Latest news with #BridesheadRevisited
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mithridate Resort 2026: Henley Regatta Meets China's Dragon Boat Festival
Daniel Fletcher's second collection for the Guangzhou-based brand Mithridate continued to be a study of cultural common ground between the U.K. and China. He looked at how both sides celebrate the change of seasons: dandy outings during Royal Ascot, wild nights at Glastonbury, as well as the Henley Regatta, an annual summer rowing event on the River Thames loved by the London set. More from WWD Kenny Scharf Exhibition Opens at MAM Shanghai EXCLUSIVE: Craft Is King, Says Jonathan Anderson, Who's Putting the Focus on Makers at the New JW Anderson Brand Giles Deacon Whips Up Colorful New Tweeds for Purdey It reminded him of his first-hand experience of the heated Dragon Boat Festival racing on Guangzhou's Pearl River at the end of May, when he was there developing the collection with the local team in his studio, sitting right next to the factory. The multicultural references led to a collection that was rooted in English heritage, but designed for a weather-transcending global audience. Wardrobe essentials were done in soft sand-washed silk and pastel Merino wool, formal attire came with a Mick Jagger hedonistic touch, and outdoor numbers were rendered in aged leather and fine checks for unpredictable weather. He also looked at the queer and romantic world of 'Brideshead Revisited' with preppy items such as a rowing blazer with a Mithridate logo inspired by old photos of Eton College, and a padded bomber jacket in navy paired with check shorts. The anything-goes style that a young David Hockney adopted played a key role, too. 'I found this beautiful photo of Hockney signing a conservatory painting. That kind of clash of colors, textures, and prints is something that I find inspiring,' he said. His admiration for Chinese craftsmanship, meanwhile, could be found in the details. The final look in the collection, a delicate embroidered dress, was hand-beaded using a traditional technique to evoke the pattern of picnic basket checks, for example. Launch Gallery: Mithridate Resort 2026 Collection Best of WWD Windowsen RTW Spring 2022 Louis Shengtao Chen RTW Spring 2022 Vegan Fashion Week Returns to L.A. With Nous Etudions, Vegan Tiger on the Runway
Mint
28-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Comparing apples and oranges. And also small caged mammals
Cod-liver oil (1947-51), mercifully, passed away swiftly. Liver (1947-98) lasted a little longer. Avocados didn't arrive until 1993—but have thrived since then. To read the contents list of the basket of goods, updated this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), is an intriguing experience. For economists it offers a sober measure of consumer-price inflation. For everyone else it is a births-and-deaths column for British consumerism, announcing the arrival of some objects and acting, for others, as their epitaph. Thus this week the list noted the arrival of 'men's sliders" and the demise of newspaper advertisements. It has previously recorded the demise of linoleum (in 1980), of corsets (1970) and of oil lamps (1947). Its very name is a relic: that word 'basket" sounding like something that might have hung from the arm of a British housewife as she went to the shops in her mackintosh (1947-52) to buy Brussels sprouts (1947-2006). Sometimes, it is an enigma: in the 2000s a 'small caged mammal" appeared, unexpectedly, in the ONS's calculations. The basket itself, in its modern form, was born in 1947. The political mood was tense. British families, who had paid a high price—in some cases the ultimate one—for the war were angry at the high prices they had to pay for everything else in the peace. The era of macroeconomic theory had begun (Britain's first official national accounts were published in 1941). Now Britain's beancounters needed microeconomic data, on things like the price of beans (canned beans: 1947-), to apply those theories. And that meant shoe-leather reporting (shoe repairs: 1947-2003). It still does: every month the ONS's 280 price collectors set out to shops in around 140 places across Britain to collect 180,000 prices of hundreds of goods and services (they also look online). Those prices are then gathered into categories (thus 'small caged mammal" goes to make up a larger category on 'pets"). Then changes in price are calculated, to enable the government to know about inflation, and at least something about the price of eggs (1947-). As well as about many other, more unappetising things. The 1947 list, at the height of rationing, shows a nation surviving on Brussels sprouts, margarine and the ominously oblique 'compound cooking fat". This, Evelyn Waugh later wrote, was 'a bleak period of present privation" and, he added, even more bleakly, 'of soya beans". Rationed food was 'unbelievably dreary", says Max Hastings, a historian. It did not fill stomachs but did, oddly, fill books. In the 'hungry novels" of wartime and post-war Britain, British novelists with poor diets and rich imaginations allowed their characters to gorge on the foods which they could not. In 'Brideshead Revisited" Sebastian Flyte eats strawberries and sips Château Peyraguey beneath a spreading summer elm. It 'isn't a wine you've ever tasted," he says. Given that 'Brideshead" was published in 1945, and 'table wine" didn't appear until 1980, this was probably true. The ONS records offer a picture not merely of national consumerism but of national character; few novelists draw in such detail. The writer Julian Barnes once said that to build a character you must 'start with the shoes". And the basket does give you Britons' footwear—from men's leather Oxfords (1947) to plimsolls (1947-87) to the casually late arrival of the trainer (1987). But it also gives detail on Britons' underwear (which in 1962 included a 'girdle"); its nightwear ('winceyette" in 1947) and on where Britons spend their time (climbing walls have replaced bingo halls). The basket is at once detailed—and doomed. Britain's economists are not quite comparing apples and oranges: both apples (1947-) and oranges (1947-) have been in since the beginning, so each can be compared with themselves. But it is all but impossible to equate the value of a 'rubber-roller table mangle" (1947-52) with a tumble drier (1993-); or of a telegram (1956-80) with a mobile phone (2005-). Using price indices over long periods is, says Diane Coyle, a professor of economics at Cambridge, 'a bit of a mug's game". The introduction of wholly new products in medicine is particularly problematic for prices. Gouty King George IV 'lived like a king", says William Nordhaus, an economist, but 'was a miserable man because his feet were killing him". Today, a pill could cure him; yet such changes are 'simply…not captured" by indices. It is not only the lists' items that have changed but their length. Early lists are not just nasty (that cod-liver oil) and occasionally brutish (1952 offers 'home-killed mutton and lamb"). They are also short: the 1947 basket has only 200 items. The current one has 750. This is typical: one study found that in the early 1970s Americans could choose between five types of running shoe. By the late 1990s they had 285. 'The real privilege of our lives today is that we have choice," says Sir Max. Choice in everything, from whether or not to fight in a war, to whether to spend your money on avocados, or climbing walls or even, should you wish, on small caged mammals. For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
The Age
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘I love the company of alpha men': Hayley Atwell on working with Tom Cruise
This story is part of the May 18 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. One might assume, as a woman in Hollywood, that Hayley Atwell is sick of being asked about Mission: Impossible co-star Tom Cruise, who she's worked with now for over five years. But when the inevitable question is asked, she seems genuinely fond of him, at least from what I can glean from our Zoom interview (her camera remains firmly off for the entirety). 'I think I've taught him over time that I'm a friend to him,' she says, a smile creeping into her voice. 'He's met my family, and I've met his, and he creates a really wholesome environment for his actors to work in … he values me as a friend and I think that comes from my respect for him as a person. He is a very mild-mannered, polite gentleman, in that old-school Hollywood way. Kind of like Paul Newman for me.' Atwell is speaking from her home city of London, and her voice is hoarse – she's just wrapped the marathon run of a West End production of Much Ado About Nothing, playing Beatrice to Tom Hiddleston's Benedick – and she speaks with a slight lisp not apparent on screen. But Atwell, 43, isn't here to talk about theatre. She's here to talk about Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the second instalment of the latest reboot of the action franchise. It was in the first instalment, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, that audiences met Atwell's character Grace, a free-spirited pickpocket eventually persuaded by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to join the Impossible Missions Force. Both Mission: Impossible and the action-spy genre at large have historically had a fraught relationship with their female characters, who are often relegated to stale stereotypes like the damsel in distress or sex symbol. As Grace, Atwell is cunning, gutsy and utterly captivating – not unlike the actor herself. With a wardrobe heavy on pantsuits and notably lacking in ballgowns, Grace is never a damsel and only occasionally distressed. 'I would consider myself an alpha woman,' she says. 'I've always been very strong. I've always had a very strong sense of who I am. I can't even work out how to get into the beginnings of why that is. It's just partly how I'm built.' This self-given moniker, 'alpha woman', is fitting for someone who's maintained both a steady professionalism and fierce outspokenness throughout her career. Atwell has been particularly vocal about the pressures young women in Hollywood face to look a certain way – including a remark about her weight on the set of Brideshead Revisited which was initially attributed to producer Harvey Weinstein but which she has since said was made by someone from the crew. Certainly, it seems this headstrong spirit is what drew Cruise (who is also a producer on the Mission: Impossible franchise) and director Christopher McQuarrie (who Atwell refers to affectionately as 'McQ') to cast her. 'I love the company of alpha men,' says Atwell, citing a number of 'alphas' she's worked with previously, including Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Simon Russell Beale. 'From the moment I met Tom and McQ, I discovered they also really love and value strong women.' Atwell praises the freedom the pair, who are known for letting actors improvise, gave her to make Grace her own. 'I find it very exciting because with Mission, if I didn't come up with any ideas on any given day, then I would appear in the scenes as just another brunette. It really was up to me to keep moving forward and keep pushing, and keep being present to Tom.' Like Cruise, notorious for his determination to perform his own stunts, however dangerous, Atwell was equally game for the physical challenges the role demanded. But it's the quiet moments, away from the high-octane car chases and scuba diving in freezing water, that really stick with her. She recounts a particularly emotional moment while shooting The Final Reckoning in Svalbard, an archipelago situated between Norway and the North Pole. 'There was this incredible sight of a polar bear walking very slowly, calmly towards our ship. It looked well fed, thankfully, but we were very aware that we were in its territory. So there was this sense of absolutely respecting its space and its privacy. We were able to experience this mighty beast in its home. It was very awe-inspiring.' Atwell grew up in London where she was raised by single mother, Allison Cain, a motivational speaker. They didn't grow up with money, but she says her childhood, surrounded by the beating heart of London's arts scene, was a happy one. Her father Grant, an American photographer, stayed in the picture, taking his daughter travelling during a gap year after high school. While she says her hunger to perform started young, she almost didn't pursue acting. Atwell received a conditional offer to study philosophy and theology at Oxford University, but purposely flunked her final exams – something she doesn't regret to this day. Acting has brought her into contact with all manner of people – from archbishops to scholars – who more than satisfy her curious spirit. 'It means that I'm immediately collaborating with them for a specific reason that fuels my own creativity rather than studying what they have to say from an academic point of view. I feel like I am a student every single day, and I'll never graduate.' After finishing her studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2005, Atwell started her career in theatre before making the transition to the screen with a breakout role in Woody Allen's 2007 film Cassandra's Dream (in 2018, Atwell spoke out about her poor on-set relationship with Allen, vowing never to work with him again). A series of roles in films including Brideshead Revisited and The Duchess followed, earning Atwell the title 'queen of period drama'. Her recent appearance in Mission: Impossible, alongside a recurring role as Agent Peggy Carter in the Marvel cinematic universe, might lead audiences to add action star to period-drama heroine. But a closer look at her CV reveals a genre-defying career, including an emotional role in an episode of the sci-fi series Black Mirror and a guest appearance on another UK TV series, Heartstopper, she's particularly passionate about. 'There were a couple of lines in the script where I just felt like: 'Yes, I want to say those lines. That feels like a beautiful moment and I would like to experience that with that actor in that show.'' Throughout her career, Atwell has remained fiercely protective of her personal life. She became engaged to music producer Ned Wolfgang Kelly in 2023 and gave birth to their child last year – two milestones she has little interest in discussing, except to say she remains 'stubbornly myself, and very close to my family and friends from childhood'. Despite her private nature, Atwell is fond of talking about self-love and its power in an industry known to be particularly cruel to women. In a recent appearance on the podcast Reign with Josh Smith, she commented on this perception, referring to a journalist who once wrote 'Hayley Atwell comes across like a self-help book'. I ask her how she maintains such hope and optimism. 'If someone was cruel to me, that doesn't mean I have to be cruel back. When I walk into a room, particularly a working environment, I go, 'It's my responsibility how I show up and what I partake in and what I comment on.' And if someone gossips, it's my responsibility to not gossip back. The minute I do, I'm part of the problem. Loading 'I understand that as a deep sense of individual responsibility to shape the conversation I'm having. I want it to come from a place of professionalism, kindness and belief in what art can do to bring us together, to unite us and to help us understand differences. But there are also many things that are beyond my control and I really understand what's not within my power.' If Atwell has earned the trust and ear of Cruise as both co-star and friend, then being in the orbit of one of the best-known men in Hollywood has dramatically shifted her relationship with fame. Or, rather, her distaste for it. 'It's not my business what people think of me,' she says firmly. 'There's nothing I can do about it. 'Of course, that's the power of charismatic actors – you can feel what they feel. You'll certainly feel a connection to the stories they're telling. But we're talking about that going into delusion if there is an assumption that, because we've seen this person on the big screen, we have any right to have any sort of relationship with them in real life.'
Sydney Morning Herald
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I love the company of alpha men': Hayley Atwell on working with Tom Cruise
This story is part of the May 18 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. One might assume, as a woman in Hollywood, that Hayley Atwell is sick of being asked about Mission: Impossible co-star Tom Cruise, who she's worked with now for over five years. But when the inevitable question is asked, she seems genuinely fond of him, at least from what I can glean from our Zoom interview (her camera remains firmly off for the entirety). 'I think I've taught him over time that I'm a friend to him,' she says, a smile creeping into her voice. 'He's met my family, and I've met his, and he creates a really wholesome environment for his actors to work in … he values me as a friend and I think that comes from my respect for him as a person. He is a very mild-mannered, polite gentleman, in that old-school Hollywood way. Kind of like Paul Newman for me.' Atwell is speaking from her home city of London, and her voice is hoarse – she's just wrapped the marathon run of a West End production of Much Ado About Nothing, playing Beatrice to Tom Hiddleston's Benedick – and she speaks with a slight lisp not apparent on screen. But Atwell, 43, isn't here to talk about theatre. She's here to talk about Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the second instalment of the latest reboot of the action franchise. It was in the first instalment, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, that audiences met Atwell's character Grace, a free-spirited pickpocket eventually persuaded by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to join the Impossible Missions Force. Both Mission: Impossible and the action-spy genre at large have historically had a fraught relationship with their female characters, who are often relegated to stale stereotypes like the damsel in distress or sex symbol. As Grace, Atwell is cunning, gutsy and utterly captivating – not unlike the actor herself. With a wardrobe heavy on pantsuits and notably lacking in ballgowns, Grace is never a damsel and only occasionally distressed. 'I would consider myself an alpha woman,' she says. 'I've always been very strong. I've always had a very strong sense of who I am. I can't even work out how to get into the beginnings of why that is. It's just partly how I'm built.' This self-given moniker, 'alpha woman', is fitting for someone who's maintained both a steady professionalism and fierce outspokenness throughout her career. Atwell has been particularly vocal about the pressures young women in Hollywood face to look a certain way – including a remark about her weight on the set of Brideshead Revisited which was initially attributed to producer Harvey Weinstein but which she has since said was made by someone from the crew. Certainly, it seems this headstrong spirit is what drew Cruise (who is also a producer on the Mission: Impossible franchise) and director Christopher McQuarrie (who Atwell refers to affectionately as 'McQ') to cast her. 'I love the company of alpha men,' says Atwell, citing a number of 'alphas' she's worked with previously, including Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Simon Russell Beale. 'From the moment I met Tom and McQ, I discovered they also really love and value strong women.' Atwell praises the freedom the pair, who are known for letting actors improvise, gave her to make Grace her own. 'I find it very exciting because with Mission, if I didn't come up with any ideas on any given day, then I would appear in the scenes as just another brunette. It really was up to me to keep moving forward and keep pushing, and keep being present to Tom.' Like Cruise, notorious for his determination to perform his own stunts, however dangerous, Atwell was equally game for the physical challenges the role demanded. But it's the quiet moments, away from the high-octane car chases and scuba diving in freezing water, that really stick with her. She recounts a particularly emotional moment while shooting The Final Reckoning in Svalbard, an archipelago situated between Norway and the North Pole. 'There was this incredible sight of a polar bear walking very slowly, calmly towards our ship. It looked well fed, thankfully, but we were very aware that we were in its territory. So there was this sense of absolutely respecting its space and its privacy. We were able to experience this mighty beast in its home. It was very awe-inspiring.' Atwell grew up in London where she was raised by single mother, Allison Cain, a motivational speaker. They didn't grow up with money, but she says her childhood, surrounded by the beating heart of London's arts scene, was a happy one. Her father Grant, an American photographer, stayed in the picture, taking his daughter travelling during a gap year after high school. While she says her hunger to perform started young, she almost didn't pursue acting. Atwell received a conditional offer to study philosophy and theology at Oxford University, but purposely flunked her final exams – something she doesn't regret to this day. Acting has brought her into contact with all manner of people – from archbishops to scholars – who more than satisfy her curious spirit. 'It means that I'm immediately collaborating with them for a specific reason that fuels my own creativity rather than studying what they have to say from an academic point of view. I feel like I am a student every single day, and I'll never graduate.' After finishing her studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2005, Atwell started her career in theatre before making the transition to the screen with a breakout role in Woody Allen's 2007 film Cassandra's Dream (in 2018, Atwell spoke out about her poor on-set relationship with Allen, vowing never to work with him again). A series of roles in films including Brideshead Revisited and The Duchess followed, earning Atwell the title 'queen of period drama'. Her recent appearance in Mission: Impossible, alongside a recurring role as Agent Peggy Carter in the Marvel cinematic universe, might lead audiences to add action star to period-drama heroine. But a closer look at her CV reveals a genre-defying career, including an emotional role in an episode of the sci-fi series Black Mirror and a guest appearance on another UK TV series, Heartstopper, she's particularly passionate about. 'There were a couple of lines in the script where I just felt like: 'Yes, I want to say those lines. That feels like a beautiful moment and I would like to experience that with that actor in that show.'' Throughout her career, Atwell has remained fiercely protective of her personal life. She became engaged to music producer Ned Wolfgang Kelly in 2023 and gave birth to their child last year – two milestones she has little interest in discussing, except to say she remains 'stubbornly myself, and very close to my family and friends from childhood'. Despite her private nature, Atwell is fond of talking about self-love and its power in an industry known to be particularly cruel to women. In a recent appearance on the podcast Reign with Josh Smith, she commented on this perception, referring to a journalist who once wrote 'Hayley Atwell comes across like a self-help book'. I ask her how she maintains such hope and optimism. 'If someone was cruel to me, that doesn't mean I have to be cruel back. When I walk into a room, particularly a working environment, I go, 'It's my responsibility how I show up and what I partake in and what I comment on.' And if someone gossips, it's my responsibility to not gossip back. The minute I do, I'm part of the problem. Loading 'I understand that as a deep sense of individual responsibility to shape the conversation I'm having. I want it to come from a place of professionalism, kindness and belief in what art can do to bring us together, to unite us and to help us understand differences. But there are also many things that are beyond my control and I really understand what's not within my power.' If Atwell has earned the trust and ear of Cruise as both co-star and friend, then being in the orbit of one of the best-known men in Hollywood has dramatically shifted her relationship with fame. Or, rather, her distaste for it. 'It's not my business what people think of me,' she says firmly. 'There's nothing I can do about it. 'Of course, that's the power of charismatic actors – you can feel what they feel. You'll certainly feel a connection to the stories they're telling. But we're talking about that going into delusion if there is an assumption that, because we've seen this person on the big screen, we have any right to have any sort of relationship with them in real life.'
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Yorkshire's stately Bridgerton home with a quirky turret stay
As I peer up at the dome of Castle Howard, the screen-famous stately home that occupies an 8,800-acre estate 15 miles northeast of York, I take in a scene from the ancient Greek myth of the fallof Phaeton, frescoed across its interior. This 70ft centrepiece is one of the many design statements that the British statesman Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, brought to North Yorkshire in the early 18th century to create an 'Italian palace in Yorkshire'. To do so he enlisted the help of the radical architect and dramatist John Vanbrugh, alongside Nicholas Hawksmoor, the designer behind Blenheim Palace and the west towers of Westminster Abbey. Some 300 years on, this country house has starred in multiple film and TV series, including the period drama Brideshead Revisited, made in the Eighties, and the Netflix series Bridgerton. At the end of April, as part of its ambitious 21st Century Renaissance project, it opened its doors to its newly refurbished tapestry drawing room. And next year the house will be available for occasional private rent, allowing holidaymakers to step into the lives of its present custodians, Nicholas and Victoria Howard, while enjoying the setting in the Howardian Hills, one of England's 46 national landscapes, which are protected for their natural beauty. Prices are on request but you can imagine it's suitably expensive. For those of us without such deep pockets there's the new Hinds House, a former gamekeeper's cottage, which is where I'm settling in for a weekend with my husband and two children. It's the newest of Castle Howard's stays, which also include a caravan and campsite with holiday homes, plus six other cottages in nearby villages. Hinds House is by far its quirkiest, forming part of a turret in the estate's original mock medieval walls, built by the 18th-century architect John Carr, who also designed Derbyshire's Buxton Crescent and West Yorkshire's Harewood House. As we drive along the poker-straight avenue to Castle Howard, it brings back memories of day trips here as a child — I grew up some 30 miles north, in the North York Moors. Down a narrow country lane, a large field's distance south of Castle Howard itself, we find the house. It sits beside a walled garden of lavender, with a private lawn containing a weeping birch tree that the children sneak beneath. • The 100 Best Places to Stay in the UK for 2025 Inside, the cottage is filled with vintage pieces from the stately home. Walls are lined with replica wallpaper from the estate's archives and portraits of earls who have lived at Castle Howard. They keep a watchful eye over the children as they dance around dressers filled with antique china. The living room exudes vintage maximalism, with ornaments and pots dotting the surfaces, and a total of — yes, we counted — 17 lampshades. Elsewhere, modern striped fabrics, pompom-fringed curtains and Pooky-style lampshades, along with French grey painted cottage doors, balance out the time-warp chintz. I retreat to the copper bathtub in the most impressive of its two bathrooms — the one whose curved stone walls form part of the turret — for a soak. The kitchen, meanwhile, has a modern country feel, with a massive Smeg fridge, a rustic farmhouse table, framed pictures of cockerels and views of hopping rabbits. Its Aga keeps us toasty and cooks our Yorkshire bacon, from Castle Howard's farm shop, within minutes. You could easily spend a weekend relaxing in this quirky property but you'd miss out if you didn't delve into Castle Howard's 600 acres of parkland, whose Pyramid folly and colonnaded mausoleum — where some 30 members of the Howard family are interred — can be seen from the cottage. It's in the parkland that we find several head-turning features including an 80ft-tall obelisk and a stone fountain featuring a huge figure of the Titan Atlas. The caw of electric-blue peacocks echoes throughout. • Read our travel guide to England here We dodge muddy puddles through the pine-scented Ray Wood, where candyfloss-coloured petals unfurl from giant rhododendrons. Their gigantic leaves delight my six-year-old daughter, who plucks them from the forest floor. She and her five-year-old brother race down the wood's steep hill while I soak up its extraordinary view of Castle Howard's baroque architecture. They coax me over a bridge that wobbles across the waterfowl-filled waters of Skelf Island, the estate's adventure playground. In summer you can join the queues for boat trips over the Great Lake: a prime opportunity for birdwatching and enjoying views of the property's north-facing façade, whose entrance appeared in Bridgerton (adults £6; children £4). I walk around the house too, which is free for one day for guests staying at Hinds House. Some of its rooms were destroyed during a fire in 1940 but the dome, with its fresco, was rebuilt in 1962. In the Eighties, filming of Brideshead Revisited funded reconstruction of the garden hall and new library. • 25 of the best unusual places to stay in the UK The new tapestry drawing room features cyan walls with a striking gold entablature, its frieze inspired by Vanbrugh's decoration in the great hall and the Roman Ara Pacis (altar of peace), a monument now housed in its own museum in Rome. A specialist conservator has stabilised the tapestries, which depict the four seasons. Other rooms — including the long gallery and grand staircase — have had a complete refurb and rehang of paintings, with Grand Tour treasures from Roman busts to mosaics added and rearranged. Aside from its extraordinary country house, the Howardian Hills have become synonymous with high-quality local food and drink. North Yorkshire's food capital of Malton, which has the tagline 'a town of makers and markets', is a ten-minute drive from Castle Howard and is celebrated for its raft of artisan producers and independent shops. The town's Shambles takes you back in time, with tiny antique stores housed in former stables. Here I drop into the Woodlark and pick up a beautifully carved oak cheeseboard, its label telling me 'provenance: the Castle Howard estate' ( There's also a clutch of Michelin-starred restaurants, lauded for their use of the area's rich natural larder. During our stay we visit a newcomer, Restaurant Mýse, a renovated 19th-century pub in Hovingham helmed by the North Yorkshire lad Joshua Overington, for its 17-course tasting menu (from £145; The restaurant's ethos is 'micro seasonality' and it uses foraged ingredients, such as wild mushrooms, medlars and apples, from the Castle Howard estate. The doughnut-like braised ox cheek in Yorkshire pudding batter, and the chicken drippings — into which we dunk sourdough — are heavenly. The crab custard topped with various pickled, fermented, salted and braised mushrooms ignites taste buds I didn't know I possessed. The standout dessert is the Jerusalem artichoke ice cream, its birch sap also collected from Castle Howard. On our final day the kids have one last run around Castle Howard's serene gardens, whose towering box hedges make for excellent hide and seek. Behind us the dome's 23.5-carat gold leaf cupola lantern glistens in the sun and we catch a glimpse of Hinds House, which the children now affectionately call 'our little old-fashioned house', across the field. A grand historic house like Castle Howard is forever a work in progress. I look forward to seeing what Nicholas and Victoria Howard decide to do with the other rooms of Yorkshire's Italian McGuire was a guest of Hinds House, which has one night's self-catering for six from £250 ( and the Yorkshire Arboretum Castle Howard provides maps of the various hiking trails you can take, through pretty villages such as Ganthorpe, Coneysthorpe and Slingsby, as well as through ancient woodland filled with bluebells in April and May ( This 120-acre garden is two minutes from Castle Howard and is known for its red squirrel enclosure, where you can listen to talks with 'squirrel volunteers' as you watch the new colony of kits (babies) being fed. Trail tree maps lead you on walks across the rare tree-filled park known for its critically endangered Australian wollemi pines (£12; Tastings and demos with local chefs and MasterChef semi-finalists such as Olayemi Adelekan feature at this annual event. Arrive hungry, browse stalls of local produce and enjoy live music with a drink from a red double-decker bus (May 24-26; free; With commanding views over the Vale of York — and, if you squint, York Minster — this peaceful, elevated farm in Terrington, a ten-minute drive west of Castle Howard, has tea rooms, themed gardens and swathes of the perfumed purple flower (£5 in May; £7 June-August;
