From a secret door concealed in the British Museum’s oak-panelled Enlightenment Gallery, staff or VIPs occasionally appear as if out of thin air, a Harry Potter moment spooking visitors engrossed in this haven of classical antiquities. It’s typical of Hew Locke’s quietly subversive approach that he begins his remarkable exhibition what have we here? with carnivalesque fabric and papier-mâché figures stepping out through this door, their brilliant colours and ornamental costumes disrupting the monochrome orderly space. Gaze up and more Locke revellers — gold masks, rainbow hats — surge into view, waving from the top of the colossal antique Piranesi Vase.

What have we here? Such gaudy characters originally turned up in Locke’s 2022 installation “The Procession” at Tate Britain. This new crop, called “The Watchers”, are as exuberant in their densely layered allusive outfits, each different and absorbing: helmets or horned headdresses, appliquéd with colonial share certificates or skulls, sprouting flowers or feathers. Led by a child bearing an outsize replica of an East-West Africa war medal, they are joyous emblems of individuality and survival first, history puzzles second.

Invited to interrogate the British Museum collection, what it means, where it comes from, Locke — Scottish-born, Guyana-raised, and a British Museum visitor for 40 years — has paired dramatically contrasting installations: interventions in the long rectangular Enlightenment space, and a jumble of mostly unfamiliar African, Asian and South American artefacts colliding with his own quirky mixed-media sculptures in the semicircular Great Court gallery upstairs. Here some dozen further “Watchers” perch above the displays, warily surveying us and the strange, incongruous gathering of objects.

The immediate impression is of being at sea among a flotilla of Locke’s exquisite wooden and brass model boats. “Windward” is a gorgeous 18th-century galleon with images of pre-Columbian art on its sails. “Armada”, based on the USS Constitution, a civil war vessel, is decked with African masks and cut-out gunmen. “Wine Dark Sea Boat BB” is a ghost ship, draped with a mesh of translucent fabric embroidered with warriors, skeletons, a sunburst Roman god. For Locke, “boats symbolise the journey from life to death or are containers of the soul”. Myth holds sway with politics.

Alongside the boats sound the bells: two dozen bronze forms, some anthropomorphic or carved as animal heads, others geometric abstractions, cast across a thousand years — 900-1900 — in Nigeria. They are anthems to the past, summoning ancestors; also warnings, calls to action.

Locke’s way is to question through visual enchantment. Beauty glints everywhere: bright, eerie Caribbean necklaces made from green beetles and stuffed hummingbirds; an Indian ruby and emerald tiger’s head from Tipu Sultan’s throne; a heart-shaped Yotoco gold breast plate, embossed with a human face, earrings, nose ornaments, 200BC-1200, from Colombia.

Locke’s glittery faux-memorabilia are comic intruders. In “Souvenir 20”, his flamboyant bust of Queen Victoria, synthetic braids from a Brixton hair shop explode out of the brass filigree of imperial regalia, medals, jewels, snakes, swamping the face — the freight of the past. “She was the head of an empire,” runs the caption, “she’s not innocent.”

So from the dazzle emerge dark or complex stories connecting sovereignty, trade, conflict, the treasures that end up in museums. An engraved Akan drum with antelope skin crossed the Atlantic from Ghana to Virginia, used en route to force enslaved people to exercise by “dancing”. Intensely vital 13th century Taino sculptures “Boinayel the Rainman” and a birdman spirit figure, rare tropical hardwood survivors of Caribbean heat, “are Jamaica’s Elgin Marbles, symbol of collective memory”. A 15th-century copper-gold “Buddha from Dolpo” was stolen from a Tibet monastery by British soldiers in 1904. Much here is “raw loot”, Locke concludes.

Museums categorise by chronology and geography. Locke’s collage across time and place distils a bigger picture: the entire collection a story of the flow of goods, ideas, people, multicultural avant la lettre, beneficiary and witness of the empire’s grand reach. William Daniell’s prints of London’s West India and East India Docks, 1802-08, the river at its magnificent bend, quays neatly arranged, a calm view bathed in morning sun, beams across the gallery. It’s breathtakingly far from the site today, Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers. “These two docks encapsulate the whole Empire,” Locke says, but in a “sanitised” rationalist depiction: where, for instance, is the quay nicknamed “Blood Alley” because heavy sugar sacks carried along it tore the skin off workers’ backs?

A St Kitts sugar merchant brought the Piranesi Vase from Rome to England. Slavery is as indissolubly part of the museum collection as it is of British trading history. Locke chooses not to show broken black bodies, but there are centuries of documents — from Charles II’s slavery charter in 1663 to 19th-century post-abolition “compensation” claims, chilling for the brute legality of lives priced (£100 for “inferior field labourers”, £33 for those “aged, diseased or otherwise ineffective”). Borrowed from Merseyside’s Maritime Museum, William Jackson’s “A Liverpool Slave Ship” (1780) depicts a splendidly rigged vessel, sails billowing; only close-up comes the shock: ventilation holes below deck, small boats with enslaved people about to be thrown into the hold.

Occasionally I felt hectored by the captions. Why should Charles II be primarily remembered for having “kick-started something truly horrendous” — slavery is not Britain’s only history. Are Maria Sibylla Merian’s sparkling watercolours “Muscovy duck wrestling with a snake” and “Toucan eating a small bird” made in 1700s Surinam really metaphors for the violence of slavery? Merian was a zoologist explorer, concerned to document the natural world.

But mostly Locke allows objects to tell their own tangled tales. A bronze jug engraved with falcons, stag and lions, made for Richard II around 1390, became a precious trophy in the 18th-century Asante court — today’s Ghana — until British soldiers snatched it after the 1895 Anglo-Asante war. A Sanofa gold weight bird, turning to look back, was collected by Britain’s “Inspector of Mines in the Gold Coast” in the 1920s-30s; it illustrates a Ghanaian proverb that it’s never too late to look back and correct mistakes.

The British Museum knows it must examine the past in order to move forward. The Black Lives Matter movement, restitution claims, especially Unesco’s recommendation for the Parthenon Marbles’ return to Athens, the broader need to retell global history, will transform the museum in the next decade.  

Among Locke’s most gripping exhibits are replicas of great Nigerian art of the 1300s-1500s, cast by craftsmen in London in the 1940s: an Ife head sculpture, slightly elongated, with almond shaped eyes and lines of holes around the mouth, a triumph of stylised naturalism, and a Queen Mother Idia mask, “the African equivalent of the Mona Lisa”. Today, sophisticated reproductions and virtual art are shifting fetishes about authenticity. Locke’s show is installed in packing crates, suggesting precariousness. The tide of history that brought objects here is changing direction; not everything will stay forever.

Locke modestly calls what have we here? a trip “down a rabbit hole”. Actually it is an unruly off-track companion to the multicultural highway of the museum’s current Silk Roads exhibition: a wise balance of pleasure, protest and constructive hope.

To February 9, britishmuseum.org

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The Japanese yen has fallen sharply in recent weeks, hitting levels not seen since before a sudden surge in the summer that reverberated across global markets.

The yen last week sank below ¥150 to the US dollar, and has lost about 5 per cent over the past month as investors bet on a slower pace of interest rate rises from the Bank of Japan, at a time when the US Federal Reserve is also expected to cut rates more slowly than previously thought. Dovish comments from Japan’s new prime minister, who had previously been critical of the BoJ’s very loose monetary policy, have helped the currency resume a slide that carried it to 34-year lows earlier in the year.

The shift, investors said, has rekindled interest in the so-called yen carry trade, where investors borrow in yen to fund bets in higher-yielding currencies, a bet that blew up spectacularly in August after the BoJ raised borrowing costs.

Hiroki Hashimoto, a senior fund manager at Royal London Asset Management, said the recent weakness could “likely be explained by the recent widening interest rate differentials between the US and Japan”. He said the risk that the governing party loses its lower-house majority at a snap election this month “could have led to the less hawkish comments” from new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. 

This month, Ishiba said that the economy was “not in an environment” for further interest rate rises by the BoJ.

The central bank raised interest rates this year for the first time since 2007. Its benchmark rate now stands at 0.25 per cent, and traders in swaps markets are putting a low probability on a further increase at the BoJ’s two remaining meetings this year.

Recent declines in inflation have already raised questions over how much further Japanese borrowing costs are likely to rise, according to Tomasz Wieladek, chief European economist at asset manager T Rowe Price. “It will become increasingly difficult for the BoJ to keep hiking without risking undershooting the [2 per cent] inflation target,” he said.

Strong economic data in the US have also piled pressure on the yen by boosting the dollar.

Mark Dowding, chief investment officer at RBC BlueBay Asset Management for fixed income, said the “big move in yen has really come from a big move in US rate expectations”, coupled with investors pushing back the timing of expected rate cuts by the Bank of Japan. Yen carry trades had been making a “small comeback”, he added.

The currency’s renewed decline last week prompted Japan’s top currency official to warn that he was monitoring “speculative moves” in the market “with a high sense of urgency”. Japan spent a record ¥9.8tn ($65bn) from late April to May to boost the yen.

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Throughout history, leaders have sought to reshape the Middle East. From the heights of my village on Mount Lebanon, I can contemplate the passage of successive empires: the beautiful remnants of a Roman temple, a Byzantine church or a (much less charming) French military bunker, there to remind me of the region’s magnetic pull and the fleeting nature of power. 

The area stretching from the Taurus Mountains to Arabia Deserta and from Shatt al-Arab to the Mediterranean is strategically located, symbolically intense, socially diverse and, therefore, politically unstable. Imposing some kind of order on its vulnerable states and uncertain, volatile identities has been a temptation for conquerors and politicians alike. Cyrus of Persia and Alexander of Macedonia tried; so, more recently, did George W Bush. 

As the 20th-century colonial empires receded and the era of independence bloomed, a largely arbitrary political map took shape, distributing among the new (non-nation) states mountains and plains, plateaus and deserts stretched around the Jordan, Orontes and Euphrates rivers. These modern creatures proved to be fragile, permanently threatened by ethnic strife and political mismanagement. 

State-building is a desperately difficult endeavour in plural societies, never accomplished, always reversible and often viewed as a mere cover used by one group or another (Alawi, Tikriti, Maronite) to impose its will. It is rendered even more difficult when emerging regional hegemons keep attempting to transform these fragile units into obedient satellites. 

The Middle East has of late experienced many such episodes. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt used a fervent wave of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s to try to impose its primacy, only to be brutally contained in its ambition by Israel’s superior arms, conservative Arab regimes’ machinations and active western hostility. Khomeinist Iran, promoting Shia emancipation and political Islam, engaged in a similar project from the very first days of the revolution, leading among other effects to a horrible eight-year war with Iraq, and the sponsoring of non-state armed groups such as Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi and Palestine’s Hamas. Tehran tried to organise that network into an “Axis of Resistance”, which looked very much on the ascendant until recently. Not to be outdone, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tried its hand at reasserting Ankara’s influence, through subtle means as well as less subtle ones, over an area that had lived under Ottoman rule for some four centuries. 

The latest to be tempted is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He talks about his ambition and demonstrates, one tactical victory after another, that he means what he says. Following the brutal Hamas eruption of October 7 2023, he transformed Gaza into a huge field of ruins, displacing, bombing, starving and dehumanising its population at will. Then he moved north to put an end to the low-intensity warfare Hizbollah had engaged in against Israel in support of Gaza, and he did it alla grande. 

He bombed the port of Hodeidah in Yemen to punish the Houthis, who had considered it their duty to help Gaza by disrupting international navigation and firing missiles at Israel. He kept hitting arms depots and, of course, Iranian and pro-Iranian militants in dismembered, disabled Syria. At the time of writing, he is preparing to bomb Iran, a response to the missile attacks of October 1 that not only entails overflying a few neighbouring countries but also drawing the US into providing support.  

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has never let anybody forget that his most cherished aim remains the annexation of the occupied West Bank (and therefore the extinguishing of any possible Palestinian state), where assassinations of militants, destruction of whole villages and expropriations of land are, if anything, redoubled. His finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is busy altering the legal system of “Judea and Samaria” in anticipation of what many fear will be full-fledged annexation and possibly the transfer of some 3mn Palestinians east of the River Jordan; recently he has been ruminating publicly about a Jewish state that could extend from Iraq to Egypt. 

Militarily, Israel’s behaviour in Gaza has looked instinctive, chaotic, a retribution rather than a war (Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, has accused all the Strip’s inhabitants of being accomplices of Hamas and therefore legitimate targets). During the year that followed October 7, Israel kept bombing hospitals and schools, mosques and churches, villages and camps, without stating, without probably knowing, what to make of the “day after”.  

In Lebanon, its war has been, by contrast, a meticulously planned one: the most recent confrontation with Hizbollah in 2006 was inconclusive, and Israeli cognoscenti have believed since then that a new confrontation with Hassan Nasrallah’s fighters was inevitable. Hence the implementation of a war plan that has been refined down to its smallest details and regularly updated during the past 18 years. The result is a campaign that combines almost sci-fi intelligence with relentless bombing from a dominating air force and state-of-the-art drones, all areas where Israel has a clear superiority, not to say supremacy. By the end of last month, in the wake of Nasrallah’s assassination, Netanyahu was half declaring victory, hailing Israel’s success in “changing the balance of power in the region for years”.

Israel’s cascade of tactical successes on both fronts is indisputable — still more so following the news this week that its troops had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. Military experts are feverishly anticipating the next Israeli innovations. Many pro-Israeli observers are in a state of awe, if not euphoria, and all this has inevitably encouraged Netanyahu to start thinking of a new Middle East, re-engineered by Israeli arms and reflecting the new hegemon’s will. Israeli cartographers are regularly asked to equip their prime minister with maps to show from the UN lectern in which a flourishing and prosperous Middle East is on the verge of replacing a tenebrous, barbaric one. 

There indeed is no doubt that Israel has altered the balance of power, substantially crippling Hamas and Hizbollah, and putting itself in a position where its government thinks it can dictate the new regional configuration — helped as it is by its victorious army, by Arab passivity, American generosity (in weapons, dollars and diplomatic support) and a broken international system. How to remain rational, let alone modest, under such a constellation of stars? 

The question is not that of this substantial change’s reality but of its durability. If anything, past attempts to reshape the Middle East have generally ended in failure: Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin entered a deep depression when examining the results of his attempt in 1982, and Bush might be ruminating still over the US-led initiative, proclaimed in 2003, to export democracy across the region through regime change. 

Starting the re-engineering of the region with an incursion in Lebanon has, in particular, been a curse for Israeli politicians: Begin and his defence minister Ariel Sharon had to resign after their 1982 large-scale invasion of their northern neighbour, which had been justified in terms very similar to Netanyahu’s now. Shimon Peres was defeated in the elections that followed his “grapes of wrath” campaign of 1996 and Ehud Olmert’s misadventure there in 2006 combined with corruption cases to bring about his downfall. The repeated promise of a “new Middle East” after each of these invasions has naturally not seen daylight. 

Could the present Israeli prime minister do better? There are a few good reasons for scepticism. First, aspiring hegemons need to be ready to redraw borders and promote regime change. Some application of force is indispensable and that’s why only countries with substantial military resources (Saddam Hussein was under the illusion that he possessed them) engage in such endeavours. 

However successfully they are pursued, these goals usually exact a heavy price in human lives and material resources. Netanyahu has gone so far as to predict regime change in Iran “a lot sooner than people think”. But grabbing more land while imposing obedient leaders on a few neighbouring countries is probably a tall order; Israel can hardly do both at the same time, as each objective (and sometimes both) will be vigorously opposed by other players. 

The second reason for scepticism is that Arab regimes’ passivity during the past year is very much linked to the identity of Israel’s main targets, two pro-Iranian champions of political Islam. By destroying them, Israel is also hitting what most Arab regimes consider their most serious adversaries. If and when Israel’s activism goes beyond this fortuitous convergence of interests, Arab passivity could suddenly disappear. Attempts to transfer Palestinians into neighbouring countries would in particular be opposed as a major source of political instability. Israeli attempts to impose a form of political hegemony in the Levant would not be acceptable to Egypt or Saudi Arabia and other would-be regional hegemons.  

A third reason is that the excessive use of force will keep Israel’s adversaries in a state of anger: Israel can accumulate tactical wins but it cannot translate them into a stable hegemony. With the fundamental issues remaining unresolved, Hamas (or a successor group) and Hizbollah can reinvent themselves any time in the coming years, their most recent humiliation playing as an incentive rather than a deterrent (there are reasons to believe that, while being pounded like hell, both groups have been able to attract new recruits). 

Fragile states in the region, when not accomplices of anti-Israeli movements, can hardly prevent the re-emergence of groups with deep cultural roots and what they consider a legitimate cause. It seems likely that the Palestinian cause will continue to play the role of the Bible’s burning bush, extinguished only to be reignited immediately after. 

Fourth, an Israeli hegemony would be built on sheer, naked, arrogant power. All Israel’s neighbours are presently on the defensive: Syria is effectively occupied; Iraq has not recaptured its national unity since its “liberation”, nor been organised by strong, transparent institutions; Jordan fears the annexation of the West Bank and its own transformation into an alternative Palestinian state (something that had been part of the programme of Netanyahu’s Likud party for decades and has recently risen up the agenda in Tel Aviv and possibly in Mar-a-Lago as well). 

As for my country, Lebanon, it is financially bankrupt, politically paralysed (with no president, a government with limited powers and a dormant parliament) and threatened by the recurrence of civil war. Israel’s hegemony, if it is established, would be an easy victory but in an unstable, frustrated, angry environment that could hardly be pacified. Even if the war stopped today, Lebanon would still need years to recover. Israel might find informants in such an environment but would search desperately for allies and proxies. 

This is more so because the kind of regional hegemony Israel is attempting to build is totally non-Gramscian: it does not seek to integrate the defeated but, on the contrary, keeps excluding him. Its expansionist messianism is unpalatable even to the least bellicose of the region’s populations simply because they could have no part in it. They consider themselves utterly removed from the Holocaust inflicted by Europeans on the Jews and are therefore unwilling to pay, yet again, for Europe’s misdeeds. Integration of the weak into the powerful’s domain, as analysed by Antonio Gramsci or, long before him, by the great Ibn Khaldūn (who wrote of a process by which the weak accept a lesser standing as long as they are part of the ruler’s network, probably a precondition for sustainable hegemony), is impossible in these circumstances. 

In this respect, the domestic evolution of the country is a mirror. Since its victory in the 1967 war, Israel has changed. This can be seen in the Druze community, traditionally a disproportionate source of recruits to the Israeli military, where there is growing unease about a redefinition of Israel that solidifies their standing as second-class citizens. It was evident too in the protests throughout the spring and summer of 2023, when liberal Israelis demonstrated in hundreds of thousands against the Netanyahu government’s “reforms” of the judiciary, meant to constrain its autonomy.  

In other words, a reconfiguration of Israel as a religious entity (as illustrated by the settlers’ increasing influence on politics or the large increase of religious militants in the officer corps) makes it even more exclusivist: liberal Jews and — certainly — Arab citizens of the state are not welcome. This transformation of the Israeli polity (not its mere “slide to the right”, as often reported) has been going in parallel with the attempt at regional hegemony, a combination that can hardly reassure large segments of the Israeli population or the country’s neighbours in the region. 

Those the gods afflict with hubris free themselves from reason. UN secretary-general António Guterres was declared persona non grata only because he reminded Israel that international humanitarian law also applies to it. Emmanuel Macron was promised hell because he suggested that arms deliveries to Israel should be halted. The International Criminal Court was demonised when it spoke of war crimes being committed; we do not know whether it will issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. Even countries that have normalised their relations with Israel are disoriented by its elastic definition of its security and contempt for others’ concern for theirs.  

Similarly, the idea of Israel as a bulwark of civilisation against barbarism is a pretension that finds an echo in the west (certainly in the US Congress) but can hardly describe the region’s ancient civilisations nor adequately reflect the Israeli army’s behaviour in Gaza. Closer to reality is Israel’s attempt to be an advanced military fort for the west, and many in the west are happy with that role. But an advanced military fort cannot be a regional hegemon, much less a beacon of civilisation. 

In this tortured, agitated, broken region, there still is a way to avoid the worst. It is by bringing back to the forefront the heart of the matter, the issue that has been around for a century and a half of conflict, the issue that many Israelis want to forget: the Palestinians’ basic political rights. Israel’s regional adventures often look like a flight from that ever-present, painful fact. Unless the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own alongside Israel is recognised and materially implemented, they will not cease to be a source of (fully legitimate) disruption, making their life and that of their neighbours impossible. 

The aspiring hegemon has concluded that if force does not pacify the Palestinians and those who, sincerely or cynically, support their cause, the remedy is in the application of even more force. If history is of any use, it teaches us that the use of force to settle complex political issues is always sterile and often counter-productive. In any case, the ruins left by Israel’s present pounding of Lebanon have none of the charm left by Romans and Byzantines in my village: they are instead the mark of an unconstrained, unbearable hubris.

The writer is a professor of international relations emeritus at Sciences-Po (Paris) and a former senior adviser to the United Nations secretary-general

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THOUSANDS of brits could pocket an extra £200 to help with soaring winter energy payments – check if you’re eligible.

The Household Support Fund offers families a helping hand when they may need it most, whether it’s with the food shop, school uniform or paying essential bills.

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In September, the Department for Work and Pensions announced the HSF in Birmingham will be extended from October 2024 to March 2025.

Thousands may be eligible to claim the cash boost from Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC).

The £200 grant can be put towards household essentials including energy and food bills.

It won’t have an effect on any other benefits you may be receiving or be entitled to.

The payment is usually transferred directly into a bank account in the applicant’s name.

Who is eligible

According to Birmingham City Council, you must meet the following requirements to be eligible:

• be a Birmingham resident
• be experiencing financial hardship, particularly with covering costs linked to food and energy
• not have received a £200 grant payment in the last 12 months

Each household is only eligible to receive one £200 grant payment in a 12 month period.

How to apply

To apply, those eligible need to complete the Hardship Grant Community Fund expression of interest form.

This can be accessed on the Birmingham City Council website under Cost of Living Support, Household Support Fund 2024 to 2025.

All applicants will be contacted via email with details of the next steps should they be accepted.

If you’re invited to apply, you will likely need to provide proof of your address and proof that you’re receiving means-tested benefits, if applicable.

What is the Household Support Fund?

Households in need can claim support to help with the cost of living via the Household Support Fund.

The funding is supplied from a £421million pot by the Department for Work and Pensions.

It was first introduced in October 2021 and has been extended five times.

Councils up and down the country get a portion of the cash to allocate to vulnerable households.

For example, Medway Council in Kent, South-East England, is offering thousands of households supermarket vouchers worth up to £225.

Some could qualify for electronic energy cards or e-vouchers to cover water bills worth £100 too.

Get in touch with your local council to see if you might be eligible for help.

You can find what council area you fall under by using the Government’s council locator tool on its website.

The help you can get varies depending on who your local council is, as well as your personal situation.

But you may be able to get free cash and vouchers to help pay for things like heating your home or to cover costs of your weekly grocery shop.

If an applicant is already receiving benefits, these will not be affected by the HSF.

And, you do not need to be getting benefits to receive vouchers or funds from the HSF.

Check with your local council to find out what support is available and the eligibility criteria.

GREEK island are aplenty, with Santorini and Mykonos some of the most popular holiday destinations in the world.

But a new study has named the island of Paros as a trending destination for next year.

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American Express Travel included the island in their 2025 Trending Destinations list.

Analysing travel bookings as well as working with global travel consultants, the island was one of the few European destinations to make the list.

The website states: “Laid-back Paros has become the Greek island of choice for many.

“The cultural scene is vibrant here, and the rocky coastline is studded with beaches, secluded coves, and sea caves.

“A mere 40-minute flight from Athens—or three hours on a ferry—this windblown retreat is also easy to get to.”

Around 200,000 people visit a year – just 10 per cent of the annual tourists that go to Santorini.

This means you can expect the island to be much quieter, and off-the-beaten track.

Its famous for a few things. This includes its marble, which was considered to be the best in ancient times, but there are other attractions too, including its many beaches.

The town of Naoussa is the second largest town on the island and has been called a “smaller version of Mykonos”.

Expect amazing seafood when there too, with most of it caught at fresh before being served up

However, it is also undergoing some new changes.

The island’s airport is expanding its terminal and runway, which will allow better infrastructure for travel.

The €41million project hopes to be complete by 2026.

New hotels are popping up too.

This includes the boutique Andronis which opened earlier this year and a new Canaves Collection resort following success in Santorini.

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Last year, professional travel planer Jennifer Greene said Paros was on the up.

She added: “The lack of an international airport tends to keep it that way, but a gentle ebb of chic new hotels is attracting more tourists.”

American Express also named Brittany in France as a trending hotspot.

They included the destination because of its “distinctive culture, coastal scenery and miles of seaside walking paths like the GR34 trail”.

Mont-Saint-Michel is one of the region’s most famous attractions, located in the bay shared by Normandy and Brittany.

One beach that’s proven popular among holidaymakers because of its long stretch of sandy beach, stunning views, and tranquil waters is Plage de Tahiti.

Ferry is a popular option for travelling to Brittany from the UK – with routes from Plymouth and Poole.

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Simply sign up to the Sustainability myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

What is wise in 2024 remains a much-debated topic: but the value of a great education is something about which few would argue. For this week’s cover story, we followed Oxford student Grace Clover as she enjoyed her final days as an undergraduate at Wadham College, in a university recognised by many as being the world’s most prestigious. Grace writes about her experiences in a piece to accompany the pictures, and captures the strange contradictions, exhilarations and adventures that come with student life. In particular, she notes the peculiar isolation that comes with fulfilling the weekly essay deadlines, the “constant socialising” and the tremendous privilege of being surrounded by so much history and beauty.

As someone who has just delivered their child to university (though not Oxford), I found Grace’s essay especially pertinent. I also felt a huge nostalgia for that short moment where one stands on the precipice of “grown-up” life. The undergraduate experience is emotionally intense, confusing and wonderfully liberating. The pictures capture the great gift it is to be a student. Side note: it also bears testimony to the many friendships forged in adolescence – the shoot’s photographer, Tom Craig, and I were both in the same graduating year at Edinburgh.

Reading and studying are two ways of grasping the branches of universal wisdom. Other stories in this issue look at different ways to live intelligently. Grace wears predominantly vintage and pre-loved fashion, a business that has transformed with the rise of sites such as Depop and eBay, but one that can be somewhat overwhelming for those who prefer a more boutique-curated browse. Rosanna Dodds has compiled a list of the world’s best vintage dealers, most of whom have online and in-person concessions as well as areas of specialisation. The guide is designed to sort the jewels from the jumble and, in a crowded and largely ungoverned market, help steer a more productive search.

Few things are more revolting than eating soup with a wooden spoon

Next, a personal obsession: since the ban of single-use plastic cutlery in England in 2023, restaurants and fast-food outlets have had to introduce a range of sustainable alternatives. There are now dozens of options when it comes to compostable cutlery, but most make for an unpleasant eating experience – there are few things more revolting than eating one’s lunchtime soup from a “cringey” and rough-sided wooden spoon. Ajesh Patalay investigates the state of eco cutlery, the issues of trying to make something both satisfactory and sustainable, and whether the current composting options are even viable. He finds that few options are especially compliant: I’ve vowed therefore to try to keep a real spoon around the desktop. 

On the subject of the working lunch, how many of you have a kitchen or catering facilities in your office? You’ll probably enjoy Grace Cook’s piece about some of the world’s great staff canteens. From Polentina, an Italian restaurant set in a garment factory in east London, to Kantine, the kitchen restaurant that feeds the staff – and visitors – of David Chipperfield’s Berlin headquarters, Grace has looked at the new wave of cooks and forward-thinking employers who are rehabilitating this much-derided catering genre. I am rather envious of the folk at On Labs in Zürich, who have a dining room designed to mimic a living space where they get to enjoy a “vegan buffet”. Thankfully, many of these kitchens are open to non-staffers: you don’t need a visitor’s pass to try them for yourselves. 

@jellison22

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