual lives—but they may not want incorporated into other aspects of their lives. [These stories] provide a space to portray those tensions. To find them funny and amusing, stimulating, make them safe, exaggerate them," explains Brunning.

​The sexy basket, the decaying corpse creature—they are refreshingly untouched by the world's toxic patriarchal modelling. Plus, they're hot! And what could be more attractive than that?

In January 2025, beauty YouTuber Gigi Beauty, also known as Gabby Sterling, took her then-husband, King Adri (Ari Aiano), on an all-expenses-paid eight-day trip to Dubai for his birthday. Later that year, on 18 November—her 30th birthday—he asked her for a divorce.

"He left me crying there on my birthday, the whole day for two days straight," she later said in a now-deleted video. Although he briefly retracted his request, the couple announced their divorce three months ago.

When I put the question out, more than 120 women got in touch. My inbox was overrun with stories of happy memories sabotaged by the men they were close to. Though I came across this through the use of birthdays, it became clear that this was a much bigger problem sullying any possible moment of joy potentially experienced by women.

I spoke to clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr Sophie Mort about why this seems to happen. From a clinical perspective, she says it's often twofold: significant occasions bring difficult emotions to the surface, while the pressure of the moment can overwhelm people who feel "ashamed, resentful, depleted or uncomfortable with emotional expectations."

Though poorly timed, she explains how the timing of these confessions may just be “avoidance reaching its limit”. She does acknowledge, though, that sometimes this is done on purpose.

“For some people the timing is the point, because it guarantees the maximum effect and it guarantees the memory belongs to them permanently. That deserves to be named plainly.”

​Because so many of these moments involve men, I question if this is something unique to straight relationships. Socialisation can provide certain scripts and permissions, but it does not make the behaviour inevitable. She tells me: “Some forms of “masculine” socialisation may also shape how insecurity is expressed. Men can be encouraged to value control, self-reliance and emotional restraint, while vulnerable feelings are treated as weakness. Saying, “I feel irrelevant,” “I am frightened you will outgrow me,” or “I am ashamed that I am struggling” may feel less available than anger, criticism or withdrawal.”

The most haunting example of this behaviour was around work. Many women shared that the night before big interviews, the first day of a new job, or even sharing the news of a new role, created fertile ground for arguments, fights, ghosting and silent treatment.

​“My mum's ex took the family car to the garage on the first day at her new job when she was planning to drive to work. There was nothing wrong with the car, and nothing had been mentioned before. He was a mechanic,” Lenna told me.

“I had an ex-boyfriend that started a massive argument with me the night before a huge interview. When I broke up with him, he admitted it was because he wanted me to be exhausted for the interview and not get it. Got it anyway, though, so that showed him.” April shared.

In 2024, on the first day of her new job, Samadreeta’s ex broke up with her and blocked her everywhere. “I couldn't even get to enjoy the achievement properly because I was feeling miserable the whole day,” she writes.

“Within research on intimate partner violence and economic abuse, employment sabotage is a recognised pattern.” Dr. Mort shares. “It can include interfering with someone’s ability to study, find work, attend work or progress in their career.”

When men aren’t eclipsing the joys, they’re making the difficult moments harder. “I phoned my then-boyfriend of four years after finding out my nan had passed away, and he decided that was the right time to tell me he’d cheated on me three days before”, Amy remembers.

Anita had a similar experience: “I got cheated on while I was overseas for my father's funeral. Found out when I got back and had a mental health spiral which landed me in hospital with a serious migraine. He refused to believe it was due to his behaviour and it must have been because of my smoking.” ​

Several women spoke of men suddenly feeling neglected when they had to redirect time and energy caring for elderly or sick parents. In so many of these cases it seemed that time not dedicated to the relationship was an affront to the men, as if women could not be loving partners and carers to others. Dr Mort chimes in on this observation: “Some men may have learned, explicitly or implicitly, that a female partner’s time, care, domestic labour and emotional attention should remain available to them, or that her ambitions should fit around the existing arrangements.”

Many of the stories people shared centred on holidays: girls' trips, solo travels, and even family holidays. “My boyfriend called me while I was on my best friend's birthday girl trip, saying he was going to unalive himself. He did the same thing while I went on a solo trip for my birthday too,” Amie tells me.

Not even sporting events were safe; the night before Molly ran her first-ever marathon was one she’ll never forget: After not hearing from him for months, I got a message from him saying he was in the hospital because he drank too much and it was because of me…I ruined his life when I ended our relationship. He was also in the running community and knew the marathon was the next day. I slept so poorly that night.

"It taught me to dread days that were about me"

Several women spoke to me about a lingering fear of celebrating achievements or even sharing them with people, for fear of reliving the disappointment. These moments begin to feel “unsafe”, Dr Mort tells me, “because experience has taught her that being celebrated comes with a cost.”

Even Dr Mort felt the weight of this too: “As a woman… I’ve experienced this myself; it taught me to dread days that were about me. So much so that I spent this birthday alone for the first time so I could fully ensure nothing anxiety-provoking was likely to happen. The phenomenon is real; it has lasting consequences.”

Despite her own experience on this, she reassures us that these moments need not be ruined forever; you can reclaim these moments and celebrations and form new memories. This doesn’t mean “forcing yourself to feel positive about what happened”, she stresses. “It may mean celebrating again with safe people, choosing a different date, creating a new tradition or simply deciding that the original event does not get to be the final version of the story.”

She tells me to invent new traditions by first asking: what was taken from you? That way you can figure out the most effective way to re-write the story and not feel like you’ve lost a moment that can never be recovered.

Take a minute. I want you to choose a car that can handle a major city, a motorway and a mountain range all within 90 minutes. Parking on a steep hill is non-negotiable. It's 30-plus degrees, so the aircon needs to be exceptional. The sat-nav must be effortless to follow. You'd like to stop somewhere scenic along the way without taking your hands off the wheel. There are two car seats in the back and a tent in the boot. One of the children has fallen asleep, so you need quiet in the back while you lip-sync, silently and with full commitment, to whatever is playing up front.

If you have an answer, I'd genuinely love to hear it, because I was completely stumped until last week, when that exact scenario played out during a test drive of the Volvo EX60 around Barcelona. A test of the car, yes, but also of my ability to navigate rush-hour traffic in the Spanish capital for the first time. Olé! Nervous drivers need not apply. And yet I'd actually use the word enjoyable, even while weaving between taxis, tourists and more cyclists than you'd find at the Tour de France. Because the new fully electric version of Volvo's bestselling XC60 can, as I discovered, handle just about anything. And not just handle—actively assist.

"Hey Google, play summer house hits." "Hey Google, what's the most scenic rest stop along this route?" "Hey Google, re-route us to a coffee shop." The AI-powered voice assistant became my default co-pilot for the day, and an exceptionally good one. A feature rolling out to all Volvos shortly, though the EX60 leads the charge. Hey Google can also control all 28 speakers individually, adjusting the volume in each zone of the car independently. Sleeping babies no longer require total silence. Quite the gamechanger.

Add Apple Music, Spotify, 5G, Waze, Google Maps, Apple CarPlay, a wireless charging pad and every in-car entertainment app worth having—displayed across a central iPad-sized screen and a smaller driver-facing panel—and every element of modern in-car technology is accounted for. All of it housed in a compact SUV small enough to squeeze into a narrow mountain monastery car park—with all-round parking sensors, cameras and a bird's-eye view to assist—yet large enough to comfortably fit two car seats, a passenger in the back and a full camping set-up in the boot. Or, more realistically, the weekly shop, a pram and whatever else needs hauling. The hidden under-boot compartment was a personal highlight: additional space and the kind of security that means the days of hiding a handbag under a rogue blanket are firmly over.

The design is a more minimalist take on the classic Volvo—inspired, lead designer Sara tells me, by "interior design, fashion, craftsmanship and contemporary art and architecture". Available in frost green, ice white, onyx black, heather bronze, aurora silver, sand dune and vapour grey, with four interior options spanning both leather and wool-blend finishes. Sleek is the operative word, if I'm only allowed one.

"The key design features are the aerodynamic exterior design with new door handles, and the airy interior with a lightweight textile dressed dashboard with a curved oled screen," she adds. Noting it was built for modern families in mind. A trait that's easy to spot with the near-never-ending list of mod cons.

Then there's the matter of range—the question that inevitably comes before everything else when it comes to electric. The answer is an 800V battery with a choice of either 660 or 611 km range, with 16 minutes of fast charging adding around 70% charge. Enough to see me through five hours of driving—aircon, music and Hey Google all running at full capacity—with only a marginal drop in battery.

A can-do-anything car, in other words. And one that, rather inconveniently, I now can't stop thinking about (as well as the patatas bravas). Oh, and did I mention you can add the car key to your phone, just like your credit cards? The future of cars is officially here.

Click here to find out more about the Volvo EX60

No relationship is experienced in the same way by the people involved. We can’t know each other’s thoughts; we can’t hear each other’s hearts when they are beating fast. When we fall for someone, when the fact that they exist crushes us, we often don’t know anything about them, but we pretend that we can find out.

I was asked recently about the role that social media plays in our crushes, and what it was like before we had access to the faces, captions and tagged displays of the people we were crushing on. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and bought my first smartphone in 2009, when I was 25. I feel lucky, because my early crushes were entirely nebulous—there was no way to know anything beyond what I was shown in real life. The yearning was analogue.

These days, we can burrow down into the mystery of someone we might have feelings for, trying to dig up every worm. Some of us believe that this can dilute or intensify the experience, and it can, but not in the ways we imagine.

In my day job as a counsellor and social worker, I have worked with many people addicted to escaping their realities. Humans can’t always cope with what we have been through, and the ongoing effects of trauma and mental illness can lead to addiction. Escape can be found through our phones, the internet and social media, just as it can be found in alcohol, drugs and sex.

When I started to notice my own reliance on my phone, I also started to write a character who was consumed by hers. The phone of my new novel Worry Doll’s protagonist, Heloise, is her best friend and her worst enemy. She picks it up and puts it down, her use unmanageable. She tries to make rules for herself and breaks them. In the same way Heloise is addicted to love, she is addicted to checking and scrolling. She wants love, connection, approval and reassurance, but she is looking for it in places it can’t be found. Interactions with her phone and her crush mimic the experiences she desires, becoming obsessions that take her away from reality.

Like alcohol or drugs, many of us have become addicted to our phones: the scrolling, the notifications, the endless stimuli. Our brains have become reliant on these pops of dopamine. If we put our phone away, we are left with nothing but ourselves. In the throes of a crush, we search for digital intimacy. Perhaps there is no such thing.

When writing Worry Doll, I wanted to explore the way a crush can take over our consciousness and render us insane. The characters abandon themselves for the unknown quantity of another, but the sacrifice plays with their realities, leading the reader to question their own. I wanted the book to read like a horror movie: without the blood and guts but with all of the perversion.

I recently watched Obsession, the new independent horror movie starring Inde Navarrette as the most deliciously unhinged girlfriend I’ve ever witnessed. When Bear (Michael Johnstone) makes a wish using a cursed novelty item, the One Wish Willow, from a woo woo store, he asks for what we have all wanted—requited love. His wish comes true, but it’s not a happy thing. He is cornered and haunted by the very fantasy he indulged for so long.

The movie says, in no uncertain terms, that having a crush on someone is a figment of the imagination. It reminds us that we can’t understand or control the way another person feels about us, or how they see the world. It achieves what I hope to achieve with my book: a blurring of what is possible in order to focus on what is not. The exaggeration of yearning, obsession and forgetting creates a version of the fantasy world we have all lived in.

Perhaps this is why it feels so breathless, so urgent, so delulu, to have a crush on someone—and why we will go out of our way to feel close to them, even if that means rewatching their Instagram story over and over. Our body starts to panic because it doesn’t know what might happen and can’t find out, despite how much we try. We have all gone out of our minds just to see their face again.

Worry Doll by Laura McPhee-Browne is out now

"I should have put my rent money on that."

It's one of the first TikToks I see after the Love Island USA finale. A woman screams at her TV as the winners are announced, lamenting the money she could have made if she'd backed them. Around it, my feed is filled with videos encouraging viewers to turn their encyclopaedic knowledge of reality TV into cash. The message is clear: your pop culture obsession doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure. It could be profitable.

For decades, gambling companies largely targeted men, building businesses around football, horse racing and poker. But a noticeable shift is underway. Increasingly, women are being treated as the industry's next major growth market, with products and marketing designed around reality television, celebrity culture, influencers and social media rather than traditionally male-coded interests.

Prediction markets have ramped up their culture offerings, allowing people to trade on reality TV, Spotify streams, and even Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. Currently, there is a $548,978 trading volume on the Love Island UK market, with Lorenzo and Julia leading.

The strategy reflects a broader cultural shift. Women today have greater financial independence, higher workforce participation and are investing in greater numbers than previous generations. Fidelity's 2025 Women and Investing Study found Gen Z and Millennial women are becoming increasingly engaged with their finances, while the proportion of women who own investments continues to rise.

A recent study from Deakin University found that gambling promotions linked to influencers, women's sport and lifestyle content increased the normalisation and social acceptability of gambling among women aged 18 to 40. Rather than trying to persuade women to engage with products designed for men, companies are redesigning the products—and the marketing—to meet women where they already are.

This is reflected across social media, as more content is dedicated to promoting financial literacy cheat sheets, stock tips, and the girlification of retirement accounts. Some of it blurs with self care and empowerment messaging, designed to be easily digestible, from get-ready-with-me videos, quippy listicles, and girl math equations that really work. It’s girl’s-girl behaviour delivered with a forehead kiss to your savings account.

"Women are actively seeking financial participation and literacy," explains consumer behaviour expert Ammarah Ahmed. "The challenge is that gambling companies are adapting to this content style too. You now have women who are engaged with reality television, celebrity culture and social media who are also being invited to see those interests as financial opportunities."

Rather than presenting gambling as risk-taking, these campaigns often frame it as savvy decision-making. Rather than betting, users are encouraged to think of themselves as making predictions, participating in markets or applying knowledge they already possess.

Dr Devin Proctor, a digital anthropologist and professor at Elon University, believes this represents a much broader cultural change. "This communicates to a whole new population of fans that their cultural knowledge has economic value," he explains. "The same knowledge that has often been dismissed as trivial or 'trashy' is suddenly presented as something capable of generating capital. What's changing isn't necessarily the activity itself—it's the moral framing around it."

His description of the "financialisation of cultural expertise" captures what feels so distinctive about this new wave of marketing. Knowledge of football statistics has long been monetised through sports betting. What's new is encouraging women to view their expertise in reality television, celebrity culture or internet trends through exactly the same commercial lens.

The marketing reflects that evolution. Influencer partnerships, creator-style videos and user-generated content dominate feeds where traditional gambling adverts would once have felt jarring. Instead of loud bookmakers and football pundits, viewers are met with relatable creators, casual conversations and lifestyle aesthetics that blur the line between entertainment, recommendation and advertising.

Dr. Rey Junco, a licensed trauma therapist and research psychologist, says he’s concerned about gambling being disguised as lifestyle content. “There isn’t any good regulation around this and therefore can present a risk for those who are prone to such addictions. If you lower the cultural and social barriers to gambling (‘hey this is fun, all the people you look up to are doing it’), more people will gamble and more people will develop problematic gambling addictions.”

Aside from its current regulations, Dr. Junco isn’t convinced the app will go further with its user protections. "I absolutely think that platforms should be better stewards of public health," Dr. Junco continues. "Do I have hope that they will? Absolutely not. We've seen this time and time again."

All of this is also happening at a particularly dark time for many people: the economy feels tumultuous, the housing market is in crisis almost everywhere, and politically, nothing feels even close to being in favour of women. So, the desire to find the golden ticket is higher than ever. Gambling companies are just hoping you’ll believe it’s on their app.

“The long-term problem here is not just individual financial loss in an economy where the younger generation is already struggling to be able to afford things like buying a house,” Ahmed warns. “It's what happens when a generation grows up with this behaviour hardwired into them before they could ever even tell the difference.”

The branding may be softer and the influencers may look different from the bookmakers of old. But beneath the lifestyle aesthetics and empowerment messaging lies a familiar business model: finding new customers and convincing them that this time, it's different.

The Sanderson, standing proud on Berners Street in the heart of Fitzrovia, is one of the city's modern icons. Its playful, avant-garde interiors, dreamed up by the world-renowned architect and designer Philippe Starck back in the early '00s, offered a new take on luxury, providing an alternative to the classic opulence of London's heritage hotels.

Instead of the hallmarks of ornate sculptures, parquet floors, plush velvet, and lots of marble, Sanderson London offers something much more imaginative, inviting guests into a whimsical wonderland where obscurity rules. Fantastical touches, consisting of sheer drapes, eclectic artwork, and the odd optical illusion, soften the modernist architecture in which they are housed and give the hotel's spaces a slightly surreal feel. Arts and culture fans will note plenty of pop culture references dotted around, too; there's a Salvador Dalí-inspired couch, and nods to Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland throughout (the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is a delight, with 'drink me' potions and vintage crockery).

London has no shortage of design hotels, with some of the stand-outs being the charming literary-inspired retreat The Bloomsbury, the art-deco-inspired The Savoy, and Blakes, which was widely considered the world's first luxury boutique hotel when it launched in 1978 (Morgans in New York was another notable contender). But Sanderson London, housed in a grand 1950s building originally home to Arthur Sanderson & Sons wallpaper and textile company, brought something new to London's hotel scene with its fantastical design and social atmosphere - the hotel's 'Long Bar', an 80-foot glowing onyx bar surrounded by Philippe Starck's signature 'eye' stools, was the place to be seen in the early noughties.

The whole place is brimming with nostalgia, from the old-school iPod docks in the bedrooms to its minimalist styling and silver-and-white colour palette with accents of chrome, glass, and sheer textiles, typical of early '00s design. Sanderson London may not reflect what a modern London hotel looks like; instead, it takes guests back to the era in which it was designed.

THE ROOMS

Initially designed by Philippe Starck, the rooms at The Sanderson were updated by Tim Andreas of Banjo, a protégé of the world-famous designer, who sensitively updated the hotel's 150 rooms and suites while maintaining their original character. The simple colour palette of silver and white filters through to the rooms, the minimalist look softened with sheer drapes and peaceful landscapes hung on the wall. Texture plays a big role in the design, with semi-sheer drapes continuing the '00s theme from the lobby.

The entry-level rooms have comfy Queen-sized beds, but the Deluxe Kings and above feature an impressive silver-leaf sleigh bed as the central focus. All beds are dressed in soft 300-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and fluffy pillows.

Bathrooms are suitably luxurious, with the Deluxe Kings, Loft Kings, and Penthouse suites offering freestanding baths. The Penthouse suite is a truly spectacular place to stay in London, with its own private lift, a living room, kitchenette, two bedrooms, three bathrooms and sweeping views of the London Eye.

FOOD & DRINKS

Sanderson London excels in originality when it comes to food and drink. Its menus are designed to spark imagination, from the whimsical Mad Hatter's afternoon tea to the creative cocktail list served alongside light bites enjoyed while basking in the late-night glow of the Long Bar. On weekends, the hotel's atmosphere becomes more lively, with guest DJs on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Restaurant serves refined Italian food with a few surprises, with an eclectic menu curated by Chef Daniele Zaffora; the homemade tagliatelle is a highlight. Meanwhile, the Mad Hatter's Afternoon Tea, served in the atmospheric Courtyard Garden, serves savoury dishes such as The Cheshire Cat (king prawn tart, horseradish, lettuce, lime & potato puffs), and the hotel's signature dessert, The Queen of Hearts pastry (pistachio & ricotta cheesecake, wild berry curd). Even if you're not sampling Sanderson London's afternoon tea, the Courtyard is a lush space to relax in and escape the chaos of central London, offering calming water features and a tropical feel.

THE ACTIVITIES

Aside from the extensive dining and drinking options, there’s a gym and a billiards room that doubles up as an event space. There's also the option to book in-room massages when there's availability. Pets are welcome at the hotel for an additional £100 non-refundable deposit (service animals are exempt from the fee).

But one of the most appealing parts of this hotel is its location. While the hotel is technically in Fitzrovia, it's within easy reach of Oxford Street and the vibrancy of Soho's many bars and restaurants, as well as the bustling areas of Bloomsbury to the east and Marylebone to the west.

NEED TO KNOWS

Rooms at Sanderson London start at £256, and you can book through the hotel's website or by phone at 020 7836 4343.

Address: 50 Berners St, London W1T 3NG

Two years ago, during Euro 2024, I wrote about the rise in domestic abuse around England football matches. Violence against women and girls had just been declared a national emergency and, while the statistics were already well known to campaigners, seeing them enter the mainstream conversation felt like progress.

Last night, after England’s latest defeat, a friend turned to me and said, matter-of-factly: “I keep thinking about how many women are going to bear the brunt of this loss.” But the statistic I remembered was bleaker still: domestic abuse incidents rise by 38% when England lose—and by 26% even when they win or draw.

Given how much attention those figures have received, I had hoped things might be different. But when I reopened my 2024 article today, expecting to update it, I realised I was about to write almost exactly the same story.

I'd be reiterating, the same 2014 Lancaster University study, with those figures showing domestic abuse incidents rising by 26% when England play and by 38% when they lose. The same warnings from charities. The same insistence that football does not cause abuse, but that the heightened emotions, alcohol consumption and volatility surrounding major tournaments can exacerbate violence where it already exists. Something I always feel at pains to reiterate after facing a swathe of online abuse whenever I post about the correlation between football and domestic violence.

What Has Changed in Football Then?

What has changed since 2024, then, is not the underlying pattern; it is how prepared we have become for it.

Before this World Cup had even begun, Women’s Aid launched The Other Kick Off, a campaign built around 11.37pm: the estimated time abusive partners might return home after England’s opening match. Digital billboards appeared near fan zones and football hotspots, hijacking one of the tournament’s most searched questions—“What time is kick-off?”—and replacing it with the time many victims and survivors dread.

The Crown Prosecution Service also issued a warning that domestic abuse was expected to rise during the tournament, while police and prosecutors said they were working together to identify offenders and bring cases forward.

According to National Police Chiefs’ Council data, more than 300 domestic abuse offences were reported during Euro 2024 in cases where victims believed the perpetrator’s behaviour was linked to football. The CPS now says that four in five domestic abuse-flagged cases referred to prosecutors, where a charging decision is made, result in charges.

In one sense, this is progress. Institutions are talking openly about what happens around major tournaments. Police forces are preparing; so too are prosecutors and charities. Campaigns are more visible and better targeted.

But there is something deeply bleak about this level of preparedness. Have we really reached a point where a rise in domestic abuse is treated as another predictable feature of tournament football? As expected as crowded pubs, delayed trains and arguments over referee Ismail Elfath.

Before a ball is even kicked, helplines brace themselves. Charities like Women’s Aid and Refuge prepare campaign materials, police issue warnings, and journalists like me pull from the same decade-old statistics. Everyone knows what is coming—it’s right there in the campaign material: He’s Coming Home. That should shock us more than it does.

The 26% and 38% figures come from research published in 2014, based on reported incidents in Lancashire during the 2002, 2006 and 2010 World Cups. The study was limited in scale and researchers called for its findings to be replicated. Yet, more than a decade later, it remains the evidence base almost everyone reaches for. Why then has such an urgent, repeatedly cited finding not led to a larger national body of research?

Perhaps because awareness has become easier than action. Of course, awareness campaigns matter: they direct women towards support, help friends and relatives recognise signs of abuse, and remind people that coercive control, emotional abuse and financial abuse can be as devastating as physical violence.

But how many more awareness campaigns do we need before the emphasis shifts decisively towards prevention, perpetrator accountability and long-term cultural change?

Women’s Aid describes this summer as “another World Cup, but the same problem”. That’s difficult to argue with. Its latest campaign follows its 2022 He’s Coming Home campaign. Every tournament brings a new creative treatment of a reality that remains stubbornly familiar.

There Are Positive Signs Football Is Changing

There are signs that parts of football culture are beginning to grapple with masculinity more seriously.

UN Women UK’s Same Side campaign, in partnership with Vodafone Foundation, called on athletes to speak to boys and young men about empathy, vulnerability, relationships and respect. Its latest phase includes toolkits for teachers and sports coaches, recognising that sport is one of the places where boys learn what leadership, courage and strength are supposed to look like.

Other green shoots have come in the form of my social feed, which has been filled with clips of Jude Bellingham and Norway’s Erling Haaland embracing, supporting and defending one another, even when playing on opposing sides. And, of course, Haaland’s enviable Birkin collection. These are small moments: two footballers showing affection won’t dismantle misogyny, but still, it matters.

Young male fans are watching and absorbing what strength looks like, how men relate to one another, and whether intimacy, tenderness and emotional openness are compatible with elite masculinity.

But for real change to happen, we have to move the burden away from women and towards the men who abuse, as well as the institutions that respond to them and the cultures that excuse them. It would also mean refusing to treat this pattern as inevitable.

By Euro 2028, football will return home to England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. The celebrations will be enormous. The campaigns about connection, identity and national pride have already begun. One of the first, from BT, sees Frank Skinner and football legends from across the Home Nations celebrate the game's power to unite us. Football can be a great force for connection. But if we're willing to celebrate that power, we also have to confront what it reveals when some women still dread the final whistle.

As England looks to lick the wounds of last night’s loss, those campaigns will start gaining momentum, but I wonder whether the parallel campaign—the one warning women about what may happen after the final whistle—will still be necessary in two years' time. I hope not.

Charlotte Street has a vibrant history. The Bohemian hub has long attracted a colourful crowd of artists, intellectuals and restaurateurs, with the famous Fitzroy Tavern a meeting point for literary greats like George Orwell and Dylan Tavern. Today, it remains one of London's prettiest and most eclectic streets, peppered with buzzy restaurants and independent businesses that manage to foster a sense of community in the hectic metropolis.

Standing proud in the centre of Charlotte Street, the Charlotte Street Hotel is dressed in sage green, with signature striped awnings and elegant seating. Its entrance is framed by two pastel-coloured lamp posts, which add an inviting glow after dark. One of London's best hotels for design fans, the boutique bolthole could be straight out of a Wes Anderson film, inviting passers-by to stop and admire its dreamy facade.

And stepping inside feels appropriately surreal, with Oscar Bar and Restaurant on the ground floor transporting guests back to a bygone era of white gloves and elegant glassware. On the walls you'll see colourful artwork inspired by the Bloomsbury Set, a group of creatives including Virginia Woolf, that congregated in the area in the early 20th Century, with a large mural of London life by British artist Alexander Hollweg dominating the space. Kit Kemp, the hotel's interior designer, is clearly a fan of dopamine decor.

It's this slightly fantastical experience that makes The Charlotte Street Hotel one of the most beloved hotels in London. The classic hotel opened in Fitzrovia in 2000 and is the third property from the now hugely successful Firmdale Hotels group. Since its '00s launch, the Charlotte Street Hotel has retained a steady stream of visitors, whether that's Londoners looking for a stylish place to drink and dine, colleagues who favour a more relaxed location for a business meeting, or out-of-towners seeking a luxurious base to explore the capital.

ROOMS

Rooms at The Charlotte Street hotel may be slightly pricier than your typical London hotel—but with good reason. Each of the hotel's 52 rooms is individually designed by Kit Kemp, the mastermind behind the rest of the hotel's playful spaces, and features bright, bold colours and patterned textiles that feel like artwork rather than interior design. The actual artwork on the walls is of high calibre, featuring artists associated with the early Bloomsbury movement such as Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Alexander Hollweg. This eclectic mix of modern art, textures, patterns, and colours gives rooms at The Charlotte Street Hotel a lived-in luxury; an antidote to the more generic hotel rooms guests sometimes encounter in five-star hotels.

Beds are plush and comfy, dressed in high-quality linens with bold, patterned headboards, while bathrooms are clad in granite, mahogany, and glass and feature luxe toiletries from RIKRAK by Kit Kemp. For a real treat, the split-level Loft Suites are spectacular, offering a free-standing tub, walk-in shower and views over London's rooftops.

FOOD & DRINKS

Oscar Bar and Restaurant pays tribute to a nearby private cinema that screens Academy-worthy films. The front section is the bar area, serving unique cocktails and an extensive wine list. It's the ideal place to enjoy a festive glass of champagne, or you could retreat to one of the armchairs in the hotel's cosy library, complete with a roaring open fire. The warmer months invite guests to live out a Parisian daydream, sipping fizz on the pastel-hued front terrace and watching the world go by.

The bistro restaurant, situated at the back of the hotel, offers more formal dining with talented Head Chef Ben Porter at the helm. The restaurant serves modern European classics such as pancetta-wrapped monkfish, roast rack of lamb with fondant potato, black cabbage, and bagna càuda, or sticky black cod. Oscar always looks busy, with a reputation for fine dining and a lively atmosphere, bringing in crowds every day of the week who are looking to experience a little Parisienne café culture in Fitzrovia.

In the bar, you'll find a cocktail menu as creative as the surroundings. Perch on a humbug-striped stool at the hotel's glitzy bar and sip on a Salome's Whisper (basil vodka, Benedictine, lemon, sugar syrup, and aquafaba), Lady Windermere (Tokaji Late Harvest, Tanqueray, Saint-Germain, lime, and fresh mint), or the signature Lady Charlotte (gin, maraschino, apricot, lemon, sugar, egg white).

ACTIVITIES

At the Charlotte Street Hotel, you're right in the heartland of London's restaurant scene. The many bustling bars and glamorous restaurants of Soho and Mayfair are a short walk away, but if you want something closer to the hotel, the options are still strong. Hakkasan, a Michelin-starred uber-glamorous Chinese restaurant, is a short stroll away on Hanway Place, while Charlotte Street itself boasts Roka, a modern Japanese restaurant, and The Ninth, a buzzing contemporary French and Mediterranean bistro.

Oscar also serves an ‘Afternoon Tea with a Twist’. The 'Indulge menu' allows guests to add three miniature cocktails to their tea, with non-alcoholic options available too. Guests can enjoy their scones and finer sandwiches in the drawing room or the hotel's restaurant.

At the hotel, you'll find a fitness centre and a sauna available to guests. There's no official spa, but guests can opt for a treatment in their room, whether that's a facial, massage, reflexology or a touch of grooming, organised through Soholistic. There's also a private screening room where guests can enjoy recent releases, classic cinema and Christmassy films during the festive period.

NEED TO KNOWS

Rooms at the Charlotte Street Hotel start at £390 per night, and you can book through the hotel's website.

Address: 15-17 Charlotte St., London W1T 1RJ

“Claude, fix my face.” That was not the prompt that I, or rather, my boyfriend, gave an AI platform, but it decided to enhance me anyway. A few weeks ago, my partner was taking a photo of me when a woman strolled past, walking a dalmatian. “I should've asked to borrow her dog,” I quipped, as I too was bedecked in spots. “Stick out your arm like you're holding a leash,” he replied. I didn't give it much thought, but within minutes, he'd uploaded the photo to an AI platform, and back came a rendered image of me holding a dalmatian.

He presented the image to me, perhaps expecting me to be impressed by the speed with which this relatively new tech could update my image when, only a short while ago, it would have taken someone experienced in Photoshop to create it. But the first thing I noticed wasn't the dog; it was my face.

Without prompting, the AI had given me a beaming smile with perfectly straight, white teeth. My cheekbones were higher, my face smoothed out, my eyebrows better groomed. It still looked like me, but I guess the intention was to show a 'better' version of me, when all that had been requested was for a spotted dog to be added in.

Later, when I told friends about this odd experience, they suggested I prompt the AI further, turning me into Cruella de Vil. What came back was an even more yassified version of me: the smile tighter, the skin tauter, even if a dodgy wig did crown the look.

I thought again of this incident, when Meta's latest AI rollout, which has since been pulled, prompted a flurry of concern. During my afternoon doomscroll, my feed became awash with the news that users would be able to generate AI images using other people's likenesses, with news reports rushing to show people how to opt out. The fury of users was so widespread that Meta made the unusual decision to reverse this feature; posting on their newsroom that: "We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available." Much of the conversation rightly centred on consent, ownership and the implications of AI-generated versions of ourselves.

But my mind kept returning to a different question, because before AI can manipulate our images, it first has to decide what we should look like. I thought back to yet another conversation I'd had, this time with Nikki Lilly, who told me what it feels like to have strangers on the internet use AI to manipulate your face. Again, supposedly to "fix" her, or, more specifically, her facial difference.

Though the severity and mental health implications varied wildly, in both cases, no one had asked for a makeover.

For my part, there was no prompt requesting whiter teeth, smoother skin or more sculpted cheekbones. Yet the AI seemed to assume those were improvements worth making anyway. It wasn't simply following instructions; it was making aesthetic decisions on my behalf.

That might sound trivial. After all, we've spent years voluntarily downloading beauty filters and smoothing apps. But there's an important difference between choosing to alter your appearance and having an AI decide to do it for you, especially given that there's an entire cottage industry sprouting up which allows users to upload their image to AI platforms that will then suggest—and later sell—beauty tweakments. Qoves, a facial aesthetics platform that uses AI and computer vision to analyse users' facial features and provide personalised appearance assessments and recommendations based on aesthetic research, has 1.1 million followers on Instagram alone.

The more I spoke to experts, as well as friends who’d had similar experiences (unkempt eyebrows seems to be an Achilles heel for AI), the more I realised my experience wasn't just an odd quirk of one platform. It points to a much bigger question about the beauty standards being baked into the AI tools we're increasingly relying on to create, edit and represent us. If these systems are learning from the internet's existing ideals of attractiveness, are they also reinforcing them—one automatically enhanced image at a time?

​According to psychologists, that's exactly what makes these seemingly minor edits so powerful. "When people repeatedly see a slightly enhanced version of themselves—smoother skin, more symmetry, subtly narrowed features—it can recalibrate their internal standard of what they 'should' look like," explains Tara Well, associate professor of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University. "Over time, the unedited face can begin to feel like a deviation rather than the baseline."

We've become used to talking about social media through the lens of comparison. For years, experts have warned that scrolling through impossibly beautiful celebrities and influencers can leave us feeling inadequate. But AI introduces a new, more intimate–and insidious–comparison: instead of measuring ourselves against other people, we're measuring ourselves against idealised versions of ourselves.

Where traditional beauty filters require an active choice–we know we've selected one, and we're usually aware that what we're looking at isn't entirely real–AI-generated enhancements are different. They're often subtle, automatic and, in my case, completely unsolicited.

"Traditional filters involve a degree of choice and awareness," says Well. "Automatic enhancements blur that boundary. Because the changes are subtle and default, users may not fully register that their appearance has been altered, which can make the enhanced version feel more 'real'. The less effortful and more invisible the modification, the more psychologically persuasive it becomes."

"In short," says Well, "these systems don't just reflect beauty standards—they quietly standardise them. And because the changes are subtle and automatic, they may be more powerful than traditional filters in shaping how people see themselves."

If AI is discreetly reinforcing conventional beauty ideals, the next question is where those ideals came from in the first place.

Professor Clare McGlynn, an expert in law and gender-based violence, argues that these technologies don't exist in a vacuum. They are trained on the same cultural biases that have long shaped women's relationship with their appearance.

"Your example shows just how deeply embedded traditional views of women and beauty are," she tells me. "We know social media exposure has adversely impacted girls' self-esteem and body image, contributing to psychological distress and self-harm. The concern is that AI could intensify those harms because it makes these 'improvements' feel even more seamless and inevitable."

In many ways, that's what unsettled me most. It wasn't that the AI had made dramatic changes to my face. Quite the opposite. The edits were subtle enough to feel plausible. The kind of tweaks you might struggle to put your finger on (worryingly, my partner hadn’t even noticed), but that, combined, nudged me a little closer to a familiar beauty ideal.

I’m not the only person left questioning myself. Journalist Kish Lal had a strikingly similar experience after asking Claude to analyse her appearance as part of a reporting project. Like me, she thought she'd be able to keep an emotional distance from the results. Instead, she found herself dwelling on critiques she'd never previously considered.

"I'm an AI hater to my core," she laughs. "I hate the way it smoothes and flattens whatever it touches." Even so, one suggestion lingered: again, it was the eyebrows. "The robot told me my eyebrows would look better if they were more manicured," she says. "I'd always loved my bushy brows. I used to rip photos of Natalia Vodianova out of magazines because of hers. I even joked to a friend that the AI must just be telling everyone to thread their eyebrows."

Then her friend tried the same experiment. "It complimented her brows and told her to get filler instead," Lal recalls. “I couldn't believe that my theory was not only debunked, but that I perhaps, maybe I could look better if I got my eyebrows threaded regularly. I scheduled an appointment to get them done the next day.”

It's easy to dismiss moments like these as trivial or even funny. But they reveal something much more uncomfortable. AI doesn't need to tell us we're unattractive to influence how we see ourselves. Sometimes, all it has to do is quietly suggest that we'd look a little better if we were just... slightly different.

The more sophisticated these tools become, the more they're marketed as neutral assistants—helping us create images, edit photos or generate avatars in seconds. But assistants aren't neutral if they're making value judgements on our behalf.

On their own, those edits seem almost laughably insignificant. I joked about my 'glow-up' with friends the way Kish Lal did and yet in both instances, we were left wondering what difference those subtle suggestions would make to our appearance.

As AI-generated images become more common—and companies race to build tools that can create ever more convincing versions of us—we'll spend a lot of time talking about consent, copyright and misinformation. We absolutely should, but I'd argue we also need to ask another question: when AI decides what we should look like, whose idea of beauty is it reproducing?

Because if I ask it to add a dalmatian, I'd quite like it to stop there.

I flew to Rio expecting to report on Shakira's record-breaking concert. Instead, I found myself inside a fully immersive brand world that made me question whether holidays themselves have fundamentally changed.

Increasingly, it seems we're travelling not just to see places, but to become part of a moment—and brands have noticed.

By the time I arrived at Copacabana Beach for Todo Mundo No Rio, the free open-air festival where an estimated two million people would gather to watch Shakira perform—and, crucially, the reason for my visit—I owned a Corona sarong, a Corona T-shirt, a Corona cap embroidered with "Copacabana" in the brand's signature font, a raffia beach bag, badges and enough merchandise to convincingly pass as a member of staff.

I had spent the previous evening drinking shimmering Corona beers brewed to mirror Rio's golden-hour glow at a sundowner DJ set atop Sugarloaf Mountain. On the day of the much-anticipated festival, artists hand-painted silk scarves featuring illustrations of Sugarloaf, Copacabana, and, of course, the Corona logo. There were customisation stations where we queued to make our merch bespoke.

It seemed that I hadn't just travelled to Rio; I'd stepped inside the Corona universe. I've been lucky enough to go on my fair share of press trips over the years. They usually revolve around a beautiful hotel, a launch dinner or a carefully curated itinerary. This, though, was different. Not so for my travelling companion, who had previously flown to Corona Island, the beer brand's own tropical enclave off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia.

At first, it felt like very slick marketing backed by a very big budget. But between those customisation stations, sunset parties and Shakira performing to millions on the beach, I realised Corona wasn't simply sponsoring a festival—it was offering something increasingly valuable: the feeling of belonging to a moment. Being a Brit, my mind drifted to the silky-smooth M&S ads of yore… "This is not just a brand activation… this is a Corona brand event."

Or, to use the brand's own parlance: "This Is Living." That fittingly apt brand slogan neatly sums up something we're all craving—something that should be a given—but feels increasingly elusive in our digital-first world: living.

We're No Longer Just Travelling to See Places

Was Rio an anomaly—or a glimpse of where travel is heading? We often talk about experience-led travel as though it's another passing holiday trend, lumping it alongside sleep tourism, wellness retreats and solo travel. But I wonder if something more fundamental is happening. Increasingly, we're not content to travel simply to see places; we're travelling to step inside worlds.

Just look at the holidays dominating our wish lists. People don't just go to Edinburgh; they go because Taylor Swift is in town. They don't simply book Silverstone; they travel for Formula One. Sicily isn't just Sicily anymore—it's The White Lotus, Euro Summer and Dua Lipa's wedding destination. Thousands of people fly across continents to run marathons, attend immersive wellness retreats or spend weekends at festivals where the destination is almost secondary to the event. Yes, the place still matters. But more often than not, it's the moment that gets us on the plane.

The data suggests this isn't simply anecdotal. Mastercard's latest travel report argues that people's motivations are becoming one of the biggest forces shaping how—and where—they travel. Researchers identified two growing groups: those seeking immersion in local culture and those travelling for a specific experience, whether that's a sporting event, nightlife, shopping or a festival. "Today's tourists are looking for travel experiences that leave a lasting impression, helping them to create memories," explains Natalia Lechmanova, Mastercard's Chief Economist for Europe.

Of course, people have always travelled in search of memorable experiences. Safaris, pilgrimages and even the humble package holiday all promised some form of escape or enrichment. What's changed is the expectation. Today's holidays increasingly claim transformation. They're sold not as a chance to switch off, but as an opportunity to become someone else, however briefly.

Rio made that very clear. On paper, I'd travelled there to report on a music festival. In reality, I'd entered something closer to an immersive universe. Every touchpoint, from the Fairmont hotel takeover to the personalised merch, reinforced the sense that I was part of something designed to feel bigger than a holiday or even a festival.

Perhaps that's why the trusty old travel brochure feels so outdated. For decades, holiday marketing asked a nostalgically simple question: Where do you want to go? Today's savviest brands seem to be asking something altogether different: Who do you want to become while you're there?

The New Luxury Is Access

It's easy to dismiss Todo Mundo No Rio as a one-off. After all, not every brand has the budget to take over one of the world's most famous beaches or sponsor a concert for millions of people.

Then I found myself at Silverstone. This time, I was there as a guest of Revolut. Officially, I'd been invited to the British Grand Prix. In reality, I'd been invited into Formula One itself: hospitality suites, behind-the-scenes access, choreographed moments, including a Q&A with driver Gabriela Boroleto, and a front-row seat to one of the biggest weekends in British sport.

Despite the frighteningly hot weather (climate change, people!), it looked very different from Rio, but there were similarities. Both weekends were designed to make guests feel less like spectators than participants. Again, the event wasn't something just to watch; it was something to inhabit.

Neither brand was selling the event; they were selling proximity. Proximity to culture and exclusivity—a moment millions of other people wanted to be part of. Brands used to sell products. Then they sold lifestyles. Increasingly, I think they're selling memories—or perhaps more accurately, the opportunity to create them.

It's easy—and tempting—to dismiss this as clever marketing, but I don't think that's the whole story. If brands are investing millions in immersive experiences, it's because they've recognised something about the way we now travel. We no longer want to be passive observers. We want to belong.

Perhaps that's because modern life increasingly fragments us. We work remotely. We consume entertainment alone. Algorithms personalise everything we see. Even the internet, once imagined as a shared public square, increasingly serves each of us a different version of reality. Travel—and music festivals, which so often go hand in hand—have become one of the few places where we can still experience collective joy.

Standing on Copacabana Beach, surrounded by, quite literally, millions of people, I kept returning to a thought: I am part of this. That desire—to participate rather than just bear witness—helps explain why so many of today's biggest travel trends revolve around events, communities and transformation rather than destinations alone.

Of course, that doesn't mean we should surrender ourselves unquestioningly to branded worlds. There's a fascinating conversation to be had about commercialisation, authenticity and whether our experiences are becoming increasingly mediated by corporations. But dismissing experiences like Todo Mundo No Rio as simply marketing misses something important because they reveal how profoundly our relationship with travel has changed.

For my part, I went to Rio expecting to write about a beer brand throwing an extravagant festival. Instead, I came home wondering whether holidays themselves have fundamentally evolved, and thinking about why, increasingly, we're chasing moments that make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

Ultimately, I think we travel to step inside worlds—to belong to a moment, if only for a weekend, and return home feeling as though, however briefly, we were part of something bigger than ourselves.

Le Meurice is a dream for art lovers, its prestige unmatched worldwide. The luxury Paris hotel, situated on the historic Rue de Rivoli since 1835, is considered Paris' first 'Palace Hotel' and has a storied past. Le Meurice famously hosted the lavish wedding banquet of Picasso and Olga Khokhlova, bringing together Parisian high society in the hotel's Versailles-inspired Salon Pompadour. Le Meurice also charmed Salvador Dalí, who was so captivated by the hotel that he booked the Royal Suite Alphonse XIII for a month, every year for over three decades.

It was Dalí's part-time residence that inspired the father-and-daughter designer duo, the legendary Philippe Starck (the mind behind Sanderson London) and Ara Starck, when they refreshed the Dorchester Collection hotel in 2016, leaning into surrealism within the décor. Most notably, the Dalí restaurant features a stunning ceiling mural by French artist Ara, where dancers glide beneath the restaurant’s glass dome.

Stepping into the lobby, there's a lot to take in; Le Meurice's unique style blends traditional elegance with modern flair and a firm focus on art, both classical and contemporary. Leather seats are surprisingly embossed with portraits of 18th-century figures, mixed with Dalí-inspired furnishings. A painting by Baron François Girard, showing the hand of the 19th-century Parisian socialite Madame Regnaud, hung above the reception and is an instant talking point. Eero Saarinen's Tulip chairs offset the grand decor of Restaurant le Meurice Alain Ducasse, which was initially inspired by the Salon de la Paix at the Château de Versailles. There are plenty of playful touches, from Philippe Starck's interactive frosted mirror to Zoulikha Bouabdellah's modern art sculpture, 'The Kiss', in the lobby. Le Meurice is a seriously impressive hotel, but part of its charm is that it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Le Meurice is one of Paris' 12 Palace Hotels - along with the likes of the grand Le Bristol (rumoured to be the Kardashian's hotel of choice in Paris) and Le Hôtel Plaza Athénée, an accolade that celebrates hotels that transcend usual standards of luxury and veer into the exceptional, often housed in grand, historic buildings - basically the crème de la crème of French hospitality.

The hotel first opened its doors in 1835 and was named after its original owner, Charles-Augustin Meurice. Over the years, it's undergone multiple renovations from creatives and designers who've put their own stamp on the interiors. Yet, the hotel has retained its original spirit as a place for creatives and thinkers in the heart of Paris, with a vibrant, lively atmosphere, particularly at Le Dalí restaurant and the dimly lit Bar 228, which plays live jazz every night of the week until 1 am.

ROOMS

Each of the 160 rooms and suites (121 rooms and 39 suites) is designed in the same style, 'modern Versailles' style, by design studio Lally & Berger, who fuse classic Louis XVI styling with contemporary touches. Try and book a park-view room if you can - there are just 40 in the hotel, complete with classic iron balconies and romantic French windows, so these book up quickly. The plush bathrooms are crafted from marble, with fluffy robes and towels, and all feature a free-standing tub and a separate, large walk-in shower with luxury toiletries from Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Complementary water, fruits, and artisan chocolates are replenished at the end of each day.

The suites are suitably jaw-dropping, with huge bathrooms, a walk-in wardrobe and classic Parisian dressing rooms. And let's not forget the views. For those lucky enough to stay in the Belle Étoile Penthouse, meticulously designed by Lally & Berger, the private rooftop offers spectacular panoramic views of the Tuileries Gardens and landmark sites like the Louvre, the Eifle Tower, and Notre Dame in the distance.

FOOD & DRINKS

The food at Le Meurice is one of its biggest draws, with the two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Le Meurice Alain Ducasse among the premier dining spots in Paris, housed in a beautiful space overlooking the Tuileries. For a fine dining experience, this luxurious restaurant offers a journey through French flavours.

The more relaxed Restaurant Le Dalí offers a lively setting to enjoy French classics, with a strong focus on local and seasonal ingredients. You'll find nods to the surrealist painter throughout the restaurant, including the hand-painted canvas by artist Ara Starck, depicting a series of dancers in bold shades, adding a little bit of theatrics to the surroundings.

For an aperitif or nightcap, the sumptuous Bar 228 is a luxurious den with dark wood pannelling and deep leather armchairs to sink into after a long day's exploring. Guests can also pop in for a high-brow pastry at La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cedric Grolet, a charming pastry boutique dedicated to the hotel’s own pastry chef.

ACTIVITIES

At Le Meurice, the sights of central Paris are quite literally on your doorstep, and if you want to venture further afield, the Tuileries Metro stop (Line 1) is a short stroll away. For those exploring on foot, the Tuileries Gardens, offering a lush green oasis in the heart of the city, are a good place to start. As a bonus, the Eurostar is just 15 minutes away, so getting to the hotel is a complete breeze.

Back at the hotel, there's a small spa with four treatment rooms (two for couples and two for individuals), as well as saunas and steam rooms. Treatments are suitably luxurious, including Valmont facials and a wide range of massages, from hot stone to Swedish.

NEED TO KNOWS

Rooms at Le Meurice start at £1,277 per night, and you can book through the hotel's website.

Address: 228, Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 75001, France

From Splitsville to Lily Allen’s tell-all album, ethical non-monogamy has been having a bit of a PR crisis. Open relationships and swinging are often portrayed as messy, doomed, or a marriage on the brink of collapse. So when I sat down to watch The Invite—Olivia Wilde's new dinner-party comedy in which an ethically non-monogamous couple propositions their neighbours—I expected more of the same. I was wrong.

Without spoiling what happens, The Invite gives ENM the nuanced portrayal it rarely gets on screen. The story follows two couples whose dinner descends into arguments, flirtation and, eventually, a proposition. Yet, for once, the open couple (played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) aren't the dysfunctional one. Instead, it's the supposedly "normal" monogamous pair (Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen) whose relationship begins to unravel.

It doesn't suggest ethical non-monogamy is easier than monogamy, nor that one relationship model is inherently better than another. What it does do is resist the simplistic stereotypes that have dominated portrayals of open relationships for decades.

"For decades, open relationships have shown up on screen as a shorthand for chaos, imminent betrayal, or a marriage in crisis," explains Ruby Rare, Intimacy Expert at Feeld. "We rarely see them simply existing, how they're actually negotiated and experienced. It's refreshing to see The Invite, a glossy Hollywood production, flip this script, with the non-monogamous couple portrayed as having the healthier and happier relationship dynamic."

As someone who has dated people in open relationships, I know firsthand how often ethical non-monogamy is misunderstood. As open relationships, swinging, and polyamory become more visible, it feels more important than ever to move beyond sensationalism and ask what these relationships actually look like in practice.

So I spoke to four people living in ethical non-monogamy about the realities rarely shown on screen.

"People are not worried about sex—they're worried about what sex means"

Ben and Olivia have been together for two years. Ben is also married, and his wife and children have met Olivia, who also has a partner. "We operate a kitchen table style polyam where everyone knows each other and would hang out independently too," Ben explains.

He didn't grow up believing ethical non-monogamy was even an option. "I grew up in a very heteronormative culture, where the only exposure I can remember growing up was when my parents mentioned their coworkers had tried swinging and it had destroyed their marriages. Not exactly a glowing endorsement."

Like many people practising ethical non-monogamy, his understanding developed gradually rather than overnight. It was his wife's desire to explore her sexuality that first prompted them to reconsider what their relationship could look like, beginning with a threesome before eventually dating other people independently.

"I won't lie, there followed a period of unlearning, of understanding what each of our triggers and insecurities were," he says. "People are not worried about sex; they're worried about what sex means, about being abandoned, about not being loved. Monogamy or polyamory are not better or worse than each other, they are just different, but what polyamory does is force you to confront insecurities, to explore yourself and for your partner to do the same."

It's a perspective rarely reflected in mainstream storytelling. While films often treat non-monogamy as inherently dramatic, Ben describes something far less sensational: the ongoing work of communication, self-reflection and emotional honesty.

"Mainstream media tends to focus on it being an oddity, at the fringes of society, filled with strange, ugly queer people," he says. "There is also an obsession with ENM done wrong and failing… this does happen, but by people who were never ENM in the first place and just wanted to sleep around and didn't care if it hurt people."

That gap between lived experience and cultural representation is precisely what The Invite begins to challenge. Rather than presenting openness as evidence that a relationship is failing, it allows its characters the emotional complexity that monogamous couples have long been afforded on screen.

"Ethical non-monogamy isn't a band-aid"

Olivia came to ENM from a very different starting point: a long-term relationship in which she began to question whether exclusivity was her only option and a desire to explore her interest in women.

"I feared we'd have to break up if I wanted to do this," she says. Instead, her partner suggested an open relationship, something she hadn’t even considered possible."I was so relieved and grateful because I was deeply in love with them and didn't want to break up," she explains. "I had always been attracted to multiple people but had avoided exploring these connections for fear of hurting people. Now I had the opportunity… I dove into learning about how to do it conscientiously."

Like Ben, Olivia describes ethical non-monogamy not as the absence of commitment, but as a relationship structure that demands more intentional communication than many people realise. And while mainstream portrayals often frame open relationships as a last-ditch attempt to save something broken, she believes that's one of the biggest misconceptions.

"If you're considering opening things up, make sure you address relational problems before getting involved with other people. ENM is not a band-aid. Be as open and upfront as you can be."

She also challenges the idea that jealousy is inherently incompatible with non-monogamy: “Jealousy often comes from a place of fear; consider why you’re feeling it and what you need.” Rather than pretending jealousy doesn't exist, she says ethical non-monogamy has taught her to examine where those feelings come from instead of treating them as evidence that the relationship itself is failing.

And while ENM is often portrayed as emotionally volatile or unstable, she describes something more grounded. What’s missing from most depictions, she argues, is the “wonderful community that comes with being polyamorous as well.”

It's another aspect of ethical non-monogamy that The Invite hints at, but which popular culture has rarely been interested in exploring. Conflict makes for compelling cinema; healthy communication rarely does.

Redefining what commitment looks like

If Ben and Olivia arrived at ethical non-monogamy through existing relationships, Vic's experience began from a different place altogether. She was single when she first started dating someone who was also seeing other people. “It really didn't bother me. That felt refreshing and right for where I was,” she says. “I was getting to know this person with low pressure and without the relationship escalator ringing in my ear.”

For Vic, stepping outside the traditional expectation that every successful relationship should move through the same milestones allowed her to recognise patterns she'd previously struggled with.

"It set up the conditions to create a loving relationship that I have been in for the past six months. I struggled with losing myself in relationships and forgiving poor behaviour before. It was linked to a feeling of low self-worth."

What often gets lost in conversations about ENM, Vic suggests, is that it isn’t about replacing commitment, but redefining what commitment looks like. “My girlfriend and I have a very fulfilling sex life, but there are things I enjoy that she doesn't. She doesn't expect me to be fulfilled by one person, and I don't expect that either.”

Still, she is clear that intention matters. “For me, wanting to experience new things is such a normal part of life… I'm still a full human who needs to show up for people who are already in my life.”

Like many people practising ethical non-monogamy, Vic has encountered assumptions from people who know little about it. In her first polyamorous relationship, she told colleagues about her relationship, only for one to describe it as a "porn star relationship."

She believes media portrayals have helped reinforce those misunderstandings. "It's often sensationalised and misrepresents the power dynamics. Often, it is one person wanting it and the other acquiescing, or it's adding a third to an existing couple. Not everyone dates together in ENM. I date separately."

Why does popular culture still get ethical non-monogamy wrong?

Dylan* came to polyamory through a relationship with someone who was already practising ethical non-monogamy. Looking back, he believes that made the transition significantly easier than trying to open up an existing relationship.

"Polyamorous dating as a single person is much easier than trying to open up a previously closed relationship. The more variables you're dealing with at once, the more difficult it can be."

Across all these experiences, a pattern emerges: ENM is rarely about casual excess or emotional detachment, and yet, most depictions still fall back on familiar tropes. Dylan notes that many narratives are “written by people who have no personal experience of poly relationships,” which leads to predictable framing: “it being all about sex, rather than companionship” or a default “regular couple” structure where secondary partners are emotionally flattened out of the story.

What’s missing, in other words, is not drama, but accuracy. And as ENM becomes more visible in culture, from celebrity narratives to films like The Invite, the question is no longer whether it exists on screen, but whether it can be shown without being reduced. Ethical non-monogamy is certainly not the easy choice, but for many it’s the right one. It’s time we show healthy and committed polyamorous couples onscreen and stop reducing them to punchlines or plot twists. We need to start treating ENM as what it already is for many people: just another way of doing relationships, with all the complexity that implies.

*Names changed

There are moments when the climate crisis stops feeling like something that belongs to the future and becomes horrifyingly immediate.

Last week, the heat-struck UK got a dose of climate reality. Because the universe evidently loves irony, record-breaking temperatures coincided with London Climate Action Week. By mid-morning, day one, the Met Office issued its second-ever Red Warning for extreme heat and London Climate Week announced that several events on extreme heat would be cancelled due to… extreme heat.

To reflect the new reality, Greenpeace updated iconic tube station signs. Baker Street to Baking Street and London Bridge to London’s Burning. But many clung to the idea that heatwaves are joyous occasions, and all issues can be remedied with a Mr Whippy ice cream in the park.

"Heatwave Delusion" and the deadliest form of extreme weather

I call this the Heatwave Delusion. We can trace it back to the summer of 1976, when the UK saw two weeks of temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius and drought conditions, where it became normal to queue for water in the street.

But in time, the bad bits seem to have been forgotten, leaving a memory of the time Brits had fun in the sun and displayed true grit from their deckchairs. It’s so deeply embedded in our collective culture that even if you weren’t born (and I was only two), it has likely affected the way you think about heat, almost as a rare gift.

But what would that same heatwave look like in today's warming world, and in the Britain of 2056? Well, to open London Climate Week, I went to an event built around that one provocative idea.

Escaping into the cool basement of the Lightroom in King’s Cross, we congregated to watch three familiar faces - Laura Tobin, Clare Nasir and Peter Gibbs - deliver a weather forecast for 2056, modelled by scientists at the University of Reading working with the Met Office.

While the map looked reassuringly ordinary, the temperatures did not. In 2056, it showed London reaching 45 degrees Celsius. Scotland climbed into the high 30s. It showed a two-week heatwave in which somewhere in Britain would exceed 40 degrees Celsius for nine consecutive days.

Experts from climate science, food, agriculture, the ambulance service and a top surgeon from London Hospital, Great Ormond Street also took to the stage. They explained that heat isn't just uncomfortable; it’s the deadliest form of extreme weather, placing pressure on hospitals, transport, food systems and the people least able to keep cool. We were left in no doubt. Those summers regarded by previous generations as exceptional - including 1976 – are now becoming the baseline reality. In the future, we may look back on this as one of the cooler summers.

Science colliding with everyday life

Outside, it felt as if the science was colliding with everyday life. As the week wore on, London broke all heat records. London Ambulance broke callout records. At points, emergency call handlers were answering over 500 calls an hour, more than during Covid. Schools closed, and rail services faltered.

It became clear that our infrastructure is built for the past, not the present. I wanted to understand how we can adapt. Luckily, Climate Week was full of people who spend their time thinking of solutions. Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the London Climate Resilience Review, told me how we need to redesign our lives for the climate we now have (not the one in 1976). That means more trees, less concrete paving, homes that stay cool naturally, neighbourhoods where shade is treated as essential infrastructure and public buildings that double as cool refuges.

Fighting for what you love

I discovered Cool off in Culture, a programme involving the BFI and Arts Council England, among others, that encourages us to use cinemas, theatres and museums as cool refuges during extreme heat. I like the idea of our cultural institutions offering not just escape into another world for a couple of hours, but escape from the heat too. Only three per cent of UK homes have air conditioning, so it makes sense for us to look differently at the shared resources we already have.

I learned about the emerging ‘shade-first’ movement, advocating for the cooling power of mature trees, awnings and green spaces (especially in our towns and cities, many of which act as heat islands – driving temperatures up). In a hotter Britain, shade can’t be a luxury. It becomes essential.

I caught up with influencer Nairn King. Originally from Arbroath in Scotland (which could experience temperatures in the mid 30s by 2056), Nairn's content is based on a passion for London life, especially weekend brunch. Looking at the 2056 forecast, I asked, ‘What are you thinking?’ Nairn paused. ‘The London summer is the point,’ came the reply. ‘And that won't be happening in 45-degree heat.’ A reminder that whatever it is we love, we need to fight for it.

When news broke that Anne Hathaway is expecting her third child in her forties, it reignited a familiar debate. Do celebrity pregnancies create unrealistic expectations around fertility? Offer women hope–or false hope?

After speaking to four women who became mothers in their late thirties and forties, I'm convinced we've been asking the wrong question. Because while fertility is undeniably part of the story, it isn't the whole story.

Instead, the women I spoke to wanted to talk about finances, careers, childcare, identity, birth, emotional readiness and the invisible calculations that many women tot up before becoming mothers in the first place.

Their fertility journeys couldn't have been more different. Bestselling author Catherine Gray conceived naturally within two months of trying at 41, despite assuming she'd need IVF. Jainnie Cho, meanwhile, spent five years and underwent ten rounds of IVF before welcoming her daughter at 46, describing the process as "my dark years".

Journalist Lisa Oxenham says becoming a solo mother in her forties was "deeply conscious and powerful", while Eleanor Willock believes one of the biggest realities we ignore has nothing to do with biology at all. "I was enraged to find out that you actually can't have it all," she tells me, describing how raising young children collided with the most demanding years of her career.

Fertility can, of course, become more uncertain with age, but waiting also brings financial stability, emotional resilience and a stronger sense of self for some women. Again and again, women describe feeling calmer, more intentional and more certain of the lives they wanted to build for their children. At the same time, they spoke candidly about IVF, birth interventions, childcare costs, career sacrifices and the emotional toll that often goes unmentioned.

Perhaps that's why reducing later motherhood to a conversation about fertility alone does women a disservice. Celebrity pregnancies can be inspiring; they can also be misleading. Both things can be true.

The reality is that there is no single story of motherhood after 40, only a series of trade-offs that deserve a more honest conversation.

Read four of those stories below.

I Thought I'd Need IVF To Become A Mother At 40.

Catherine Gray, 46, had her daughter Mia naturally at 42 .

My partner and I met when I was 40 and started trying on our first anniversary. We both assumed it was going to take a really long time to get pregnant and were braced that we'd need fertility treatment. So when I got pregnant within two months, we were stunned and not at all prepared.

I assumed I was one of a privileged few, but when I said to my midwife, "We're just so lucky that it happened naturally for us," she replied, "I wish more fortysomething mothers knew that that's actually the norm."

My heart truly goes out to those where that isn't the case—it must be utterly agonising—but the scientific reality of fortysomething fertility is much more hopeful than I had always believed.

The other challenge is that fortysomething mothering can mean the early years, that 0–3 gauntlet, collides with perimenopause. I went through a phase of intense rage, which I self-diagnosed as postnatal rage. As soon as I started HRT aged 45, I descended back down to my usual good-natured semi-irritability, with no surges of rage. That dovetail never directly affected my parenting, but it did affect my relationship, and I wish more women knew to watch out for that almighty collision.

Despite all of that, I think there were huge advantages to becoming a mother in my forties. I'm sincerely OK with leaving the party at 9pm, travelling being a distant memory, and spending my Sundays at National Trust properties. I've done enough partying to last a lifetime, and I satisfied my travelling bug hugely in my thirties by island-hopping, living abroad and diving with sharks.

Nowadays, give me a cream tea and some forest-bathing, followed by pyjamas with a cosy murder boxset. I think I'd be making those lifestyle choices anyway, now that I'm 46, so they don't feel like a sacrifice. Personally, I think I would have felt much more hobbled by motherhood in my thirties.

Finances played a huge part, too. I didn't buy my first property until I was 40 and, unlike most of my friends, I had no parental help. People have babies in rented accommodation all the time, of course, but I didn't feel secure enough when I was ping-ponging between rentals with a one-month notice period.

The "you just manage" truism is frequently trotted out by older generations, but we also have no regular familial help. There's no way on earth I could have afforded a £750–£950 a month childcare bill in my thirties.

When I see celebrity stories about women having children in their forties, I wish they'd tell women that it's not just something A-listers with outrageous incomes get to choose and that it can happen for us muggles too, even if we don't have endless IVF budgets.

I also wish we'd stop calling it selfish to have a baby later, when you feel more rooted emotionally, logistically and fiscally. Oftentimes, it's just not possible in our thirties. For many, including me, if forty-something parenting does work out, it could be the absolute best timing.

It Took Me Five Years And 10 Rounds Of IVF To Become A Mother At 46

Jainnie Cho, 46, got pregnant with her daughter Frankie via IVF at 45 and gave birth to her at 46.

I knew getting pregnant in my forties would be difficult, but there was also a part of me that mistakenly thought I might be an exception. When I started the IVF process at 41, I was in good physical condition, and all the fertility tests came out better than average for my age. However, the reality was that it ended up taking five years, ten excruciating and expensive rounds of IVF and what I now call "my dark years".

One thing that really surprised me was that, at 46, I'm able to do it. That includes breastfeeding for five months, which was painful, intense and nothing like what I expected. Practically, I'm in the most stable and affluent stage of my life in terms of my finances, so that's a huge advantage. Emotionally, I think I'm the most stable and at peace with myself in this decade than any other, which is a big help when you're faced with mini battles and constant newness with a baby.

There's a lot of media attention these days given to celebrity mothers in their forties and beyond. I think that can be misinterpreted. It can make it seem as though, with medical advances and increasing life expectancy, it's "easy" to get pregnant and give birth later in life. At least in my case, that definitely wasn't true.

Becoming A Mother In My Forties Was The Most Intentional Decision I've Ever Made

Lisa Oxenham had her daughter Eliza at 40 and her son Wolfgang at 49 last year.

Before I became a mother, I didn't think I fully understood how narrow the fertility window really is. Like a lot of women, I'd absorbed the idea that if you're healthy, fit, eating well, and still feel young, your body will somehow cooperate.

I knew fertility declined, but I'd never really looked into the science of it. It's very different when you're actually sitting in the clinic. It's very difficult to understand unless you're in it. The reality was completely brutal.

When I was doing IVF, it asked everything from me—physically, financially, emotionally and mentally. There were injections, scans and medication schedules. There was hope, then disappointment. I had to make all of these decisions alone and keep going even when things went wrong. It was financially crippling.

But I've always been someone who's up for a challenge. I'm a very determined person, and I kept going. The other side of that story is that I absolutely loved pregnancy, and I knew I would. I loved the raw physicality of it. I loved giving birth, even though it's really hard. I loved early motherhood. I loved the preparation. I loved everything about it.

While it was incredibly difficult to get there, the experience of becoming a mother later in life felt deeply conscious and powerful. I'm really proud of myself for doing that.

One thing that surprised me most was how much energy and love I still had for it. People talk about later motherhood as though it's only about tiredness and risk. But I have this enormous sense of purpose and joy. I literally don't think about my age at all. I feel more vital than I ever have.

I also think becoming a mother later means you know what you're choosing. You know the life you're giving up or changing. You know the cost, the responsibility and the loss of freedom—and you still choose it. That is incredibly intentional.

Looking back, I'm much more grounded than I would have been ten years ago. I know myself much better. My life is about going with the flow and being present. I don't stress about the small things. Everything is in perspective.

I didn't just choose solo motherhood. I built a business, a support structure and a new professional life around it. I had to think about money, childcare, work, home, health and support in a very practical way. When you've fought so hard to have a baby, you don't take any of it for granted. I feel ecstatically happy.

That doesn't mean I want to romanticise it. The financial side of later motherhood is hugely overlooked. People often talk about it as though it's simply a lifestyle choice, but fertility treatment can cost tens of thousands of pounds. Doing it alone means there's nobody sharing that financial burden. Then there's the stamina you need, and the emotional loneliness of solo parenting.

I'm lucky to have incredible friends and my mum around me, but I am still the emotional centre of my family, and the breadwinner. Sometimes it would be nice to have another adult there to say, "I've got this."

When I see celebrity pregnancies in women in their forties, I think they can be incredibly inspiring because they make later motherhood visible. For so long, women have been made to feel that once they reached a certain age, the conversation was over. But for ordinary women, later motherhood can involve fertility treatment, huge financial costs, uncertainty, grief, physical strain, emotional strain, work pressure and loneliness.

We see the beautiful photograph. We don't always see the years of trying, the injections, the miscarriages, the money or the privilege that make certain options possible. I don't think the answer is to be negative about later motherhood; I'm proof that it can be absolutely wonderful. I just think we need to tell the whole story.

I Was Told I'd Never Get Pregnant Again. Then I Conceived At 40

Eleanor Willock, 50, had her daughter at 38 and her son at 41.

My kids are now 13 and 9, and I'm 51 this year. We had failed IVF to get the first one, and then a surprise pregnancy the month after IVF finished. Our son was a complete anomaly. We weren't trying to get pregnant; we'd been told I'd never get pregnant again, and I conceived about four months after my 40th birthday.

The reality of that was very bleak. I was completely underprepared for a second child. We'd made a lot of lifestyle changes because we thought we were only going to have one. I became chronically depressed to the extent that I didn't tell my husband I was pregnant until I was 15 weeks gone. I went for eight private scans before that without telling him because I was so sure it was a mistake, or that I would lose the baby.

When I found out we were having a boy, I became even more depressed because my depressed brain was telling me that a boy would be difficult, and that I would never be able to love another child as much as I loved my first one.

The reality was that my age didn't make too much difference in terms of recovery from childbirth. I knew what I was doing the second time around, which really helped, and the depression lifted almost immediately.

Practically, though, having children later affected my career irredeemably. There are various reasons for that, but I underwent a complete career change four years ago because your children need you more, rather than less, as they get older.

As a woman born at a certain time, I had the advantages of a university education, a really great corporate career and, in general, access to everything I needed. I was enraged to find out that you actually can't have it all.

You can't be the managing director of a very successful PR company and expect to be there for your children on the same level. I believe that's one of the biggest challenges of later motherhood that people can't ignore. Being in a management position in any industry with young children, as women in their forties are more likely to be than women in their twenties or thirties, makes it extremely difficult. For men, it is not the same at all.

When I see stories about women like Anne Hathaway becoming mothers later in life, I don't think they reflect the reality for most women. Stories about older women using surrogates, egg donation and other routes to parenthood can make those options seem very accessible. They are if you have money. They're not if you don't.

As usual, so much comes back to the cost of childcare and the cost of raising a family. But fundamentally, if you'd asked me during the years when having children felt incredibly hard to come by, I would have looked at every single story of a woman becoming a mother and absorbed the drops of hope it gave me—that cannot be underestimated.

Stories like Anne Hathaway's should be celebrated, especially by other women, rather than criticised for being unrealistic or irresponsible. For me, they're a reminder that hope matters too.

We're spoilt for choice when it comes to hotel spas in the capital, with some of the most prestigious wellness spaces in the world residing in London's landmark hotels. The Peninsula Spa and Wellness Centre, housed in the Belgravia hotel, is a welcome addition—a subterranean oasis that instils a sense of calm with its nature-inspired interiors.

Dreamed up by world-famous architect and interior designer Peter Marino, it's a haven of tranquillity inspired by the surrounding nature found in Hyde Park, Green Park, and Buckingham Palace Gardens, with beautiful mosaic tiling creating abstract motifs inspired by local landscapes.

As with the rest of the hotel, which is known for its high-tech amenities (including 'spa mode' lighting in the bathrooms and wireless charging points), technology plays a significant role, with light panels that mimic natural light in the basement space and twinkly underwater music.

The Peninsula London first opened its doors in September 2023, with the spa opening following in December of the same year. This hotel is the first from the Peninsula brand in the UK, following properties in Hong Kong, New York, and Paris. It has quickly established itself as one of the most prestigious hotels in the area—a notable achievement, considering that historical icons The Berkeley and The Goring are its Belgravia neighbours.

This is everything you need to know about booking a luxury spa day at The Peninsula Spa and Wellness Centre, including the treatments to look out for and the most luxurious packages for a day of indulgence (or a lavish UK staycation).

THE SPA

Celebrated architect and interior designer Peter Marino designed the space, in collaboration with Hopkins Architects, taking into consideration the nearby green spaces. Lighting is considered, with overhead panels that stimulate natural light. Cleverly, the lights dim to an ambient glow as night falls. The spa is situated in the basement of the hotel, which is a commonplace for big London hotels. But rather than opt for the dark, cocoon-like atmosphere of, say, The Corinthia, which leans into its underground location with black marble and fire pits, the spa creates an illusion of space and light to complement its natural theme.

At the centre of the spa is a tranquil 25-meter heated pool, surrounded by intricate mosaic-tiled walls in shades of green and blue depicting abstract landscapes. Like the rest of the hotel, the spa is spacious, with the facilities spanning two floors. There are four thermal cabins with varying degrees of heat, as well as a sauna and steam room, located in the changing rooms.

The Peninsula Spa and Wellness Centre is available to guests staying at the hotel, but Londoners and tourists can also book a spa day or treatments to experience this serene bolthole in one of London's most desirable areas. For those staying at the hotel, there's an in-room Wellness Portal where guests can take yoga classes or try a meditation session from the comfort of their own rooms.

THE TREATMENTS

There are seven, cocoon-like treatment rooms, including a couple's room. The treatment menu is broad, with some lovely add-on treatments to tailor each experience, with beauty brand partners of Subtle Energies and Margy's Monte Carlo, as well as hair royalty Errol Douglas, who heads up the hotel's salon, The Atelier.

The holistic facials are a highlight, using products from Ayurvedic aromatherapy brand Subtle Energies. Visitors to the spa can add a guided meditation or Shirodhara, an Ayurdevic treatment that involves pouring warm liquid over the forehead for relaxation. The spa is the first in the UK to partner with the Swiss brand Margy’s Monte Carlo, offering the Ultimate InSkin Elixir Facial. This high-tech facial begins with a personal diagnosis, allowing the facialist to select an elixir and mask tailored to the individual's skin type.

There are also some sumptuous body treatments available, including chakra-balancing massages, detox body wraps and an exfoliating body polish that utilises mineral-rich Himalayan crystals. Guests can also opt for traditional Chinese medicine treatments, such as acupuncture, performed by one of the specialist practitioners-in-residence.

COLLABORATIONS

The Penisuala Spa introduced two new wellness packages this summer to further enhance their wellness offering—and they're worth getting excited about.

Cult LA-brand Ricari Studios brings its one-of-a-kind ‘Ricari Method’ to the hotel, which uses a combination of technology and human touch to sculpt and tone the body. 'Ricari' loosely means 'to re-charge' in Italian and works on the concept that we can rejuvenate the body through stimulating blood flow and boosting lymphatic drainage—a philosophy rooted in ancient wellness that's also very on trend right now. Devised by Anna Zahn in Los Angeles, this partnership marks the first time the method has come to the UK.

ONE: Personal Training, founded by former professional athlete Henry Barratt, offers personalised one-on-one sessions including strength and resistance training, functional movement, boxing, and Pilates.

PACKAGES

The Indulgent Relaxation package (£560)

• Personalised Holistic Massage (1 hour)
• Anti-Pollution Facial (1 hour)
• Body Wrap (45 minutes)
• Two hours of spa facility access, including our indoor 25m swimming pool, vitality pool and sauna

Holistic Escape (£450)

• Personalised Holistic Massage (1 hour)
• Holistic Age-Defying Facial (1 hour)
• Two hours of spa facility access, including our indoor 25m swimming pool, vitality pool and sauna

Time for tea (£535)

• Personalised Holistic Massage (1 hour)
• Holistic Age‑Defying Facial (1 hour)
• Afternoon Tea in The Lobby
• 2 hours facility access (pool, vitality pool, sauna)

NEED TO KNOWS

Spa days at The Peninsula London start at £250 for use of the facilities for three hours, and you can book through the spa's website. Alternatively, you can use the facilities free of charge if you book a 90-minute treatment.

You can view the full treatment menu and prices here.

Address: 8/F, The Peninsula, 1 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7HJ

Phone: 020 3959 2888

On safari, you spend a surprising amount of time waiting. It started the moment I stepped off the plane, waiting for my luggage.

After three increasingly desperate circuits of the baggage carousel, it became clear that while I'd made it to Kilimanjaro Airport, my suitcase had not. Around me, a gaggle of befuddled travellers formed. Rumours spread, predictions were made (the winning guess being that yes, our luggage wouldn't arrive for at least another 72 hours). As more disgruntled passengers joined our little union, I became something of an authority on the situation. I knew nothing, but why let a lack of knowledge get in the way of a leadership position?

At the time, losing my luggage—or rather, KLM losing my luggage—felt irritating, but in hindsight it seems like an appropriate introduction to safari, which, I'd learn, involves an astonishing amount of waiting. There's waiting for luggage, waiting for weather, waiting for movement, waiting for animals; waiting for something to happen.

I didn't know it yet, but I arrived in Tanzania needing exactly that lesson.

I wanted Tanzania to change my outlook on life, broaden my horizons. Ultimately, I wanted it to make me happier. That's an enormous burden to place on a holiday, but perhaps a distinctly modern one. Increasingly, we don't simply want experiences to entertain us; we want them to transform us. We want our holidays to return us to our lives as better versions of ourselves.

At Gran Meliá Arusha, each morning began with the aroma of coffee harvested on the estate, poured into mottled glass coffee cups handblown by artisans from Sanaa—a pioneering on-site social enterprise that teaches traditional crafts to disabled locals. On the rooftop, we’d gorge on fresh pastries, tropical fruit, eggs cooked to order, and uji, a warm millet porridge lightly spiced with cardamom and cinnamon as Mount Meru hovered in and out of the misty view. It was the last place where my usual pace made sense. I was in Tanzania, but mentally still in London, refreshing emails, thinking about deadlines and wondering what I was going to do with all these experiences—how I might turn them into something.

Even on the drive from Gran Meliá Arusha to Ngorongoro, I found myself caught between observation and expectation. Outside the window were flooded roads, livestock, motorbikes and Maasai children shepherding cattle through impossibly vivid landscapes. I was in awe, but overwhelmed by the desire to capture everything.

Our next stop was Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest intact volcanic caldera and a UNESCO World Heritage Site home to around 25,000 animals, including the Big Five. Perched on the edge of the ancient crater, Ngorongoro Lodge Meliá Collection reopened in 2023 following an extensive renovation that has integrated the sprawling, open-plan property with both the landscape and Maasai culture. Inspired by local traditions, the lodge blends earthy textures, traditional patterns and artwork from Sanaa with expansive windows that pull your attention to the caldera below.

Built in 1969, Ngorongoro Lodge was the first permanent lodge on the crater rim. More than half a century later, it remains one of only a handful in the conservation area, its unrivalled position making even its design-led interiors feel secondary.

The crater itself changes by the minute as light shifts across the floor and clouds roll in and out. On our first evening, we watched local Maasai leaders stop mid-performance and simultaneously crane their necks towards the caldera.

"Wildebeest," they whispered. "How on earth do they know?" we wondered. A fellow guest pulled out a pair of binoculars and... nothing. The binoculars were passed around to no avail until one of the Maasai men, playfully despairing of us, directed our eyes towards a clearing beside the softly shimmering water far, far below. Even with binoculars, we could barely make out the animals, yet every Maasai man had heard them.

Later, back in my room, staring out over the crater, I found myself unexpectedly teary. Sure, the cynic in me could've put it down to the generous pours of South African red I'd enjoyed over a long dinner built around local ingredients—smoked fish, grilled meats and dishes that fused African flavours with Mediterranean influences—served against a backdrop of crater views. But beyond the jubilations of the staff greeting us in song and the awesomeness of the landscape before me, I suspected something else was at play.

The world seemed both thrown into sharp perspective and a million miles from what I thought I knew it to be. I had the sudden feeling that life here is what it should be—not so much living in a luxury hotel, but living in symbiosis with nature and the other animals we share this planet with. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd been getting everything so far wrong.

And yet even as I stood in front of one of the most extraordinary landscapes on earth, part of me remained tethered to the life I'd left behind. Perhaps that was the first clue that this trip wasn't just going to teach me how to slow down; it was going to show me how difficult I found it.

The following morning, we descended into the crater itself. What struck me first wasn't just the wildlife, which I'd spent months anticipating, but the scale. Looking down from the rim the night before, the crater had seemed almost abstract, too vast to properly take in. On the ground, however, it was alive with the weight of 2.5 million years of history.

Lions lounged in the grass, post-coital. Our guide explained that during mating season, they'll—to quote Bloodhound Gang—"do it like they do on the Discovery Channel" every 15 to 20 minutes, 24 hours a day. We stayed for a few performances, but once the claim had been confirmed, we began to feel oddly predatory. It’s an uneasy contradiction when an apex predator seems to occupy the moral high ground, so on we drove.

Elsewhere in the crater, hippos surfaced briefly before disappearing beneath the water again like shiny boulders we'd easily have missed were it not for our eagle-eyed guide, Alex. Herds moved slowly across the landscape, and even the migration we were so fortunate to witness didn't seem hurried. Nothing seemed concerned with efficiency; the animals weren't performing for us, and the landscape was indifferent to our presence.

The wild operated entirely independently of our expectations; there was no app to track a leopard sighting, no shortcuts. Back home, waiting is something to be eliminated. Here, it was the experience.

The lesson seemed baked into life at Ngorongoro Lodge itself. Having finally been reunited with our luggage, we were due to head for dinner when a member of staff suggested we delay it. The weather forecast had predicted clouds, but there was a chance the sunset might be worth sticking around for. So we waited.

When we returned to the rooftop, a crescent moon of chairs had been laid out facing the crater. Apricot gave way to orange; orange deepened into a moody shade of pink. Then, just when it seemed the sunset was over, the clouds cracked open like a hard-boiled egg, hairline fractures spreading across the horizon as lightning flickered through the distance. Not for the first time, as a storm rolled across the crater, I found myself thinking how Lion King-like it all felt.

The feeling followed me into the Serengeti. Built into the naturally terraced slopes of the Nyamuma Hills, Meliá Serengeti Lodge seems to follow the contours of the landscape; rooms spill out towards sweeping views of the savannah, while neutral colours, natural materials and Maasai-inspired details (again, by Sanaa) ensure attention remains firmly fixed on the plains beyond.

I’d wake before sunrise with every intention of sorting through yesterday’s photos, driven by a familiar urge to document and distil the experience before it had even finished unfolding, only to find myself distracted by the view instead. From the balcony, the Serengeti looked different every morning as light shifted across the grasslands. The landscape was never static, yet nothing about it felt rushed.

The lodge seemed to operate according to the same rhythm. Time was measured not by meetings or notifications but by game drives, meals (oh, how there were meals) and whatever wildlife happened to wander into view. Local Maasai guides patrol the grounds and escort guests back to their rooms each night.

It was on one of these walks that I learnt that a few nights ago, a leopard was headed for reception when Mompati intercepted it. "They see this red," he said, pointing to the traditional shuka he wore. "They run." I was glad to have Mompati’s company, his spear never far from his side. After dark, the lodge sounded different. Hyenas whooped somewhere beyond the floodlit paths while insects provided a relentless soundtrack.

On our first game drive, the landscape at first glance appeared empty. We'd drive through vast grasslands beneath enormous skies while Alex scanned the horizon with almost supernatural focus. Then someone would point towards what appeared to be absolutely nothing. We'd squint, pull out the ever-ready binoculars and still see nothing. Until slowly, a tuft of grass would move just so and, impossibly, an entire cheetah would emerge from the landscape.

The Serengeti is never empty; I simply hadn't learned how to see it yet.

If modern life rewards scanning, then safari life rewards attention—and patience. The more time I spent looking, the more I noticed. Birds circling overhead, vultures gathering in the distance, grimly devouring a fallen wildebeest. Tiny movements in long grass; clues that something was about to happen. The wild refused to perform on demand, and in an age of instant gratification, that's what made it feel all the more precious.

Even conversations had slowed. Tucking into grilled lobster, served family-style beneath a smattering of stars in the bush after an especially memorable walking safari, entire discussions were dedicated to what we'd spotted that day and which animal each of us had found most enchanting.

It was hard to choose just one. That, too, forced us to slow down, to revisit days organised around game drives and meals rather than emails and deadlines. Lunch one day was served in the crater, where the hotel's head chef barbecued giant prawns and great hunks of meat while an elephant looked on, totally nonplussed.

The rhythm of Tanzania seeped into everything. On our penultimate day, long before dawn, we climbed into a hot-air balloon and rose surprisingly peacefully above the plains.

Below us, elephants moved through the grassland, buffalo gathered in vast herds looking like a colony of ants from our vantage point, and that famous horizon stretched endlessly in every direction. And yet even then, a tension emerged: I didn't want to miss anything, but I also didn't want to forget anything.

Throughout the trip, I'd found myself caught between experiencing and recording. I photographed animals, filmed the sky as it splintered with lightning, and filled pages of notebooks each morning before sunrise to the sound of cicadas and the smell of African sage.

I wanted to preserve every detail, but I also kept returning to the same question: would the experience be richer without a camera between me and the moment? I still don't know.

Today, I am grateful to have the photos and videos, but they pale in comparison to how it felt to be there, turning a corner to see a pride of lionesses, one lazily flopping into the shade cast by our jeep, offering a closeness I hadn't dared imagine was possible.

One afternoon, we watched a lone buffalo wallowing in a muddy pool while a warthog repeatedly attempted—and failed—to approach. The buffalo clearly wasn't in a rush. Why should he be?

The warthog would have to wait—it's simply part of life in the wild.

How to Book

I travelled with Meliá Collection on the Once Upon a Life in Tanzania itinerary. Packages start from US$3,000 (approximately £2,265) per person, depending on travel dates, destination split and park entry fees.

What to Pack

When Milly Goldsmith uploaded a TikTok describing herself as “chronically single”, she thought a handful of people might relate. Instead, millions watched, and thousands of women flooded the comments to admit they'd never had a boyfriend either, confessing feelings they'd not shared out loud: that they felt left behind, embarrassed or convinced something must be wrong with them.

For Goldsmith, the response was a revelation. For years, she'd believed she was the only woman approaching 30 who'd never experienced romantic love. Instead, she’s since been called the voice of a generation and “the Gen Z Bridget Jones”.

Here, she reflects on shame, loneliness, people-pleasing and grieving the life she thought she'd have by now, and explains why she's finally stopped seeing being single as her greatest failure.

What It Feels Like To Have Never Had A Boyfriend

As told to Mischa Smith

I always thought getting a boyfriend was something that would just happen. It seemed like one of those milestones everyone reached without really thinking about it, like learning to drive or moving out. Everyone around me just seemed to find someone naturally, so I assumed the same thing would happen to me.

It wasn't until I was about 18 that I realised maybe it wasn't going to be that straightforward. By the end of school, I'd never had a boyfriend. I'd barely spoken to many boys, and all of my friends were starting relationships. At first, it was just something I noticed in the back of my mind, but over the years, that feeling slowly turned into fear.

I got to university and still hadn't had a boyfriend. I hadn't even had a situationship, and the longer I stayed single, the more it became my normal. Being independent became my comfort zone, so the idea of letting somebody into my life started to feel unfamiliar, and because it felt unfamiliar, it also felt frightening.

Even now, relationships are still this huge unknown to me because I've never experienced anything different. Love is such a huge shared human emotion, and I haven't really experienced that side of it. For something that's such a fundamental part of so many people's lives, it can feel quite isolating. There's definitely a sense of fear, but there's also a huge amount of FOMO.

I think the turning point came after Christmas in 2024. I come from a family of four siblings, and Christmas has always been loud. There are loads of people in the house, presents everywhere, food everywhere, games, and conversations. I absolutely love Christmas. But that year, all of my siblings were with their partners and for the first time ever, it was just my parents and me.

If I'd had a partner, I would've been doing exactly the same thing as everyone else. Instead, I felt like I'd been left behind. Not just within my family, but somehow in life itself. I remember sitting there thinking: why? Why does this seem so easy for everybody else? Why can't I experience something that everyone else seems to experience naturally?

I'd been going to therapy already, but I'd never really spoken about being single. I think part of that was because I hadn't fully acknowledged how much it affected me, and the moment I said it out loud, it would become real. It would stop being something I could blame on bad luck or bad dates or bad men.

Deep down, I think I knew there was something about me that I needed to understand, but I wasn't ready to face it yet. Then I started journaling. I'd never really journaled before, but suddenly I had all these emotions that needed somewhere to go. There was a lot of crying, a lot of confusion, and a lot of anger.

I kept thinking: why me? As I wrote, I slowly started connecting the dots. One of the biggest revelations was learning about attachment styles. I'm an anxious avoidant, which is probably one of the worst combinations if you're trying to build relationships. I need enough space to realise I actually want somebody, but by the time I've taken that space, I've usually pushed them away.

To someone else, it looks like I'm not interested; to me, it feels like I finally feel safe enough to let them in, but by then, they're already gone. That cycle suddenly explained so much about my life.

One of the strangest parts of all this has been talking about it publicly. When I first made a TikTok about being "chronically single", I genuinely thought people would think I was weird. I honestly didn't know anybody else who'd reached 28 without ever having a proper relationship.

I uploaded the video without overthinking it, which is unusual for me because I'm a perfectionist. I just wrote honestly about how I felt. Then it exploded. Suddenly, thousands of women were commenting, saying they felt exactly the same way, which completely changed my perspective because I'd spent years believing I was the odd one out.

The more I started understanding myself, the more I realised this wasn't just about dating, it was about the way I'd learnt to protect myself. One thing therapy made me think about was how difficult I find vulnerability.

Saying "I love you" to my parents honestly feels like saying a swear word. Everything in my body just tenses up.

It feels like I'm stripping away every layer I've built around myself. Every wall I've spent years putting up suddenly comes crashing down. They're only three words, but they carry so much weight. I just haven't had enough practice saying them to make them feel normal.

Even now, after my parents have read the chapter in my book where I write about this, my whole body tenses up knowing they know how I feel. There's still a small version of me that's trying to protect herself.

Growing up, love wasn't really expressed through words in our family; it was always through actions. My mum would cook dinner, and she'd give me a hug. My dad would give me £10 after a dance exam and tell me he'd been proud of me, that was our version of saying, I love you.

I know my parents love me; I've never doubted that for a second. It was just something that went unsaid. Now that I'm older, I can see how growing up in an environment where we didn't verbalise those feelings has shaped me. It makes sense why opening up to people doesn't always come naturally. It's something I'm still trying to unlearn.

With some people, saying "I love you" feels completely natural. One of my best friends says it to me all the time, so I say it back really easily because I know there isn't any risk. I know it'll be received in exactly the way I intend it.

The same is true with my nieces; I'm always telling them how loved they are because I want them to grow up hearing those words. Maybe there's a part of me that's trying to give them something I would've found easier to hear growing up.

I don't think I'm broken; I just think some relationships require me to unlearn habits that have been there for a very long time. The same thing happened with people-pleasing; for years, I thought I was simply being kind. I thought changing my plans to suit somebody else or making myself endlessly available was just what nice people did. I didn't even know what boundaries were. Therapy taught me that being a kind person and being a people pleaser aren't the same thing.

When it came to dating, I'd let people move dates three or four times because I didn't want them to think I was difficult. I'd convince myself it was absolutely fine. Now I realise I could've said, "No, this day works, or it doesn't." That isn't rude; that's self-respect. I think there were lots of moments where I could've respected myself more.

For a long time, I worried more about whether someone else was annoyed with me than whether I was happy. I was constantly moulding myself to fit other people. Eventually, I had to ask myself a really uncomfortable question: If I'm changing myself depending on who's in the room… Who am I?

For years, I believed being single meant I'd failed somehow, that there must be something wrong with me. Now I see being single completely differently.

It's actually the default; it's where we all begin. It's given me an incredible amount of independence: I can travel on my own, spend weekends on my own, enjoy my own company, and I know myself incredibly well. Some people joke that maybe I know myself too well now.

Of course, there are moments where I think it would be lovely to have someone to book holidays with, cook dinner with or go to the cinema with. I'm still human, I still want love. But I don't see being single as something that's wrong with me anymore.

That's probably been the biggest shift of all.

When Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter whom an Irish civil jury found had raped Nikita Hand, walked onto one of America's most-watched talk shows, there was no difficult conversation or acknowledgement of that finding. Instead, there were jokes, promotion and the whirring machinery of celebrity rehabilitation.

It is hard to imagine a clearer message to survivors of sexual violence: even when the court believes you, the court of public opinion is ready to move on.

The Tonight Show appearance was far from an isolated incident. This came despite a court hearing medical evidence that doctors had documented extensive bruising across Hand's body following the assault, while a paramedic testified she had "not seen someone so bruised, with that intensity of bruising" in a long time. Yet just two months after the verdict, McGregor made his first major public appearance, attending Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington, D.C., no less.

That appearance was followed by a string of other high-profile outings, including another visit to the White House, as well as interviews with Tucker Carlson and Fox's Sean Hannity. Neither interviewer addressed the civil case, instead allowing McGregor a platform to sound off about immigration and his presidential ambitions.

We often talk about why victims don't come forward. We list shame, fear of not being believed, and the trauma of reliving an assault in court. All of those barriers are real. But there is another question we ask far less often: what incentive do survivors have to endure years of investigation and legal proceedings if the person they accuse appears able to resume public life almost immediately afterwards?

This week, the Crown Prosecution Service announced changes designed to make rape trials fairer for victims. Prosecutors are being encouraged to focus more on a suspect's pattern of behaviour, rather than placing survivors under the microscope. As Victims' Commissioner Claire Waxman said, survivors need confidence that they will be treated with "dignity, respect and fairness" throughout the justice process.

These are welcome reforms, but justice doesn't end when a verdict is delivered.

If the legal system is working harder than ever to encourage victims to come forward while wider culture continues welcoming powerful men back onto our screens, we create an impossible contradiction. We tell survivors that reporting matters while showing them that accountability may only last as long as the news cycle. "We all know reporting is essential for change but society must hold up its end of the bargain," says Tabitha Morton, Executive Director, UN Women UK.

As campaigner Eliza Hatch puts it: "It's not just an incredibly insensitive and thoughtless insult to Nikita Hand. It's also a slap in the face for all survivors of sexual assault and rape, who are constantly told that men's careers and future prospects are worth more than their pain, suffering and lived experiences of trauma."

That contradiction isn't reserved for celebrity culture, either. Just last month, three teenage boys in Hampshire who were convicted of raping two girls avoided immediate custody. The judge cited, among other factors, their youth, low IQ and, maddeningly, a desire to avoid "criminalising" them unnecessarily. The sentences are now under review.

Though the details differ, the underlying message feels depressingly familiar. Again and again, attention focuses squarely on the futures of perpetrators, not the lifelong impact on survivors. We've heard countless examples of judges worrying about perpetrators' careers, their prospects and their supposed sporting promise. Too rarely do we ask the same questions about the people they assaulted.

This pattern stretches back decades. Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, received a mere six-month sentence after the judge cited concerns that a longer prison term would have a "severe impact" on him. His case became a global symbol of whose futures the justice system instinctively protects.

And though the country and court differ, the instinct to protect offenders is startlingly consistent.

As Sinéad Geoghegan, Head of Communications at the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), says: "The fact that a man found by a civil court to have raped a woman has been platformed on one of the world's most popular TV shows exemplifies the lack of meaningful accountability so many perpetrators face, particularly those with power and status. We see this time and time again and it sends a harmful message to all of society that rape isn't that serious, when in reality it devastates women and girls' lives." Morton adds: "Justice cannot live only in courtrooms. It must live in behaviour—in who we platform."

Of course, none of this is to argue that every offender is beyond redemption or that rehabilitation has no place in justice. But when we rush to restore powerful men to positions of influence while the people they harmed continue to navigate lifelong trauma, it sends a message, whether intentionally or not, about whose pain matters more.

While practical and convenient, it's rare that self-catering accommodation can be romanticised in the same way as a luxury hotel. Le Jardin de Verre, a new project from Locke Living, dispels this myth, bringing its signature hybrid of spacious apartments rather than (let's face it, it's Paris) somewhat cramped hotel rooms and boutique amenities. Not to mention a showstopper restaurant that draws in diners from all over the city.

While there may be the option to dine in with a fully-equipped kitchen in each apartment, Bibie at Le Jardin de Verre, helmed by renowned chef Loïc Julliand, is well worth the visit, drawing nightly crowds thanks to its unique setting and dedicated cocktail bar. Wellness fans can enjoy the 24-hour gym and a dedicated yoga studio. Then there's the lively courtyard decked out in fairy lights and plush furnishings, with plenty of comfy spaces to curl up in with a book. Or your laptop, if you're living that digital nomad life.

Housed in what was once a set of French Baroque mansions and a 20th-century industrial factory, Le Jardin de Verre is Locke Living's first outpost in Paris, marking the group’s 17th property to date. This feels like a natural fit for a city so focused on creativity, considering Locke's design-led aparthotel concept. Le Jardin de Verre brings something new to the City of Lights with its unique blend of traditional Haussmann-style touches, bold colour schemes and industrial elements that pay homage to its heritage.

Locke Living is known for its creative collaborations, and Los Angeles-based architecture and design studio Fettle dreamed up its Paris outpost, inspired by the hotel's connection to nature. The reception area offers a calming space adorned in stone, terracotta and timber. Locke's trademark playful styling can also be seen throughout the aparthotel, with patterned lampshades, vibrant artworks and comfy-looking soft furnishings at every turn, designed and made by textile artists Sinéad and Mark Hanlon of Studio Knot.

Paris is known for being très expensive, and an aparthotel would suit those who want to mix dining in and eating out, or anyone staying for a longer period who would like the option to do their own laundry. The courtyard and coffee bar double as a welcoming co-working space during the day, so this is an excellent location for digital nomads to settle into the city. The beauty of Le Jardin de Verre is that, despite all these conveniences, it still feels like a design hotel.

ROOMS

Don't let the unassuming entrance fool you; Le Jardin de Verre is a sprawling property with 135 rooms across 11 categories. The categories range from the compact 'City Studios' to impressively large suites; the most impressive being the grand split-level Begonia Suite and the Roseraie Suite. The hotel's greenery inspires the Begonia Suite, a two-story duplex apartment with a serene green palette. The Roseraie Suite is the hotel's penthouse suite and features a showstopping glass ceiling inspired by the hotel's atrium. The Roseraie Suite is designed for entertaining, with an eight-seater dining table that sits beneath a grand chandelier and a corner sofa for a comfortable end to the evening. Parisian dinner party, anybody?

All rooms come with a fully equipped kitchen with a stove and fridge, as well as dining space ideal for longer stays. Again, nudging more towards hotel than aparthotel, luxurious Kinsey Apothecary products are available in the bathrooms, as are plush towels.

FOOD & DRINK

Since opening in summer 2025, Bibie has received a positive reception from diners and established itself in the Latin Quarter's bustling restaurant scene (no mean feat in a dining scene as competitive as Paris). Diners can enjoy French classics, often with a contemporary take, served in a serene, plant-filled atrium (Le Jardin de Verre means 'the glass garden'). Think moules-frites or steak au poivre, with other European influences woven into the changing menu. There's also an impressive 200 wines on offer, with a focus on natural wines.

The restaurant doubles up as a coffee shop in the morning, where guests and visitors can enjoy fresh coffee and pastries at Bibi Cafe, taking in the morning light under the atrium's glass ceiling. The evening calls for sipping classics like a Kir Royal or a French 75 in the snug-like cocktail bar.

ACTIVITIES

Le Jardin de Verre sits on Rue de Lacépède in Paris’ historic Latin Quarter in the 5th arrondissement, surrounded by quaint cafes and cosy bookshops. It's quieter here than the more touristy parts of central Paris and the kind of streets you can stroll around without the crowds, window shopping or making a pitstop for morning pastries.

The aparthotel is also a short stroll from some of Paris' most beautiful gardens, the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin du Luxembourg, as well as cultural landmarks including the Panthéon. Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a lively central neighbourhood, is also within easy reach. Browse the art galleries along the Rue de Seine and enjoy Parisian cafe culture at the atmospheric La Palette.

NEED TO KNOWS

Rooms at Le Jardin de Verre start at €275 per night for a City Studio with a balcony, and you can book through the Locke Living website.

Address: Le Jardin de Verre by Locke, 7 Rue Lacépède, 75005 Paris, France

Four years after nearly dying during childbirth, Louise Thompson still finds herself poring over scan reports late into the night, trying to understand just what exactly happened to her. She went into hospital as a healthy young woman to give birth to her son and left physically and psychologically traumatised, facing years of surgeries, recovery and unanswered questions.

Thompson, a former reality TV star turned author and activist, has spoken publicly about birth trauma, emergency surgery and the perilous road to recovery before. But what continues to surprise her is not just the trauma itself, but the realisation that some experiences don’t simply fade with time and that perhaps the only way to make sense of the pain is to turn it into purpose.

Here, she reflects on living with the aftermath of the birth that almost killed her, the anger that followed, and why revisiting the darkest period of her life ultimately led her to campaign for change in maternity care.

Sign Louise’s petition for a Maternity Commissioner to improve maternity care for mums and babies here

What It Feels Like To Turn Pain Into Purpose

As told to Mischa Smith

If I think about my birth experience now, four years later, my mind goes to Saturday night last weekend. I’d had a day to myself. My son and my partner were away. Most parents would think that’s a really joyful experience, having a day to themselves. But I’d been hugely triggered by a book I’ve tried to read fairly regularly over the last four years: The Body Keeps the Score.

Reading about trauma and about other people’s experiences has really reaffirmed to me that this is not something that I will ever get over. It opened the floodgates again. Then, after a very, very dissociated day on my own, where everything flooded back into my mind, I spent four hours reading through scan reports and being reminded of everything that had happened. It’s genuinely bizarre to me that, as an intelligent young woman, I still haven’t managed to digest all of the information that’s happened to me.

I was putting scans into AI, creating emails to send to medical professionals and lawyers, trying to figure out what the hell really happened, because ultimately, I was a super healthy person who had everything going for me. A lot of privilege.

That was all basically ripped away from me. My health was taken away from me. It was incredibly scary; there’s no better word than scary. I was full of fear 24 hours a day, and I feel pretty angry as well.

There are women who are probably dying right now, frankly, and I think it’s fucking unacceptable. It’s unacceptable. It is one of the grossest failings in humanity that women are treated like this.

The lack of education around hormones and women’s health and maternity care in this country is ruining people’s lives so that we cannot live full, interesting, happy, efficient, productive lives. Women are being held back. The more I dig into this, the more I realise that every single day someone is coming to me with a story, and it makes me feel sick to my core.

Four years later, Ryan is still affected by what happened. We watched that Panorama together, and he threw up all night afterwards. That is the visceral reaction people can have years after a traumatic birth.

People often think about birth trauma as one moment, but every single part of our world was shattered the day I went into that hospital. Every single thing. The lack of someone writing the right thing on the whiteboard, the investigation, the birth debrief, the information that was wrong; it’s everything. It was a complete car crash.

I lost 12.5 litres of blood in a year, and I had to have my colon removed; it’s phenomenally upsetting. And what I’ve realised since is that this isn’t an isolated incident. When this first happened to me, I left the hospital, and I couldn’t really speak to anybody for months. If someone said, “Oh, my birth was quite bad as well,” I would think, there’s no way anyone could be on the same wavelength as me, but the more I speak publicly about my situation, the more I realise there are thousands of women. Tens of thousands of women.

Over 150,000 people signed our petition in less than three months. People are being told that what happened to them is normal. They’re being told that they’re the problem. They go home assuming there’s nothing they can do.

Speaking publicly wasn’t something I planned; I think I was still quite numb when I started sharing things online. I wanted to explain that I’d had a baby and that the circumstances were weird. I was so used to sharing everything publicly that not sharing felt really jarring. In some ways, it connected me with my old self, and I found writing became an outlet.

I would lie in bed with my son for hours while he slept, and I’d write these captions and just mind-dump. I found this connection with writing that I’d never had before. I’ve always been a control freak; I could never express myself so freely, but I actually just didn’t care. I had nothing to lose. I was like: I don’t care if everybody hates me. My life couldn’t be any worse.

There was a phase where people around me suggested I stop sharing such honest accounts of my mental health because they worried I was holding onto things for too long, they worried it might put off work opportunities, but I couldn’t stop.

I’d already lost so much; two of my businesses were basically wiped out as a result of the birth trauma, and one even destroyed my relationship with a business partner. I couldn’t go back to being the person I was before.

It’s only really been in the last year that something has shifted. Now I’m sharing more to help other people versus helping myself, and that’s partly because I’ve realised how many women have been through something similar.

I remember when women I knew started telling me about their own experiences; women I’d gone to university with, women who nearly died, women who couldn’t access their medical notes. I even spoke to doctors who had experienced traumatic births themselves. Consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists who told me this was a problem.

Even people who worked at the hospital where I had my traumatic birth told me they supported what I was doing; that was when I realised this wasn’t personal, it really is a systemic issue. And once you see that, it’s impossible to ignore.

My book happened to come out the exact week the Birth Trauma Inquiry was published. I connected with Theo Clarke, who became my co-petitioner, and when we met, we realised we needed to do something.

Since then, the campaign has become a huge part of my life. Suddenly, I’m hiring someone with a political background, I’m speaking to MPs, I’m meeting policymakers, I’m reading medical negligence cases at two in the morning – I never imagined any of this would become my life, but I think I’ve realised that if we don’t keep talking about it, nothing changes, and women deserve better than this.

The public cares deeply about this issue; the question is whether the people in power will listen. My long-term goal is to set up a charity facility for women. I’ve realised I’m going to have to network, ask people for help, and keep having difficult conversations – none of that comes naturally to me. But the time is now to put on my big girl pants and see where we can go with it. Because the thing I’ve learned over the last four years is that recovery and forgetting are not the same thing. And some experiences change you forever.

Walk into the vast, marble-floored lobby at the Boston InterContinental, and you know pretty quickly that you're going to be well looked after. A fire roars in the fireplace, modern monochrome artwork adorns the walls, and travellers sink into plush, low-slung sofas everywhere you look.

While a lot of Boston's hotels sit in the very heart of the city and right in the centre of the hustle and bustle, the InterContinental - a five-star property from IHG Hotels & Resorts - is tucked away in a quieter part and on the harbour front. The hotel occupies a prime position between the Financial District and the Seaport. All of Boston's must-try attractions are walkable, and everything is within your reach.

The location in and of itself is beautiful. On the warmer days of our trip, we spent our mornings strolling along the harbour walk, and our evenings enjoying a drink on the terrace overlooking the famous Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, a series of replica ships that commemorate the city's history and one of its most significant sites.

But this InterContinental has far more on offer than just its location and views. Despite pretty sizeable conference facilities and a reputation for being a business base, it strikes a rare balance: polished enough for business travellers, yet characterful enough to appeal to leisure guests.

For more on the Boston InterContinental's facilities - a unique waterfront location, spa facilities, and modern interiors despite a historical setting - plus why I'd recommend it for your next Stateside stay, keep scrolling.

Boston InterContinental: "Tranquil, modern charm on the historic waterfront"

The vibes

Despite my preconceptions of the chain as a hotel exclusively designed for those on business trips or conferences, the InterContinental is friendly, welcoming and unpretentious - a far cry from the corporate vibes of other chain hotels.

Attentive, welcoming staff and a warm, relaxed ambience set the tone - you feel instantly at ease and at home in the light-dappled lobby. With floor-to-ceiling windows, marble, and polished stone covering the floors and ceilings, the interiors are contemporary without feeling cold. Centred on calming, neutral tones, the colour palette centres on soft creams, warm woods and brushed metallic accents, making the space feel considered and modern.

At certain angles, you can see right through to the rippling water which runs alongside you, reminding you that you're in Boston. Top tip, too: do make sure to try the river taxis, which drop you right outside the hotel and offer a more adventurous way to explore the city.

The rooms

The hotel has 424 rooms in total, with many offering floor-to-ceiling windows and stunning views, especially as the sun sets in the evening.

Our room is notably spacious - ours had two double beds, a lounge area, a desk, and a bathroom with a bathtub, two sinks, and a shower. Plush bathrobes, marble interiors, and BYREDO bath amenities in my favourite “Bal d’Afrique” scent add to the luxe, elevated feel.

If you're a member of Club InterContinental, there's a spacious lounge on the twelfth floor which has private dining, workspaces and drinks options - we enjoyed light bites, coffees and a few glasses of wine here over the course of our stay.

The food

There are three different restaurants on site, meaning you're really spoilt for choice and have plenty to choose from every day. We mainly eat at Matria, a Northern Italian-inspired restaurant which has a waterfront terrace and fresh, seasonal menus. As we were in Boston during the Boston Marathon weekend, they put on a specific "Runners Menu" on the Sunday evening, which included plenty of fresh salads, tomato pasta iterations, protein sources, and garlic breads.

The food ticks all of the right boxes - dinners are fresh and flavourful, and the breakfast buffet is extensive but expertly cooked. I enjoy porridge with Greek yoghurt and fresh berries one day, and scrambled eggs and sourdough the next. You can also order from the à la carte menu and enjoy American staples, the waffles being a standout highlight (when in the US, right?).

Perhaps surprisingly, the bar, Bar Fellini, is buzzing every night, which I'm sure was aided by the fact that we stayed over the marathon weekend. An Italian aperitivo-style cocktail bar that sits in the heart of the hotel radiates a more intimate, evening-vibe - we enjoyed a glass of champagne here after the race.

There's also a speakeasy-style cocktail bar, the Loyall Counting Room, inspired by Boston’s colonial history. My top tip? I'd highly recommend getting breakfast room service, if you can - it was one of the highlights of our trip. Think eggs over easy, crispy-as-anything Turkey bacon and thick, fluffy pancakes.

The amenities

There are ample amenities on site - a spa, sauna, swimming pool, and spacious, well-equipped gym with all the equipment you could need for a good workout. There's also a full-service spa and treatment options, if you'd like to book in some dedicated downtime. Wellness isn't an afterthought here; it's baked into your trip.

Of course, there are also the conference and event facilities throughout the hotel, should you be travelling for business, not pleasure - but the staff do an excellent job of maintaining the hotel feels elevated and friendly, rather than overly corporate.

As with most high-end hotels, a concierge is on hand with recommendations for during your stay, so do check in if you're unsure on an itinerary for your trip.

One of my favourite amenities was the simplest, though; the direct access to the Boston Harborwalk for morning runs and waterfront strolls.

The need to knows

Stay at the Boston Intercontinental from around £250 a night, depending on the season. 510 Atlantic Ave, Boston, MA 02210, United States, ihg.com.

Towering palm trees dot the coastline, their fronds gently undulating in the breeze, and the jade green sea laps at coves of powdery white sand: Pangkor Laut Resort offers an unforgettable taste of Malaysian island life.

Here, beaches curl between dramatic rock faces and overlook still, glassy waters, offering sun-soaked days so peaceful and still that it feels like a private paradise. Wildlife roams freely, oriental pied hornbills casually join breakfast tables, and giant fruit bats hang happily in the sea almond trees, as the rolling rainforest becomes a verdant backdrop to the opulent overwater villas, stilts rising from the emerald and turquoise sea. Set on a private island, the 5* Pangkor Laut Resort is, undeniably, luxurious; but, infused in its culinary excellence and first-class hospitality, is a commitment to Malaysian tradition, culture and warmth.

The Vibe

Malaysia is rapidly asserting itself as an affordable alternative to Thailand and Indonesia, offering swathes of untouched beaches and unparalleled snorkelling spots. Approaching Pangkor Laut Resort by speedboat is nothing short of breathtaking; the dense and majestic greenery, sprawling across 80% of the island, is interrupted only by slivers of golden sand and a sprinkle of pitched wooden roofs. Traditional Malay design elements are laced throughout the resort; the open-air pavilions are dotted with rattan furniture, sleek marble floors and deep-set balconies, every area brought to life with natural materials and local art. Beyond the reception, villas are found on both land and sea; The Estates are exclusive hubs comprising apartments, pools and private hot spas tucked away for unrivalled privacy, while the sea villas sit on stilts atop the silky green ocean, with balconies perfectly positioned to watch a mellow, coral sun rise over the neighbouring islands.

On the west coast, the ethereal Emerald Bay offers a secluded beach that’s so picture-perfect it’s likely no other will ever compare; think sand that’s bright and soft, water that’s exceptionally clear and astoundingly still, and sun loungers shaded under the trees’ blooming branches. Best enjoyed with a continuous supply of refreshing coconuts.

But, despite the sprinkling of infinity pools and private beaches, it’s the Spa Village that will really make your stay at Pangkor Laut truly unforgettable.

The Spa

If you think you’ve experienced all a spa can offer, think again. The Spa Village is not just an additional experience during your stay at Pangkor Laut – it is one of the experiences that will define your entire trip. While that sounds like a bold claim, it’s not award-winning for nothing. The entire offering is its own holistic retreat within the resort: a maze of treatment cabins and indulgent ritual spots for personalised experiences that give massage a whole new meaning.

Long before your treatment begins, you’ll enjoy 45 minutes at the Bath House. Enjoy the Spa Village’s signature foot pounding, inspired by Chinese tradition, before heading to a series of outdoor pools embracing various healing practices. The first large pool, inspired by Indian purification rituals, is tucked below the trees and sits under large vases of streaming water. Let it wash over you before heading to the Ayurvedic steam pots, inhaling the various scents. From there, you’ll be guided to a washroom – much like those at Japanese onsen – before heading to the outdoor rock pool to sit and meditate under the blue sky.

Treatments can last up to four hours, and they’re worth every deliciously relaxing minute. The incredible Royal Secrets of Puteri Lindungan Bulan is a wonderful invitation to unwind, and includes a flower petal milk bath, body scrub, full body massage and nourishing hair mask, while the personalised experience with a Chinese specialist is a tailored to whatever your body and mind needs. Don’t skip a visit: it’s a truly unique experience, and one you’ll think about long after you’ve returned home.

The Rooms

Across the 300 acres, you’ll find several different offerings. There are 140 villas in total - a mix of hillside, garden, beach and sea – and 8 Estates. Opt for a sea villa in the Spa Village – it includes access to a private pool, and you’re just minutes away from the best resort treatment you’ve ever had.

The sea villas hover over the water on stilts and include a king bed, veranda and panoramic landscape views. In the bathroom, there’s a deep, marble bath flanked by a trio of windows that open out to the ocean – turning every soak into a tropical dream. You’ll want to get up early and throw all the shutters open to watch the sun inking the sky as you float in the tub. Unreal. The balcony is where you’ll find peace at first and last light; in the morning, perch on the bench with a coffee in hand, or head out to listen to the water lapping below as you wind down for bed.

Food & Drink

Uncle Lim’s Kitchen is where you’ll find mouth-watering Chinese dishes using locally sourced produce that blend Nyonya and Hock Chew-style home cooking elements. Known for its deep fried calamansi chicken, juicy Kung Po calamari and tender butter prawns, you’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to seafood. And, within the open-plan restaurant, you’ll get a gentle breeze and views of the moonlight sparkling on sea.

For buffet-style dining, head to Feast Village. At breakfast, order a freshly squeezed juice and fill up on brightly coloured fruits, from tangy pineapple chunks to pink slices of watermelon. There’s an array of hot dishes for each and every diner – otak-otak steamed dumplings and red bean buns, flaky rotis and rich dahl, creamy scrambled eggs and roasted tomatoes. Finish with Malaysian kuih-muih, traditional sweets and desserts.

Make time to visit Fisherman’s Cove, an adults-only restaurant specialising in elevated seafood dishes. The views are sublime, but when it comes to the menu the crispy soft-shell crab is not to be missed, and the dancing prawns – delicately tossed with citrus aioli – are a standout. For mains, order the flaky pan-fried Manong River Jade perch or grilled barramundi with tomato salsa. End with the rich, citron chocolate mousse with lemon curd. Divine.

Additional Information

Direct flights operate daily between London Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur International Airport, but opting for a short layover offers more flight flexibility. Transit through Istanbul Airport and enjoy the comforts of the Turkish Airlines lounge on your outbound and inbound journeys.

Global-All-Inclusive packages can also be booked directly, and will unlock complimentary speedboat transfers from Pangkor Laut to the mainland. The all-inclusive getaway includes curated dining, logistics with return land and sea transfers for Pangkor Laut, and a programme of immersive activities such as jungle treks and turtle education as well as wellness offerings including yoga and meditation.

How To Book

For more information, visit YTL Hotels. To book directly, reservations can be made via the Pangkor Laut Resort website.

What to Pack

It's rare in life to have had as varied a career as Jodie Kidd. From being one of Britain's most recognisable 90's supermodels to fronting the male-dominated world of motorsport, Kidd has done what very few before have even attempted, swapping catwalks for cockpits and proving that you're never too late to pursue your passions.

And passionate, she is: she's loved cars since a young age, admitting when we chat to a childhood obsession with Ayrton Senna. In later life, a chance encounter with none other than Jeremy Clarkson changed the course of her career - and the rest is history.

Below, she chats about her life in motorsport - on her early years in the fashion industry, the scepticism she's faced in a male-dominated industry, and her drive to champion the next generation of female talent. Plus, she deep dives into her passion for electric vehicles, and the role she reckons they're set to play both on and off the track.

Keep scrolling.

Jodie Kidd: "I’m hopeful we’ll find a female Formula 1 racer who can compete alongside the boys."

What’s your earliest motorsport memory?

Watching Ayrton Senna race in Formula 1. He was a big part of our lives. My nephew has Ayrton as his middle name; that’s how obsessed with him we were. He was definitely my earliest memory.

What was the moment that made you realise you were ready for a career change from modelling?

I decided to stop modelling after around a decade of a wonderful career in the industry and accidentally fell into motorsport by taking part in the Gumball Rally.

Through doing that, I had a chance encounter with Jeremy Clarkson, which led to him inviting me onto Top Gear. I did the ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ lap, went to the top of the leaderboard and fell in love with cars and racing from that moment onwards.

Are there any similarities between the worlds of modelling and motorsport?

They’re very different, but high adrenaline is a strong similarity in both. It sounds strange, but you get the same adrenaline walking down a catwalk as you do when racing cars.

What makes EVs in particular so important to you?

They’re the future and a necessity in order for the world to evolve - we can’t be living off petrol and crude oil forever. Some of the cars are fantastic, and you can get some incredibly quick cars with extraordinary power, so it ticks that box.

I just love the ease and the feeling I get from driving one! They're so smooth, and you can drive anywhere in them, whether it’s a short or a longer drive, especially as I recently learned that there are more than 118,000 public chargers now – nearly twice as many as fuel pumps!

I recently worked with the Department for Transport (DfT) to showcase the vast UK charging network. I curated my own electric road trip from Land’s End to the Angel of the North and found chargers at the most beautiful, unexpected places. You stop, charge up, take in the view, and you're back on the road.

What’s one thing you wish more people knew about EVs in motorsport?

I wish more people realised the extent to which EV motorsport is driving technological progress off the track. Series like Formula E and electric off‑road racing show that EVs can be competitive, durable, and exciting, not just environmentally friendly.

As E racing is growing, so is the demand for EVs in the real world – in March this year, the UK’s EV market achieved its strongest performance to date. Registrations of EV's reached an all-time high with the highest monthly total ever recorded.

Even in Formula 1, the increasing use of hybrid battery technology has significantly changed how cars are designed and raced, and these innovations are slowly filtering into everyday road cars. EV motorsport isn’t just entertainment - it’s actively shaping the future of vehicle technology.

What challenges have you faced entering a very male-dominated sport?

It’s been difficult because when I started racing, it was the 90s and early 2000s when there were very few women racers. Thankfully, this is something that has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. At the time, however, for me, it was tough because people didn’t take me seriously -especially as I had come from a modelling background. It’s fair to say that it isn’t the norm to see models go from fashion week to pit lanes. When women were initially spotted on race tracks, it was as a spectator, and when my career started, it was incredibly rare to see women in race overalls. It was definitely tough, but I got over it and showed the world that women can race too.

How has the industry changed over the last ten years?

Dramatically! We’ve seen women come to the forefront in engineering and in running F1 teams, such as Claire Williams. There’s even now an all-female race series, so it has undeniably come on leaps and bounds in the last ten years.

What do you hope the future of motorsport looks like?

I’m hugely optimistic. It seems that everyone is obsessed with Formula 1 now; it’s become huge! I’m hopeful that with the amount of intrigue, we’ll find an amazing woman Formula 1 racer very soon who can compete alongside the boys.

What would your advice be to young women who dream of a career in motorsport?

There are so many more routes into motorsport now for women, whether that’s engineering, design, or the racing itself. You just have to stay driven and keep putting yourself out there. Despite the fact that there is now far more opportunity, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy; setbacks are inevitable - but that’s part of it. The important thing is not to let the setbacks define you. Take the negativity, turn it into motivation, and use it to push yourself forward. If you keep working hard and keep going, the opportunities really are there.

Nestled between Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Arch, The Peninsula London is an elegant sanctuary with a timeless quality; a relative newcomer on London's luxury hotel scene that can rival the Capital's most iconic establishments.

The Peninsula is one of those grand hotels that feels as if it has been stationed in Belgravia, near the likes of The Connaught and The Dorchester, for decades. Yet, the hotel actually opened in 2023, marking the brand's debut in the UK, following hotels in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, and New York, among others. Rather than inhabiting one of the 19th-century buildings like its neighbours, the hotel was built from scratch—and rumour has it that Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels spent 30 years finding the ideal spot.

What cements The Peninsula's success amid such fierce competition is its distinctiveness; there's no hotel like it in the city. Rather than attempting to be hyper-modern (which can, let's face it, often feel a little sterile), it exudes the elegance and warmth of a bygone era, along with genuine, old-fashioned hospitality. Luggage is whisked away instantly upon arrival. Staff are warm, attentive, and discreet. And the uniforms, designed by London fashion royalty Jenny Packham, are impeccable. A masterclass in understated sophistication before you've even left the lobby.

The Peninsula is owned and operated through HSH, Asia's oldest hotel company still in operation, and its heritage is gracefully woven throughout the hotel's design, from the hand-carved guardian lions at the hotel's entrance (a Peninsula tradition) to the artful displays of fine Chinese porcelain. Tea time at The Peninsula is treated as a ritual to be taken slowly and thoughtfully. In the tranquil courtyard, designed by celebrated designer Enzo Enea, you'll find 120-year-old Japanese maple trees and the sweet scent of jasmine.

The Peninsula London's story didn't begin in Belgravia, but in the heart of 1920s Hong Kong. Dubbed the 'Grande Dame of the Far East', The Peninsula was one of Hong Kong's first luxury hotels, quickly becoming a benchmark for high-end hospitality, known for its fleet of Rolls-Royces and opulent lobby. The lobby is the heart of the hotel at Peninsula properties; a place to dine, sip cocktails, relax, or people-watch.

The Peninsula's refined character is well-suited to London's refined and historic Belgravia. After all, London has always been a pioneer of top-tier, white-glove service, particularly in the most prestigious neighbourhoods of Belgravia, Mayfair, and Knightsbridge—it's safe to say The Peninsula fits right in.

Here's everything you need to know about The Peninsula London, including what to expect from its £1,300 a night rooms, its incredible restaurants, in particular Brooklands by Claude Bosi and Canton Blue, and the hotel's vast wellness offering, including a new partnership with cult LA brand, Ricari Studios.

THE ROOMS

The rooms at The Peninsula are refreshingly large for a city centre hotel, starting at 50 square meters. Esteemed interior designer Peter Marino, who was at the helm for the entire design process of the hotel, creates a 'home away from home' feel with bespoke furnishings, a mix of textures and original artworks that add character and eclecticism to the rooms and suites. The colour palette is gentle and refined, featuring rich creams, off-whites, and soft blue accents that contrast with deep mahogany wood. Rooms also feature a mahogany-pannelled dressing room, or walk-in wardrobe in some instances.

Amenities are impressive and position The Peninsula as forward-thinking, despite its classic design elements. There are wireless chargers, 'spa mode' lighting in the bathrooms and even a nail dryer to eliminate smudges — a genius addition.

The hotel features a total of 190 rooms and suites, each boasting a spacious layout. The uniformity of rooms in terms of size is possible due to the hotel being a new build, constructed from the ground up as part of a £1 billion project. Before The Peninsula London, the Bulgari was the city's last new-build five-star hotel, built in 2012. In a city known for its sometimes cramped rooms, considering their high price points, this space is a welcome addition.

THE FOOD AND DRINK

There are seven places to eat and drink at The Peninsula London, including The Peninsula Boutique & Cafe and The Lobby, where breakfast and afternoon tea are served. Notably, Canton Blue is an opulent, multi-level restaurant, inspired by the design of the Keying Junk, a trade ship that sailed between Europe and Asia. Canton Blue serves Cantonese Chinese with a fine dining twist.

Situated on the ground floor, the atmosphere is seductive, with soft lighting, intimate booths, and striking design features—the handiwork of esteemed Hong Kong-based interior designer Henry Leung. Dining here has a certain magic; the magnificent ceiling has a vast backlit panel depicting a celestial map inspired by Keying Junk's journey from East to West. Little Blue is the cocktail bar next door, serving inventive concoctions and late-night noodles.

Brooklands is situated at the top of the building, offering a distinguished rooftop spot helmed by Michelin-starred Chef Director Claude Bosi. The hotel is currently hosting the 'Claude & Co at Brooklands' dinner series; special one-night collaborations between Bosi and world-famous chefs.

ACTIVITIES

With one of London's most famous parks, Hyde Park, just a stone's throw away, there's the opportunity to team a city break with some time in nature. Part of London's appeal is its vast green spaces, which feel a world away from the hectic metropolis. Polished Belgravia is also worth exploring, with the charming Elizabeth Street and Motcomb Street lined with artisan shops, luxury fashion stores, buzzy restaurants and florists. Eccleston Yards is also within easy reach, home to the stylish wine bar and studio Amie, the beautiful Wild By Tart restaurant, and Re:Mind studio, which offers restorative meditation, healing, and breathwork sessions.

Back at the hotel, guests can unwind in The Peninsula Spa and Wellness Centre, which includes a 25-meter heated pool, thermal rooms, an ice fountain and a relaxation room with heated loungers. There's also an on‑site beauty salon called the Atelier. Peter Marino also designed the spa, drawing inspiration from the serenity of nearby Hyde Park and Green Park, using earthy tones and natural materials to enhance the space.

The Peninsula has also recently announced some exciting partnerships, including a collaboration with Cult LA brand Ricari Studios, who offer their one-of-a-kind ‘Ricari Method’, a blend of hands-on and machine-led massage to stimulate blood flow and air lymphatic drainage. Meanwhile, ONE: Personal Training offers guests personalised one-on-one training sessions in the high-tech gym.

NEED TO KNOWS

Rooms at The Peninsula London start at £1,300 per night, and you can book through the hotel's website.

Address: 8/F, The Peninsula, 1 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7HJ

Phone: 020 3959 2888

When Nelly London discovered she was pregnant, there was no moment of uncertainty and no difficult decision to make. Instead, she knew immediately that she didn’t want to be pregnant. Her focus turned to getting the care she needed as quickly as possible.

Here, she talks about certainty, relief, the realities of having a medical abortion, and why the experience was so different from the narratives as a millennial woman she’d grown up seeing in popular culture.

What It Feels Like To Get A Medical Abortion

As told to Mischa Smith

My period is literal clockwork. I was about 12 hours late, and I immediately thought, fuck. I just knew. I ran out, bought a test, took it, and it was positive. And I immediately thought, no. This is not something I want to see.

There was no joy in seeing that result. There wasn’t a question. There wasn’t a discussion I had to have with myself. I was almost physically rejecting it. Like, no, this is not correct.

The first person I told was my partner. He was actually the one who had suggested taking a test because it’s so unusual for me to be late. I went downstairs and told him, and I think I looked so upset and horrified that he was just like, “Right. What shall we do? How do we sort this, and what can I do to help?” Obviously, in reality, there’s little somebody else can do to help, but it was nice that he asked.

Within minutes, I found MSI and called them. I remember thinking beforehand, “How do I even start this conversation?” Then I remembered the line from Sex and the City where Miranda calls her doctor and says, “Hi, I’m pregnant, and I need not to be.” I’m pretty sure I stole Miranda’s exact line.

The woman on the phone was incredibly kind. She told me I’d called the right place, took a few details and arranged for a midwife to call me back. I remember feeling reassured almost immediately. She was just very calm and very clear. She told me not to worry, that I’d done the right thing by calling and explained what would happen next.

What surprised me was how completely consuming it became. I was looking at the next couple of weeks in my calendar and thinking, I can’t do any of this while I know I’m pregnant. None of it would actually have changed. They were meetings, dinners with friends, completely normal life things. But my brain couldn’t think about anything else. I’ve since learned that a lot of women experience that feeling.

Even though abortion is straightforward healthcare and waiting times in the UK are thankfully quite short, when you know you don’t want to be pregnant, it becomes all-consuming. You just want it resolved.

My entire process took about five days from finding out to having the abortion. Which is nothing. It was incredibly quick. But those five days felt so long. All I could think was: I want this to be over. I wasn’t really spending time thinking about fears. I was counting down the hours. The difficult questions actually came afterwards.

Once it was over, I could finally breathe again. And then I started wondering why my reaction had been so immediate. Why did pregnancy feel so catastrophic to me? Why was my experience so different from all those pregnancy announcement videos we see online? You know the ones where somebody sees a positive test and bursts into tears of happiness while their partner cries beside them.

When I saw a positive pregnancy test, I wanted to call an abortion clinic immediately. So then I found myself asking questions about what that meant. Did it mean I don’t want children right now? Did it mean I don’t want children ever? I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but those were the conversations I had afterwards.

One thing I do wish somebody had prepared me for was the pain. This is a difficult thing to talk about because abortion is so politicised, and I don’t want my experience to be used by people who are trying to take reproductive rights away from women. But for me, having a medical abortion was unbelievably painful. The closest description I can give is that I entered another universe of pain.

I know that isn’t everybody’s experience. Some women have cramps and carry on with their day, but it was mine. The second medication causes your uterus to contract; for me, those contractions were intense.

I blacked out for around 90 minutes. I remember opening my eyes when it was dark outside and feeling completely lost. I didn’t know where I was or what time it was. My partner told me that around two hours had passed.

What I find difficult is that women don’t always feel able to talk honestly about experiences like that. There’s this fear that if we talk about the pain, people will use it against us. But equally, women deserve to know what they might experience; it’s complicated.

The strange thing is that despite all of that, I never regretted my decision. Not for a second. I didn’t spend the process wondering whether I was doing the right thing. I knew I was. And I know that can sound shocking to some people because we’re often told that abortion should be accompanied by enormous guilt or regret, but that simply wasn’t my experience. And it isn’t the experience of a lot of women.

The morning after, I woke up feeling exhausted but relieved. Really relieved. I just felt grateful that I could move on with my life again. That I could go on with my week, my month, my plans. And that’s probably the thing I wish people understood better about abortion.

A lot of us grow up imagining that we’ll be judged, that we’ll be lectured, that we’ll walk into some awful clinic and be made to feel like we’ve done something wrong. That wasn’t my experience at all. I was treated with kindness, respect and understanding from beginning to end. Nobody asked me to justify myself, nobody demanded a reason, nobody tried to make me feel guilty. The people caring for me simply wanted to make sure I was OK.

And after everything I’d worried about, that was probably the biggest surprise of all.

If you’re considering an abortion, get in touch with MSI Reproductive Choices UK to find out about your options and access NHS-funded abortion care.

It’s not every day you get to stay in one of the leading hotels of the world.

It’s even harder to find a truly unique and unforgettable hotel in New York. Sure, the city that never sleeps has plenty to offer, but many face the same pitfalls: a focus on style over substance, tiny yet expensive box rooms, and generic, inauthentic luxury.

Head to the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 28th Street, though, and nestled unnassumingly between the Flatiron District, Chelsea and Midtown, you’ll find The Fifth Avenue Hotel - which, despite only opening in October 2023, has received near-instant critical acclaim.

Stepping into the lobby on a sweltering hot day in April, it’s easy to see why. While the outside of the hotel appears modest and unassuming, don’t be fooled by the facade. Because inside - well, they’ve brought together some of the most creative minds in design, art, gastronomy and hospitality to create a truly unique and unforgettable location.

Built around a Gilded Age mansion owned by banker and socialite Charlotte Goodridge in the mid-1800s, the hotel combines a restored Beaux-Arts building with a modern glass tower, creating a striking merge of old and new in the heart of Manhattan.

No two rooms are exactly alike, but each is a riotous nod to maximalism, the complete opposite of the minimalist luxury that’s dominated for the last few years. Expect loud wallpaper, velvet furnishings, Murano glass chandeliers, antique cabinets, and hundreds of curated art pieces throughout the 24-storey hotel.

It’s near faultless; original, effortlessly stylish, and unpretentiously luxurious. Plus, for any travellers, the location is hard to beat: quiet enough to get some quality shut eye but within walking distance of all of the major attractions (including the Sky Line, Grand Central and Times Square). It’s situated in the buzzing heart of the city; a perfect balance of creative energy, history, and central location.

Keen to read my full review and stay at New York’s most exciting new opening yourself? Keep scrolling, because spoiler: I’m already plotting my next trip.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel Review: “Faultless, iconic New York charm”

The vibes

Instantly welcoming, polished, and warm, wander into The Fifth Avenue Hotel lobby and you’re met with floor-to-ceiling antique mirrors, polished marble floors and plush velvet sofas to sink into. You could while away hours flicking through the coffee table books on offer or perusing their “cabinets of curiosities” - two towering vintage oak cases packed to the brim with crystals.

The first thing we notice, though, is how good it smells - a delicious mix of polished wood, antique books, and floral citrus. I’m still yet to find out what the signature scent is, but I can still smell it - intimate, opulent, and quietly theatrical, which tells me everything I need to know about the hotel before we’ve even been shown to our room.

Walls are an eclectic mix of coral, buttercup yellow, and green, making whichever area of the hotel you’re in mood-boosting, joyous, and unique (the elevator lobbies are even wrapped in ruched rose-coloured silk, pleated by Parisian craftsmen). Priceless paintings sit alongside treasures from flea markets and far-flung travels; it’s whimsy made elevated, all seen through interior designer Martin Brudnizki’s lens and perfectly curated to never once feel gaudy or kitsch.

As founder Alex Ohebshalom says, “The Fifth is the realisation of many years of dreaming and discovery. We are creating a one-of-a-kind experience; it’s a whimsical, transformational escape in the heart of Manhattan. Our creative spirit will allow us to elevate the guest experience, introducing a new level of service designed to inspire and delight.”

The rooms

There are 149 guestrooms and suites to choose from, all of which are unique in design and interior. Brudnizki’s passion for individuality results in a thoughtfully curated, deeply residential atmosphere that blurs the line between hotel and home - I felt more like I was staying in a wealthy collector's private residence than a hotel.

We stayed in a Mansion Suite, and our room is decadently spacious - the biggest hotel room I’ve ever stayed at in New York before. Our double room has a well-sized lounge area, complete with sofa, mini bar, pantry and dining table, bathroom with bathtub, bathroom, and shower room, and bedroom area, complete with king-sized bed, plush Egyptian cotton bedding, and twinkling star-shaped ceiling lights. As with everything in the hotel, the attention to detail is second to none and the guest experience, unrivalled: nightly notes from the turn-down staff, sweet treats from the kitchen staff, and daily pantry restocks of high-end snacks, low-sugar soda options, and sparkling water.

If you’re looking for something more special, they’ve also recently launched a collection of new suites that feature stone terraces and breathtaking views of the Empire State Building and Manhattan skyline.

The food

You know you’re in for a treat when the bar and restaurant are renowned in their own right, with both packed during our stay. Café Carmellini, the hotel’s main restaurant, is the brainchild of acclaimed and award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini and seems to attract locals as much as tourists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the interiors are breathtaking: two sculptural trees dominate the space, with mood-lit, cosy booths setting the tone for the evening. We’re sat right next to the open-plan kitchen, so happily while away our evening with a glass of champagne, watching the chefs at work.

With a menu packed full of Italian, French and classic New York dishes, our standout highlights include the Crab Mille-Feuille, Duck Duck Tortellini, and Scallops Cardoz. As a carb-lover, the pre-entrée bread course is also spectacular: think sky-high, crisp grissini breadsticks, warm, freshly baked breads, cultured butter, olives, and the best quality olive oil.

We can’t resist dessert, and I’m so glad we didn’t - the olive oil & Sorrento lemon coppa is one of the best I’ve ever eaten: a bright, light, and delicate lemon-soaked sponge layered with silky vanilla cream, lemon sauce and chopped pistachios.

Come breakfast, you can order from the à la carte menu, which offers an array of elevated classics, from eggs to yoghurt parfait. If you’re feeling indulgent, don’t miss the fluffy-as-anything buttermilk pancakes with a mouthwateringly sharp lemon-berry compote or the croissant trolley, stacked with made-in-house daily specials.

For a nightcap, don’t skip a dirty martini at The Portrait Bar, an intimate, firelit space offering signature classics and playful classics from Bar Director Darryl Chan.

The facilities

While the facilities at The Fifth are fairly minimal - there’s a small 24-hour gym, and no sauna or spa on site - I wouldn’t expect anything else for such a central NY location. Make the most of cardio machines and weights at their in-house fitness space, or if you’d rather enjoy a specific class, ask for a complimentary day pass to Life Time Fitness, located at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue. There you can enjoy several floors of fitness equipment, saltwater lap pools, and eucalyptus steam rooms.

The team ensure you’re well looked after, with a dedicated porter and concierge on hand to help you with route plans and reservations. They also offer complimentary dry cleaning, pressing of up to three items per guest, and overnight shoeshine.

Up to two dogs per room can stay for an additional cost of $250.

The need to knows

Stay at The Fifth Avenue Hotel from around £350 a night, depending on the season and room type. 1 West 28th Street, New York, NY 10001, thefifthavenuehotel.com.

This summer will see a rise in staycations thanks to the jet fuel crisis, which is leading to cancelled flights and soaring costs. The BBC has reported that booking platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com are already seeing a spike in UK travel plans, with many deciding to swap flights for a Land Rover Discovery-worthy road trip instead. If the pandemic taught us anything when it comes to travel, it’s that you don’t need to go far for a memorable holiday. Whether you are looking to explore untouched beaches, reach an all-time high daily step count or simply have some time away from your emails, below is a guide to some of the best places to stay and explore this summer.

Farm Stays

While Soho Farmhouse has had city types donning wellies and taking a turn through stables for several years, a more authentic agritourism concept is currently flourishing. “There’s something about being properly surrounded by nature that feels increasingly precious,” says Aimee Hodgkin, curation and hotels director at Mr and Mrs Smith, highlighting Louma in Dorset as a key property. “What makes it special is how immersive it feels. Life here unfolds around the practical realities of the farm—animals moving through the day, fires tended, meals prepared and shared—with time shaped by the land rather than a timetable.”

Fowlescombe in Devon opened in May 2025 and is the blueprint for how luxury farm stays should look—it is a working farm where guests are encouraged to learn about the land, whether that’s picking vegetables, feeding livestock or a guided tour of the mechanisms of this sustainable farm. Influencer Lucy Williams, who has impeccable taste when it comes to hotels, hosted a stay here for the launch of her With Nothing Underneath collection, where guests collected eggs and enjoyed the farm-to-table offering. As a working farm, this is much more than a gimmick for TikTok, as everything is a genuine celebration of local biodiversity—even the mattresses are made using wool from Fowlescombe sheep.

The Restairies at Paradise Farm in Suffolk is another leader in this category, as Gem Boner (formerly of Soho House) and her husband Thom, opened a five-bed retreat in a 16th-century farm. “Farm stays are special because they reconnect you to all the things modern life quietly steals from you—space, nature, slow mornings, proper food, muddy boots, fresh eggs, fires, stars, and conversations that aren’t interrupted by inboxes,” says Boner. “We wanted to create more than a beautiful place to stay. We wanted to build an off switch. Also, frankly, life is better when there are alpacas involved.” We can’t argue with that.

For something more intimate, the cottage Homestead in the North York Moors is a family-run business with an attached restaurant where the menu is based around the flourishing kitchen garden.

What to Pack:

Surf and Turf

Cornwall is hardly a groundbreaking staycation idea; however, there’s been a wave of London influencers and editors moving here for the surf-filled lifestyle. Think coastal walks, seafood platters and salty hair. “Cornwall is super special all year round,” says Lindsey Holland, a fashion influencer who runs a surf retreat company, Marnie Rays. “The best waves tend to be in the winter, but spring and summer are also putting on a show at the moment! I love surfing at Godrevy and Gwithain—the beach cafe at Godrevy is amazing and there’s also an incredible coastal path walk that starts there too.” While she adds if you’re heading to the north coast, you need to visit Gorse Bakery for a bacon butty. If you don’t want to do any organising, the Marnie Rays retreats are ideal for those learning to surf.

“Obviously Newquay is Cornwall’s surfing hotspot, with great surf schools and some of the best beaches for all levels, from Watergate Bay to Fistral beach,” says Emily Dawes, a fashion editor who lives in Cornwall. “But if you want to experience surf culture like a local, it’s worth heading (way) out west to the wild and beautiful Sennen Cove (next door to Land’s End), which has a legendary surf school, miles of white sand and clear blue Caribbean-like seas. For post-surf fuel, the Sennen Surf Lodge is a chic beach bar with barefoot vibes, a killer sunset and delicious food and drinks. Don’t miss their Pizza Roja pop-up for the best pizza in Cornwall (or maybe even the UK).” For days when you want to avoid the crowd, she recommends going to Gwynver Beach which is an “off-the-beaten-track surfer’s paradise.” For heading West, Dawes recommends you stay at Farraway House in Sennen or at Pembrooke Lodge or Little Pembrooke, the Cornish house which was thoughtfully renovated by fashion PR Bianca Fincham and is far more elevated than your typical rental.

What to Pack:

Saltburn Cosplay

Stately homes and grand estates will always be an indulgent option for a UK staycation, whether you’re pretending you’re the lady of a manor house or reign over a castle in the Highlands. Emerald Fennell, eat your heart out. “There are certain houses that come into their own in summer, and Cowley Manor is very much one of them,” notes Hodgkin. “Set deep within the Cotswolds, it has the quiet confidence of a grand estate that knows its place in the landscape—elegant without being imposing, and best enjoyed slowly. What draws me back, time and again, is the sense of space and ease. The gardens—originally laid out by Capability Brown—unfold with a natural rhythm, dense woodland giving way to open lawns, water moving gently through the grounds.” British heritage brand Barbour just hosted a trip at Aldourie Castle in Loch Ness, which is an exclusive-use house for those wanting to have something truly luxurious. Send your group chat a photograph of the formal dining room as your sales pitch.

What to Pack:

A Londoner's London

If you’ve done the Tower of London and don’t want to go anywhere near the M&M store, why not Lime bike your way around the city like a Londoner, sticking to neighbourhood haunts only. No Pret allowed. “There are London hotels made for sightseeing — and then there are those that feel entirely of the city,” says Hodgkin. “The Broadwick sits squarely in the latter camp. Set on a quietly storied street in Soho, it has the relaxed confidence of a place designed for people who already understand London’s rhythms. From here, the capital is best explored instinctively: hopping on a Lime bike, slipping down side streets, cutting between favourite restaurants, record shops and late‑night haunts rather than following a map.” Plus this summer, El Fenn has a rooftop residency at the hotel. Add onto your itinerary lunch at Cafe Cecilia (where Jonathan Saunders recently hosted industry friends to celebrate his creative directorship for & Other Stories) and a stroll of Broadway Market (Rites is excellent for second-hand designer finds on this street) and a visit to the recently opened V&A East, which has an exhibition ‘Music Is Black’ and quite possibly the best museum eatery in the city, Café Jikoni.

Right now, Marie Claire has some exclusive discounts on hotel booking sites such as 8% on select hotels at Hotels.com and Expedia.com—well worth checking out for more options in the UK and beyond.

What to Pack:

Coastal Path

When visiting the coast this year, why not branch out beyond Margate. Hannah Almassi, MD of Marie Claire and Who What Wear, has seen first-hand the rise in visitors to the South Downs. "When I moved to Eastbourne four years ago, it felt like a little untouched pocket of calm, palm trees and retirement properties. Lately, there's been a noticeable increase in people hiking across the South Downs and the town and walking paths have become full of well-dressed Gen Z groups—and I’m not mad about it! It feels like it’s experiencing a renaissance many years after its original Victorian seaside town boom.” As for what to do when you get there, Almassi recommends you visit the Towner Gallery, stay at the Port Hotel and book a table at Foundry for brunch and have a romantic dinner at Skylark. And because what is a UK staycation without a walk to a pub, she recommends you take a small hike via Butts Brow to the Eight Bells in Jevington. If you’re driving, it’s always worth detouring via Charleston House, the magical home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

There is also a rise in properties that combine the coast with countryside, such as Fowlescombe in Devon. Updown Farmhouse near Deal is another hotel that masters this concept, with a charming main country house, quaint cottages on site and a serene terrace restaurant, where you can eat breakfast in the cottage-style garden. It’s one of the most relaxing hotel breakfasts I’ve ever had and is the perfect place to unwind after a day navigating crowds at the beach.

What to Pack:

A Great British Menu

Dining in the countryside can have a reputation for mediocre pub grub, however one of the most exciting restaurants in the UK is nestled in a seemingly sleepy corner of Somerset. Bruton might be a small village, but people plan holidays around a dinner reservation at Osip, where chef Merlin Labron-Johnson puts an artistic spin on seasonal local produce and was awarded a Michelin star in 2021. There are four rooms for those who want the full Osip experience, while The Newt is just down the road and is without a doubt the best place I’ve ever stayed in the UK. Opened by Babylonstoren, everything about the property is magical, from the Alice in Wonderland-style gardens to the hearty breakfasts to the outdoor hot tub. The restaurants are a celebration of British produce, with cider made from apple trees on site and vegetables plucked from the sprawling estate. Holm is another new addition to the Somerset line-up, and Hodgkin notes that here “the excitement comes from immediacy—open‑fire cooking, exceptional ingredients and a closeness to the land that makes each meal feel elemental, tactile and completely absorbing.”

The Lake District is also a foodie destination and hub for fine dining: 13 Cumbrian restaurants featured in the 2026 Michelin guide. The gothic country house Forest Side has one of the most in-demand restaurants, with an eight-course tasting menu that uses lots of ingredients from the expansive kitchen garden and local Cumbrian farmers.

If you are in the mood for a very fancy pub experience, then head to The Three Horsehoes in Batcombe, Somerset. With the menu crafted by chef, caterer and writer Margot Henderson OBE and Head Chef Nye Smith, this is the perfect, low-key destination for delicious food with friends or family and to take in the charming sights at nearby Petworth.

What to Pack: