As the Hodge review shows, my experience was not an isolated case – and my frustrations have been shared by operators across the sector. Now, this should not be used as an excuse to simply criticise the Arts Council or the people working within it. Public bodies operate under real pressure, and accountability for public money matters. The issue is not whether scrutiny exists, but whether the way it is applied is proportionate, transparent and fair.

A recent study discovered 50 is the age when people ‘no longer feel young’ – but John Thomson says simple healthy tweaks can help you embrace ageing positively

The top 25 telltale signs you’re getting older include sitting down to pull your socks on, noticing your vintage wardrobe making a comeback – and muttering ‘who?’ when watching the BRIT Awards. Other key indicators according to research include preferring a quiet pint over a raucous night out, becoming indifferent to the latest fashion trends, and suffering from a persistent ache.

Commissioned by American Pistachio Growers, the study of 5,000 people aged over 40 revealed 50 was the age when people began to feel they were ‘no longer young’, but 38% said being old these days is actually when you reach your 80s rather than your 50s or 60s.

John Thomson, who partnered with American Pistachio Growers to inspire middle-aged Britons to view ageing in a positive light, said: “Getting older is inevitable, but you can still live life to the full.

“It’s about embracing experience, having a laugh about the realities of ageing and making small changes that actually make a difference.”, reports the Mirror.

“You don’t need to overhaul your life – just make some healthy tweaks to your daily routine.”

Indeed, 36% of respondents have adopted healthier habits in an attempt to stay youthful, including taking vitamins or supplements, choosing nutritious snacks (19%), and consuming more protein (17%).

Maintaining a nutritious diet has emerged as a clear priority, with 60% of men and 61% of women saying they’ve become more health-conscious. Among the ageing population, the primary concerns were avoiding illness (59%), maintaining physical activity (58%), and preserving their independence (47%).

TV nutritionist Rob Hobson, who has partnered with American Pistachio Growers to promote the nut as a simple, everyday food that can support healthy ageing, stated: “Getting older isn’t about slowing down, it’s about making smarter choices.”

“Simple habits like eating nutrient-rich snacks, staying active and prioritising sleep can help you feel youthful for longer,” Rob added. “Age is just a number, but how you fuel your body makes all the difference.”

Suzanne Devereaux–McKinstrie, spokesperson for the non-profit organisation, added: “Getting older isn’t just about limitations, it’s about opportunities.

“It’s the perfect time to explore new hobbies, prioritise wellbeing and celebrate the confidence that comes with experience.

“A big part of that is focusing on diet. Unshelling a classic snack such as an American pistachio can help you stay strong and vibrant so you can say yes to life’s opportunities.”

THE TOP 25 SIGNS YOU’RE GETTING OLDER:

1. Talking about aches and pains with friends
2. Groaning when bending down
3. Preferring quiet venues to noisy ones
4. Preferring a quiet drink over a night out
5. Enjoying an early night
6. Not caring about the latest fashion trends
7. Thinking that new music isn’t as good as it used to be
8. A recurring ache that doesn’t disappear
9. Using phrases like ‘back in my day’ or ‘remember when….?’
10. Sitting down to put socks on
11. Caring less about how you look
12. Taking shoes off as soon as you get inside – slippers have become a necessity!
13. Noticing something you wore in your youth is now back in fashion
14. Starting conversations with ‘Do you remember when…?’
15. Reading menus at arm’s length
16. Talking to yourself
17. Moaning about politics
18. Feeling more confident/self-assured
19. Getting up at 6am naturally
20. First “Who?” when watching the Brit Awards
21. Looking forward to gardening
22. Feeling confounded by AI
23. Listening to the radio or podcasts instead of club music
24. Getting excited about new home appliances
25. Checking the weather forecast hourly

Walking through the doors of London’s Charles Dickens Museum is always a special moment. This handsome, tall London townhouse – middle class by Victorian standards but practically palatial to visitors today – was the crucible in which a young, ascending Charles Dickens wrote himself into international superstardom.

It is here that The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby spilled from his pen. And it is here, as the new exhibition Extra/Ordinary Women compellingly demonstrates, that Dickens lived in constant proximity to the intelligent and talented women who shaped his imagination, his domestic life and his enduring theatricality.

The Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition offers insights to many of these women. His wife, Catherine Dickens, who also wrote within these walls. His sister, Mary Hogarth, whose sudden death here devastated him. His sister-in-law, housekeeper and adviser Georgina Hogarth, who remained his rock for the rest of his life.

Victorian culture, which was suspicious of women who moved in theatrical, artistic or public spheres, left deep traces on Dickens’s portrayals of women. In his writing, Dickens either sanitised his female characters, like the “saintly” Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) or the “innocent” Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist (1838); or he reformed them, like the “fallen” women, Martha Endell and Little Em’ly in David Copperfield (1850). He gave these characters emotional clarity and symbolic weight that belies the more complex real-world inspirations.

The exhibition shows that Mary Hogarth, for instance, is scattered through Dickens’s fiction in the form of saintly young women whose deaths confer moral meaning. Dickens’s close friend Angela Burdett‑Coutts – a philanthropist and powerful progressive – was softened into Agnes Wickfield, a gentle moral influence in David Copperfield.

Dickens the performer

Looking around the exhibition, I found myself thinking about performance. Not just the performances of the women around him, but Dickens’s own lifelong, desperate theatricality.

It has always seemed obvious to me, as a performer of Dickens’s work, that he wrote with an actor’s mind. My own performed reading of A Christmas Carol taught me that his prose demands embodiment: the regretful cadences of Scrooge’s former fiancée Belle, the anguish of Bob Cratchit, the vocal changes that illustrate the transformative journey of Scrooge himself. These characters were not merely written to be read, they were written to be heard.

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The deputy director of the museum, Emma Harper, informed me that while writing, Dickens would break from his desk to perform the characters he was developing in the mirror. He also performed domestic dramas for his children, founded amateur dramatic troupes and he threw himself into public readings so intensely that doctors monitored his pulse before and after each performance. He made himself physically ill with the sheer force of his acting. This is not a writer who happened also to perform. This is a performer who happened also to write.

And the women around him were, in many ways, part of that theatrical and artistic world. His daughters are good examples. Mamie Dickens loved performing, and Katey Perugini, an artist of real talent, appears in the exhibition through in a newly displayed painting that mimics her own painting style. The exhibition also reminds us that Ellen Ternan – Dickens’s longtime mistress – came from a theatrical family.

All of this becomes shockingly vivid with the exhibition’s centrepiece: the newly revealed, previously unpublished letter to the French opera singer Pauline Viardot. It is, in many ways, a perfect artefact, because it shows Dickens in full, contradictory colour.

Here is the great novelist, in Paris for his triumphant theatrical readings, writing with unabashed admiration to a woman whose artistry moved him to tears. But here is also Dickens the flirt – offering her an invitation to dine and promising tickets to his next reading.

Dickens wrote the letter while en route to see his mistress, Ternan, in Geneva. “I am going to Geneva tomorrow night, but will be back in seven days,” he says breezily, attempting to schedule dinner with Viardot for the following week.

The exhibition also includes a letter from Viardot to Dickens’s biographer, where she recalls Dickens “raining tears” during her performance of Orphée. And it reveals something about Dickens that the exhibition continually circles back to: he existed in a self-made world of performance, admiration, emotional excess and artistic intoxication. He was drawn to women who were brilliant, expressive and creative, because they belonged to that same world of heightened feeling and dramatic possibility.

This is what makes Extra/Ordinary Women so compelling: it reframes Dickens not only through the women he knew, but through the theatrical culture they collectively inhabited. Stepping outside, I felt his familiar voice linger, now joined by the sense that the women behind the scenes were finally stepping into the light – something the dramatist in Dickens might have appreciated.

Extra/Ordinary Women is at the Charles Dickens Museum in London until September 6

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North Yorkshire Council bosses have said they are working to address the high rates of vacant shop premises in Scarborough and Malton.

​The town centre vacancy rate in Scarborough is almost two and a half times that of Whitby and York, recently published data reveals.

​Scarborough has the highest town centre vacancy rate in the county at 18.6 per cent, followed by Malton at 17.1 per cent, and Ripon at 12.8 per cent, while Whitby has a vacancy rate of just 7.6 per cent.

​The national high street vacancy rate across the UK stood at 13.8 per cent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, Savills reported.

​Cllr Mark Crane, executive member for open to business, said: “It’s something we can do more on and we’d like to work with communities and businesses to bring some of those shops back into use.”

​A council performance report for the third quarter states that “vacancy rates are still below the national average” and that the data for Scarborough is “skewed due to the Brunswick Centre redevelopment, and this obviously impacts the initial optics of the data return”.

​The report states that “by removing the Brunswick Centre from the calculations, [the rate for] Scarborough, whilst still high, would fall from 18.6 per cent to 15.8 per cent vacant”.

​The shop vacancy rate for York city centre was 7.5 per cent as of last November – the lowest level recorded since July 2023 – according to the York Business Improvement District.

​Cllr Crane said: “We are working to look at vacancy rates in Scarborough and, surprisingly, in Scarborough and Malton, they are in line with national averages, though that average is still higher than we’d like it to be

​“We’re hoping the Brunswick will be redeveloped and that will be a significant boost to the high street once it’s completed.”

​The former Brunswick Centre, renamed Square One, is being redeveloped into an Odeon multiplex cinema by the Scarborough Group.

​Cllr Crane said the council was also looking at whether it could “get hold of some property and make that available to people who want to start up a business, it’s something we’re looking at, and would like to do.”

​“But we own no shops in the town and we don’t set the rates or the rents,” he added.

​“Members should understand that going forward, high streets will not be what we have known growing up. We have seen massive increases in the likes of Amazon, and town centres are increasingly becoming places of cafés and places for people to meet.”

​At a public meeting of the United Scarborough residents’ group on Monday (February 16) concerns were raised about the high number of empty town centre businesses.

​Several residents said that while large chains were moving out of town centres, business rates were often “far too expensive for independent local businesses”, and also noted the “excessive number of e-cigarette and gambling shops”.

​Embracing a café culture was supported by many of those in attendance, with one resident noting that “we have a better variety of cafés than York”.

​The NYC performance report said: “All towns had a lower vacancy rate than the Great Britain average, except Scarborough and Malton – this was the case for the previous KPI return.

​“Vacancy in most town centres has either increased marginally or remained the same in recent months.

​“The high street alone in Scarborough, without the Brunswick, has seen a fall in vacancy rates, from 18.9 per cent in 2024 to 15.8 per cent in 2025.

​“This shows progress in the right direction, and we know where the issues are and are proactively addressing them.”

​

Huntingdonshire District Council has delayed making a decision on plans to build a “substantial industrial and logistics” development on the edge of Huntingdon.

The wait continues to see whether controversial plans to build a “substantial industrial and logistics” development can go ahead, after councillors agreed to delay making a decision. The plans for the Hinchingbrooke Logistics Park were due to be considered by councillors at a Huntingdonshire District Council meeting on Monday (February 16).

However, planning officers asked to defer consideration of the application after the developer had agreed to liaise further with the highway authority, to “secure further clarity” on the potential highway impacts of the development.

Officers said once this had taken place the application would be brought back for councillors to consider at a future meeting. Councillors unanimously agreed to this proposal.

The new industrial and logistics development is proposed to be built at Brookfield Farm, to the northwest of Huntingdon, next to the A1307 and A141. Developer Newlands Property Developments (Huntingdon) Ltd has said it wants to create up to 205,000sqm of general industrial and storage and distribution space, as well as a bus depot, or similar transport-related use.

The plans said the maximum building heights would range from 18.5m to 24m, which the developer said “reflect market demand” and accommodate modern standards for storage and distribution facilities. The developer also said these heights responded to the “site levels and surrounding landscape context”.

The plans also set out that “over 50 per cent” of the site would be used for “green and blue infrastructure”. A new access road to the proposed logistics park is proposed to be created off the A141.

The developer has said it hopes to start work on the site in mid to late 2026, with the aim of the first occupation of the new buildings in 2028 and the last building to be occupied in 2033.

In planning documents, the developer said there is a “clear, current and identified need” for facilities like this in the district. They said: “There is currently a very limited provision of existing large-scale quality units to meet modern occupier needs in the area, presenting the case for immediate release of additional land.

“The proposed development is being brought forward specifically to address significant market demand for industrial and logistics space within Huntingdonshire, as there is no capacity left in the existing allocations for such growth.

“The delivery of 205,000sqm of modern employment floorspace represents a major new capital investment in the area, which will help to enhance the profile of Hinchingbrooke and will address underlying issues by raising the overall level of access to skills, training and employment, as well as boosting economic activity and expenditure in the area.”

Concerns raised about size of the proposed development

The plans have faced backlash with 51 formal objections against the project lodged with the district council by members of the public. Many objectors raised concerns about potential traffic impacts, with one arguing that adding more lorries to the roads in the area would “cause unprecedented gridlock”.

Another objector said: “With a major hospital, a large secondary school, and the police headquarters already situated in close proximity, I would think common sense would urge developers to look to other less built up locations, as long queues and wait times affect both us and them.”

Concerns were also raised about the heights of the proposed buildings. One objector said: “The proposals are just not suitable for this location. It is situated right beside a large residential estate and the proposed height of these warehouses is far too tall so close to residential houses.

“The look of so many warehouses of this size as you approach Huntingdon will really be an eyesore on the landscape.”

However, some support has been shared with one person saying they hoped the district council would approve the project to help create new jobs in the area.

Before proposing the delay, planning officers had recommended that the application should be approved, subject to conditions and the completion of a legal agreement. They also recommended that if the legal agreement was not completed then the application should be refused.

For more planning notices in your area visit publicnoticeportal.uk .