Bwani Junction, the Scottish band who painted the Forth Rail Bridge blue in their video after being refused permission to play live on the bridge, will be appearing at the Thistly Cross Festival on Saturday 30 June 2012.Other bands playing at the farm near Dunbar, East Lothian include Meursault, Woodenbox, Remember Remember, Found, Fatherson and Kitty the Lion.Thistly Cross Cider was started in 2008 as a collaboration between farmer, Ian
Oliver Burkeman is an award winning journalist, now based in Brooklyn, whose regular column in The Guardian explores popular psychology and self help culture. His beautifully written and genuinely helpful new book – The Antidote: Happiness for People who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking – questions the merit of relentless positivity in the pursuit of happiness and indeed the pursuit of happiness itself. Burkeman introduces the book in this excellent animation
Robert Burns, poet, songwriter and Scottish icon, spent his last seven years in Dumfries in Scotland’s south west. It was his retreat from the Edinburgh literary world that had brought him, only a year before, contemporary fame. It was in Dumfries he wrote his great songs, Auld Lang Syne, My Love is like a Red Red Rose and John Anderson My Jo. It was here he had his children and died
‘Disneyland for design geeks’ is how Denmark has been described. On the outside Finn Juhl’s house with its unassuming exterior couldn’t be further from Cinderella’s Castle but inside the Danish architect and furniture designer has worked his magic in this early example of open plan living. The floor plan has been designed meticulously so that each room has its own clear function but you can always see the next room
Charles Lowther and the rest of the team behind the excellent George and Dragon in Clifton have this month opened the gardens and cafe at Askham Hall in Penrith, Cumbria. This the first stage of a project that will next year see the beautiful Grade 1 listed house offer rooms, restaurant and spa. For now you can visit the gardens with their colourful terraces, herbaceous borders, formal lawns, kitchen gardens
Coat hooks, like calendars, are modest household items which seem to inspire a sort of mania in designers to come up with ever more stylish and innovative prototypes. The ones featured here should allow the design conscious to hammer home their aesthetic credentials the minute anyone steps into their home. Be aware however that when you hang more than one coat on your hooks you no longer see the design
Even with the optimism of youth a child might not expect Albert Einstein to be the best pen pal yet… in between sleeping for 10 hours a night, developing theories of relativity and being the most famous scientist on the planet, the physicist found time to reply to some of the children who wrote to him. From the charming Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children comes the following exchange
Ok so it’s just an ad, and a Coke ad at that, but it’s got that so simple yet so clever thing going on the way the best ads do…
York Minster was wall-to-wall grass last week for the York Minister Rose dinner to raise funds for the restoration of the building. The living grass – called Wow!Grass! because that’s what people say when they see it – is grown in felt made from recycled textiles rather than soil. It can be rolled up afterwards without leaving a mess. Developed by York-based specialist Lindum for the events industry, it has been
Forget the dreaming spires, this psychedelic fun palace is what Supermachine Studio came up with when asked to design a Creative Centre for Bangkok University. The two storey student village is housed in the university’s already cutting edge Landmark compound and is conceived as a stimulating environment students will want to hang around in after lectures are over. There’s a karaoke hut, music rehearsal room, pole dancing area and snooker