Cover girl: An intimate portrait of the Queen appears in Vanity Fair Credit: Annie Leibovitz/Vanity Fair
The picture is being published on the cover of the latest edition of Vanity Fair on Friday, to mark Her Majesty’s 90th birthday.
Sitting with the Queen are her two corgis, Holly and Willow, along with Vulcan and Candy, her two ‘dorgis’. This is the crossbreed the Queen developed when one of her corgis mated with a dachshund that belonged to her sister, Princess Margaret.
“I was told how relaxed she was at Windsor, and it was really true. You get the sense of how at peace she was with herself, and very much enthralled with her family.”
The future of the British monarchy concerns Catherine Mayer, although she is an American by birth.
Towards the end of this exhaustive yet entertaining biography she tackles the politics of the succession, arguing from the law of unintended consequences, and the nature of constitutional reform, to the conclusion that for all his inconsistencies and contradictions, Charles is, if not the best man for the job of head of state, certainly the most highly qualified.
Mayer reaches this position by a slow and circular path, as if she were perambulating the landscaped garden of one of the many country properties the prince flits between. Often she sits down under a gazebo to ponder weighty issues, and is joined there by one or other of her interviewees – among them the prince himself.
Mayer’s book has reignited – some controversy: is Charles too “political” to be a constitutional monarch? Will he give up his obsessive beneficence when he seats himself on the Stone of Scone? And can he square his seemingly heterodox religious beliefs with his status as head of the Anglican Communion? Mayer is a shrewd enough surveyor of the British scene not to be fooled by such deceptively rational bends.
The building of Poundbury and his attack on architectural modernism in general, is motivated by an underlying the notion that humans divorce themselves from the structures of the natural world at their peril, set out in his own 2010 book Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World.
a lifelong republican, warms to the heir to the throne, and asks: is he the king we deserve?
A practical guide to what we have lost in the modern world, why we have lost it and how easily it is to rediscover. Harmony is a blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable world that the human race must create to survive. For more than 30 years His Royal Highness Prince Charles The Prince of Wales has been at the forefront of a growing ecological movement. Originally treated with scepticism, many of his ideas are now widely accepted and gaining increasing impact and influence. His work has sought to meet a huge range of modern challenges, from urbanisation to deforestation. In every case, however, the philosophy that is the foundation of his work has always been the same, but has always been unspoken, until now. For the first time, Prince Charles, with the help of his two leading advisors, has brought together his vast knowledge and experience to set out this philosophy – a philosophy that is as robust as it is practical. In Harmony, Prince Charles looks at different aspects of our modern world to demonstrate how many of the challenges seen in areas as diverse as architecture, farming and medicine can be traced to how we have abandoned a classical sense of balance and proportion.
The unboxing video craze began with videos about unpacking of new high tech consumer products and slowly examining all the elements of the product, from the inner and outer wrappings to the actual product itself.
“You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.” — Jonathan Ives, Apple designer
The craze spread into the world of fashion and toys for children. Once the trend took off unboxing videos were created by companies for their own products.
The thrill of getting something new is exciting, as anyone who has ever watched children at a birthday party knows. It is not all about receiving the toy, they really enjoy watching their friends opening their presents.
Friedrich Froebel understood how children enjoy the anticipation unboxing gifts, when he designed play gifts in wooden boxes.
Restored wetlands along the north side the Latrobe River near Sale in Gippsland, Australia are bursting with birdlife and sprouting new native vegetation.
Freckled ducks in flight
Fauna ecologists have been delighted by the discovery of growling grass frogs and green and golden bell frogs.
Green and golden bell frog
Five years ago the paddocks at the historic Swing Bridge were a barren dust bowl. Bad seasons, bad management and bad luck had turned a spectacular mix of land and water into a barren, featureless plain where only the strongest river red gums battled through those years. Clear waterways, tangled with debris from storms, deteriorated to swamp.
The Swing Bridge, on the Latrobe River south of Sale, carried the road to the south, while giving large lakes vessels access into the Port of Sale.
The Swing Bridge is now preserved as an historically important structure, while traffic crosses on a new bridge a little upstream.
“One great law dominates in nature and thought. Between two things or two ideas relatively different there always exists a third which unites the two others in itself, and is found between them with a certain equilibrium.”
Froebel gave himself to the search for an intermediary form between the ball and the cube.
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson, an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking Glass. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy.
In 1862 Charles Dodgson, a shy Oxford mathematician with a stammer, created a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole. Thus began the immortal adventures of Alice, perhaps the most popular heroine in English literature.
Greek archaeologists believe they have discovered the lost tomb of Aristotle, the greatest philosopher in history, who became the tutor of Alexander the Great at the court of ancient Macedonia.
Kostas Sismanidis said he was almost sure that a 2,400 year-old domed vault he unearthed in ancient Stagira was the burial place of the man credited with formalising logic.
“The architecture and location of the tomb, close to Stagira’s ancient square and with panoramic views, supported the belief that it was the philosopher’s final resting place.”
Two literary sources suggest that the people of Stagira, the birthplace of the philosopher in 384 BC, transferred his ashes from Chalcis on the island of Euboea (Chalkida on Evia today) where he is known to have died in 322 BC.
The vault has a square marble floor dating from Hellenistic times and an altar outside. Coins dated to Alexander the Great and ceramics from royal pottery were also found.
An aerial view of the dig site at Stagira in the Greek region of Macedonia, the birthplace of the philosopher in 384 BC
Aristotle was a pupil of Plato. He travelled around the Aegean and Asia Minor before returning to Athens where he founded his own school, the Lyceum, in 335 BC.
The charming thatched cottage, where Enid Blyton wrote many of her much loved books, is on sale
Old Thatch is Grade II listed and dates back to the 17th century
Located a few miles from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, Old Thatch was Blyton’s home for nine years from 1929. She began writing her Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair series while living there.
In 1938, when her daughters were aged seven and three, Blyton moved to a new house in Beaconsfield named Green Hedges.
Through an intense breeding program of native flora, botanists provided the Western Australian RSL with a commemorative grevillea (Proteaceae) for the Anzac Centenary. The perennial plants are expected to live 20 to 40 years.
For approximately 10 years, botanists have been running a plant breeding program, which produces native plant varieties for general cultivation.
RSL Spirit of Anzac Grevillea, it is the first hybrid grevillea of the breeding program to be commercially released.
“We wanted a plant that was robust and flowered for a long period, particularly on the 25th of April, Anzac Day.”
The hybridisation program has incorporated classic natives, combining attributes to allow for tough, yet ornamental flora.
Multiple parents add to resilient offspring
The RSL Spirit of Anzac Grevillea has a combination of parents sourced from the Western Australian Wheatbelt, the South Australian desert and the northern New South Wales coast.
“We breed resilience such as disease tolerance, low water requirements, heat tolerance, large flowers, flower colour, floral display, flower period, plant form and leaf shape.”
“Each hybrid will have a different range of these features due to recombination and expression of the parental genes.”
On the 25th of April 1915, Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula. The objective was to open the Dardanelles to give the British a clear sea route to their ally Russia from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. There were no easy supply lines to Russia. The North Sea was often frozen and the Far East too distant.
The Gallipoli Campaign lasted nine months before the evacuation of the last Allied troops in January 1916. A year later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and Russian involvement in the war ended with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed on 3 March 1918.
Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland, the future Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Belarus, and Ukraine.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took away territory that included a quarter of the population and industry of the Russian Empire and nine-tenths of the coal mines.
Jamie Oliver and Cheryl launch a Facebook ‘live’ event featuring chefs from ten countries to encourage viewers to cook healthy dishes from scratch.
Food Revolution Day aims to highlight a global nutrition crisis amongst children.
“Right now if you look at under five year olds, 41 million are obese or overweight, and 159 million are malnourished and not growing physically and mentally in the right way.”
“In the last 40 years we have seen public health go from amazing to terrible.”
The chef has recently triumphed with his campaign for a sugar tax on fizzy drinks.
The British Government used the Queen’s Speech to pledge a new tax on sugar rich fizzy drinks, to be introduced from April 2018.
Access to good, fresh, nutritious food is every child’s human right, but currently we’re failing our children. Millions of kids are eating too much of the wrong food, while millions more don’t get enough of the good stuff to let them grow and thrive. We need to unite as one strong, single voice to force governments and businesses to create a healthier, happier world for the future.
