As the latest round of Academy Awards are announced in Hollywood, we celebrate some of Britain’s oldest cinemas by rounding up some of the stalwart picture palaces that have survived a century or so of big-screen shows. Most are small-town independents, and all are older than the Oscars.
Artist Residence and the Lido Townhouse are among a new wave of independents with personality, there have been recent openings at the more imaginative end of the budget market (Mollie’s and the Moxy) and the city’s first five star is on the horizon. Here’s our pick of the best places to stay in Bristol.
Our go-to Cornish pubs tend to be old school: the salty veterans of fishing and mining, lots of knotty oak and on the dark side (we mean the lighting). On the ales front, we tend to go for ‘real’ rather than ‘craft’. Most of our top ten are by the sea (or on the water) – and one of them is in Devon.
“No city in Britain uses its urban landscape as a canvas quite like Bristol.’ So says Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel guide 2026 – which selects 50 of the world’s best destinations and experiences for the year ahead (Bristol is only UK city to be featured). As a veteran Bristol resident, I write what I know about the city’s vibrant street art scene (the article first appeared in the i-paper).
A peek into Brighton’s incredible toy and model museum, set in Victorian cellars beneath the railway station and packed with vintage collectables recalling a century or so of childhood play. Tins teddies, clockworks, diecast vehicles, model railways, games, puppets, dolls houses and instant nostalgia lie among the thousands of carefully curated items.
Home to the world’s only Royal Harbour (granted by George IV in 1821), the Isle of Thanet town – the former home of Gothic Revivalist Augustus Pugin – boasts hundreds of listed buildings: handsome Regency terraces rub shoulders with landmark churches, Victorian pleasure gardens, war-time tunnels, maritime buildings and some curiosities (like an artificial gorge).
A little after the fact (like 9 years), I finally got around to writing a blog about our trip to Ghana – in particular a series of long taxi rides from Accra to Komenda to Axim and back again. On the way we met the irrepressible Miss Taxi Ghana, a woman on a mission.
Billed as the world’s first ‘amazement park’ and the UK’s largest immersive art experience, this unique Bristol attraction is a trippy ‘voyage of discovery’ in which visitors can genuinely lose all sense of reality. Created by the team behind the Boomtown Fair, expect tunnels, installations, themes, interactive sets, animated robots, ticking clocks, soundscapes, waves of light, optical illusions and a lot of fun.
In 1945, when the war was just over, and my mother was still in WAAF uniform serving with Bomber Command, she was invited to join aircrew on a flight over Europe in a heavy bomber aircraft. It left a very lasting impression on her. In a bid to replicate some of the experience, I took the controls of an Avro Lancaster flying from RAF Manston..
in the first of a new series, we visit the home and studio of artist Lord Frederic Leighton – a Victorian marvel in West London’s leafy Holland Park. Leighton shipped ceramic tiles from southern Europe and the Middle East to create his exotic Arab Hall. The house has recently been treated to an £8 million facelift and is now fully accessible.
