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‘It’s like striding across the top of the world’: the Pennines’ new Roof of England walk

‘It’s like striding across the top of the world’: the Pennines’ new Roof of England walk

The route showcases the North Pennines’ unsung landscapes. We road test a 50-mile section that takes in golden forests, high moors and pretty villages Up on Langley Common the wind is rising. The tussocks under my boots cover the Maiden Way, perhaps the highest Roman road in Britain, but the sense of being close to the sky – today a simmering grey – remains as palpable as it would have been 2,000 years ago. Looking north, a rainbow arcs across the horizon, the full reach of it clearly visible from this high ground. Buffeted by the squall with every step, it feels as though I’m striding across the top of the world, which is apt, since I’m following the new Roof of England Walk . This 188-mile, multi-day trail was developed by the North Pennines national landscape team, and launched in September. Taking in lofty footpaths and some of the best-loved elements of the North Pennines – among them High Force, Cross Fell, High Cup Nick, the Nine Standards and England’s highest pub, the Tan Hill Inn – the aim is to showcase this sometimes overlooked corner of the country. Continue reading...

Five of the best translated fiction of 2025

Five of the best translated fiction of 2025

The return of Nobel laureate Han Kang; film-making under the Nazis; stuck in a time loop; Scandinavian thrills; and essential stories from postwar Iraq We Do Not Part Han Kang, translated by e yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hamish Hamilton ) The Korean 2024 Nobel laureate combines the strangeness of The Vegetarian and the political history in Human Acts to extraordinary effect in her latest novel. Kyungha, a writer experiencing a health crisis (“I can sense a migraine coming on like ice cracking in the distance”), agrees to look after a hospitalised friend’s pet bird. The friend, Inseon, makes films that expose historical massacres in Korea. At the centre of the book is a mesmerising sequence “between dream and reality” where Kyungha stumbles toward Inseon’s rural home, blinded by snow, then finds herself in ghostly company. As the pace slows, and physical and psychic pain meet, the story only becomes more involving. This might be Han’s best novel yet. On the Calculation of Volume I and II Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland (Faber) “It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought.” Book dealer Tara Selter is stuck in time, each day a repeat of yesterday. Groundhog Day it ain’t; this is more philosophical than comic – why, she doesn’t even bet on the horses – but it’s equally arresting. Tara slowly begins to understand how she occupies space in the world, and the ways in which we allow our lives to drift. At first she tries to live normally, recreating the sense of seasons passing by travelling to warm and cold cities. By the end of volume two , with five more books to come, we get hints of cracks appearing in the hermetic world – is Balle breaking her own rules? – but it just makes us want to read on further. Continue reading...

Onlookers review – snapshots of a south-east Asian country shaped by tourism

Onlookers review – snapshots of a south-east Asian country shaped by tourism

Through static compositions and observational detail, the documentary explores how Laos’s visitors and residents inhabit the same spaces in very different ways Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s idiosyncratic documentary gazes upon sights and vistas that would not be out of place on travel postcards. Minimal in its camera movements, the film looks at glimmering golden temples, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and processions of monks moving through lush landscapes. It also shows what is absent from glossy brochures, namely the intrusion of tourists. The disruption to the local rhythm of life is at once visual and aural: we see throngs of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of shorts and T-shirts a stark contrast to the ancient architecture. Their occasionally rowdy leisure activities are intercut with more mundane moments from the locals’ everyday lives, like schoolchildren heading to class or laywomen offering alms to monks by the roadside. There’s a sense of tension between the static camera and the movements that occur within the frame. Scenes of tourists being loaded on to buses bring to mind Jacques Tati’s 1967 classic Playtime, which gently pokes fun at the idea of an authentic cultural experience attained via consumerist means. The point of view in Takesue’s film, however, is on shakier grounds. Some of the visual juxtapositions veer towards reiterating well-worn binaries between the east and west, the regional and the global. For instance, most of the tourists seen in Onlookers are white; in truth, visitors to Laos largely come from neighbouring Asian countries. Likewise, the Laotian population is also far from homogeneous: one sequence shows middle-aged men playing a game of catch, with the caption telling us they are “arguing in Lao” – yet some of them are speaking Vietnamese. Continue reading...

Alan Carr tries to become a wine connoisseur: best podcasts of the week

Alan Carr tries to become a wine connoisseur: best podcasts of the week

The Celebrity Traitor winner teams up with fellow comedian Lee Peart for a hilarious attempt to demystify vino. Plus, David Suchet narrates Dickens’s spine-tingling tales “It’s not like a lads, lads, lads podcast this, is it?” says Alan Carr in the first of his new wine show with comedian pal Lee Peart. There are tastings, reader dilemmas and a Q&A with wine expert Tom Gilbey. The real highlight is the pair’s banter. Carr’s response when Peart says he wants to get him “back on white” so he gets to have his favourite type of wine when they share a bottle? “You could have told me this off camera … I didn’t know this was Relate!” Alexi Duggins Widely available, episodes weekly Continue reading...