Category: 5. Entertainment

Actor and activist Nadia Jamil has delivered a powerful reflection on motherhood, mental health, and the importance of setting boundaries — especially for women navigating parenting in a patriarchal society.

She also talked about how important it is for boys to understand that their future wives should not be expected to “mother them”. Giving the example of her own son, she said while she may pamper him as his mother, that shouldn’t lead him to believe his wife has to do the same.

At a recent panel hosted by the Almawrid Women Society, she said, “I am a mother and the daughter of a working mother. I never felt that we or our household were deprived of anything because our mother was working. On the contrary, my self-confidence, my humanity, is inspired by my mother’s.”

Jamil recalled a childhood with a present father who played an active role in parenting, not out of compulsion, but with conscious care. “Our father, when our mother was not around, spent quality time with us. He was not clueless,” she said. “So if a woman is deprived of a husband who helps her with domestic duties, then that is her misfortune.”

Cutting into the deeply embedded gender roles in South Asian families, where emotional labour and childcare are often shouldered entirely by women, Jamil reflected on her own experience as a working mother raising both a young daughter who is four as well as a 23-year-old son.

“Not every woman is fortunate enough to have a husband who gives his family time. In that situation, women do end up making a lot of sacrifices. But I am also a mother who works, and I have a four-year-old daughter whom I want to inspire to become a woman who can work, be self-reliant, and be happy to take care of herself,” she added.

Acknowledging how her approach to parenting has evolved over time, she said, “I am a very different mother to my daughter than I was to my son because I have seen that if I don’t take care of my mental and emotional well-being, then I won’t be able to take care of my child.”

A major part of this learning, Jamil argued, involves setting and maintaining clear personal boundaries, something rarely taught to women in our society. “If my son crosses them, even if he speaks to me disrespectfully, he will have crossed that boundary, and I will not entertain it.”

She criticised the culture of self-sacrifice that is romanticised among Pakistani mothers. “In our society, a lot of things are just made up,” she said. “Things like women staying hungry to feed the kids. To an extent, by design, a mother will prioritise her child’s needs over her own. But if I overcompensate, it will be at a cost. It is up to us how much pressure we put on ourselves.”

She went on to talk about how she is raising her son. “When a boy becomes a teenager, he is exposed to all kinds of things,” she said, citing her son’s education at Aitchison College and his exposure to elite feudal households. “At home, he insists I make his plate. And I do that for him because I am his mother. But he cannot expect the same thing from his wife or wife-to-be. He shouldn’t. That girl does not need to mother him. I tell him that he needs to understand this.”

Jamil’s message is ultimately about breaking cycles of guilt, burnout, and gendered expectations.

She wants mothers to not just raise good children, but to raise children, especially sons, who grow into respectful, self-aware adults who do not outsource their emotional needs to women or expect nurturing at the expense of their partner’s well-being.

If you are attending the Friday opening night of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, get ready for stars, fireworks and “Tropical Chancer,” “I’m Not Your Toy” and “Bulletproof” courtesy of La Roux.

The festival, kicking off the European summer holiday season, has a track record of free opening night concerts that get the Czech spa town grooving. Two years ago, Russell Crowe rocked the crowd, and electronic band Morcheeba got folks moving. Last year, Kosheen was in the house – well, actually in the square outside the Hotel Thermal.

This year, another big British name is ready to bring the party to Karlovy Vary, which runs through July 12: Grammy-winning synthpop act La Roux. And is tradition, the fireworks on stage will be followed by a fireworks display.

La Roux’s self-titled debut album in 2009 was a critical and commercial success and won numerous awards. It produced such hits as the ones mentioned above. It was the creation of singer Elly Jackson, known for reddish hair that also inspired the band name, and record producer Ben Langmaid, who later left the duo.

Jackson followed up the debut album with 2014’s Trouble in Paradise, followed by 2020’s Supervision.

Ahead of the Karlovy Vary performance, Jackson, born in London to actors Trudie Goodwin and Kit Jackson, talked to THR about how her music has changed, her next album, why she deserves more credit, and how female music creators must often still fight to get it.

How do you feel about how your music and your style have evolved and changed over time and how much you have developed as an artist?

I feel that probably the biggest difference is that, as time has gone on, I’ve learned how to be more authentically myself in my work, whilst creating stylized worlds. When I first started, thinking about it from a psychological perspective, maybe there was some kind of covering up of who I really am, but under the guise of creating characters. Although I’m really proud of that time and I wouldn’t change it for anything, and I love all the visuals I did, it’s nice to be able to take the shell off a little bit as you get older and learn to be who you are, but still in an artistic landscape. That’s been a nice process, a kind of unmasking, but hopefully not in a really boring way.

Where did the name La Roux come from?

Basically, I just didn’t want it to be my name, because I think that’s really boring. Generally, names as a kind of artist name are quite dull nowadays anyway. And I also wanted it to be a name that meant that I could do lots of different things throughout my career. I felt there was an ability within that to have a bigger musical scope. I wanted my name to be able to encapsulate different things and feelings, and that’s when I decided to come up with a project name.

The guy that I did the artwork with on the first album is Alex Brown. We’re friends and we met when he was still at uni. I told him, “I’ve given myself this week to come up with a name for the project, and if it goes on any longer than that, it’s going to get silly.” When I went round to his house, he said, “I just found this ’80s baby name book in a skip outside – maybe you’ll find a name in here.”

The first page I opened said Laroux,” and I’d wanted the name to encapsulate my red hair. I also wanted to have the letter X in it, because my music was electronic, and when I was a teenager, those things went together. And I also wanted it to be a bit French, because I have some French heritage in my background. And weirdly, that is exactly what those words mean. La Roux means red-haired one in French. But even more handily, it’s the male version of that. So it’s actually, kind of by accident, a very androgynous name as well.

A friend once said: “La Roux reminds me a bit of an actress…”

Tilda Swinton?

Exactly! Have you met her? Or was she an inspiration for you?

Weirdly, I didn’t actually know who she was when I was younger. My mom is an actress in the U.K., and she knew who she was, of course. And obviously, I know who Tilda Swinton is now, but I didn’t then. I was very young. My mum was like: “There’s some similarity between you and Tilda Swinton. And I said: I don’t even know who she is, so it can’t be intentional.”

Anything that I had been like had probably come more from listening to Annie Lennox my whole life. I just happened to be ginger, and I had short hair, and I like ’80s music, so the things are going to get combined.

So no, it wasn’t intentional at all. But then I met her, and we had a couple of pictures together, and she’s very sweet. So, it was a brilliant moment.

With your family background and your talents, have you done any acting or have you created any film or TV music?

One of the biggest frustrations of my career is that people never asked me to produce anything when I produced my last three albums, and I play all the parts, and I arrange and compose every record. It’s always been really shocking to me that no one has asked me to do a soundtrack. No one’s ever asked me to write anything on commission or produce anything. I find it very strange that it makes me feel like we must still live in a sexist world that I hope we don’t live in, but we do. I would love to do that, but I’ve never been asked.

I did get asked to audition for a film role once or twice, but weirdly, being on stage in front of 50,000 people wouldn’t scare me, but doing that scares the living daylights out of me. I really like doing little bits of silly sort of acting in music videos. I really enjoy that. And I don’t think I’d be a terrible actress, but the setting would have to be very right. And I’m not the kind of be-it-all, do-it-all kind of artist. I like music.

Friends of mine in Central and Eastern Europe all know your music. It seems like you have a fan base there…but have you played a film festival before?

I can’t remember exactly where “Bulletproof” was a number one, but I remember it being big in that part of the world. I’ve played all over Germany. I’ve played in Poland. And I have played a fashion show or two. But I don’t think I’ve done a festival before.

How important was or is “Bulletproof” to you personally and your career?

Actually, “Bulletproof” came at the end of the first record. It was the last thing we wrote for the record. And it wasn’t intentional. What happened was: Ben was on the phone, and I was in the living room on the keyboard, and I started playing the main sounds, an arpeggiated part. And he just came in and said, “Record that!” And then we just wrote the song. I was pissed off at the time because I’d been trying to date somebody, and they’d been dicking me around. I’d been listening to a lot of Yazoo, and that was a big reference on the day.

Why “Bulletproof” is weird for me is that it was throwaway when I wrote it, and it still feels really throwaway to me. It’s like it’s not for me, even though I wrote every single part in it and co-wrote the lyrics with Ben. It doesn’t represent who I am as an artist or a person at all. For me, I would say it’s outside of the catalog, which is probably also why it’s successful. But I feel that track just has a completely different feeling from anything else, which is also why it’s big.

We’d already written the album. We were already getting signed to Polydor. We were in a very relaxed, confident space, and I think for both of us, that day was just easy, because it just flowed. And we knew we’d written a really good song, but neither of us knew we’d written something that was going to essentially pay us for the rest of our lives. It is crazy when you think about what an afternoon can do.

Which one of your tracks is, or are, a good representation of who you are as an artist and person?

I would say “Tropical Chancer,” “Sexotheque,” “Cruel Sexuality” [on album 2, Trouble in Paradise]. “Colourless Colour” [from the first album] was very me at that time, probably the most me track on that album at the time. And “Quicksand” was a big one for me back then, too. And then later, “Otherside” is my favorite track from Supervision and is the most me. “Automatic Driver” and “Gullible Fool” as well.

Since these days, it seems like everything is political, any political or social issues you’d like to share?

Just: Free Palestine.

What’s next for La Roux?

I have a new record that is written and finished, and it’s on its way. I’m also working on other music. I’ve gotten back into my flow now.

Anything you can share about this fourth studio album you just mentioned? Is it different in any way?

It’s a La Roux record. It’s not like I’ve gone down some wild [path] or anything, but at the same time, I would say that it’s a lot warmer. It’s got R&B references, but I wouldn’t say that it’s an R&B record. It has R&B moments, but it’s a pop record. It’s got my own slant on an R&B flavor, shall we say?

Before I let you get back to work, anything else you’d like to highlight or follow up on?

The only thing at the moment is that I’ve really realized how frustrating I find it that I don’t get recognized in the same way as my male counterparts for my production work. That’s something I want to talk about. I kind of just ignored it in the past and was just like, “Whatever, it is what it is.” But it’s something that I recently found I actually really need to speak up about, because otherwise it’s just going to continue. I am doing three years of work at a computer by myself, and then people ask: “Which guy did this?” It’s beyond frustrating, as I’m sure you can imagine.

So, I’m now always trying to remind people that, when you listen to my music, I wrote and performed all of it, unless it’s a saxophone or the odd bass part that’s difficult. Maybe three parts across an entire album are performed by somebody else. Sometimes, I get a percussionist in at the end who specializes in percussion. Or if I want the piano to be really grandiose and old-school, then I would get a pianist in. But I would have written the basic part already. That happens maybe three times across an entire album, and still, I don’t get the credit for the other 90 percent or 80 percent that I did. It’s just very frustrating.

It’s not just men who do it. Women do it as well. We’re just brought up in a way where we categorize certain tasks into genders, and we don’t know exactly where it starts or how we do it. It happens to all of us, and you can’t really blame people for just what they’ve absorbed throughout their lives. But we can try and change it moving forward. It’s just about women communicating, unfortunately, slightly louder than men have to, which is also annoying. Maybe we just have to find ways of talking about it and making sure people do know, because otherwise, why would I bother sitting there all day trying to get better at something if no one even knows I’m getting better at it or recognizes that I even did it in the first place. 

Oasis fans are Bristol a boost as they make their way to see the band reunite on stage for the first time in 16 years.

Liam and Noel Gallagher will kick off their 41-date world tour at the Principality Stadium on Friday and Saturday, ending in Brazil in November.

Across the Severn Estuary, Bristol is cashing in on concert-goers who have come from all over the world.

Adrian Stephens, who has travelled from Holland with his family, said: “This is for us, for me and my boys.”

The Britpop band dramatically split in 2009 after a backstage bust-up, with years of public feuding between the Gallagher brothers, until their comeback Oasis Live ’25 reunion tour.

“It’s a really big event and it’s going to be really exciting,” Mr Stephens, who is originally from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, said.

“I’m loving it. It’s going to be like icing on the cake for me.”

Katie Thompson, assistant manager at the Clifton Hotel Group, has welcomed extra bookings as they had more vacant rooms than usual because of Ashton Gate’s cancellation of large-scale concerts this summer.

“We are seeing an uptick in bookings because of that,” she said.

“The Oasis concert couldn’t have come at a better time for us due to that cancellation. We had the availability to be filled.”

Great Western Railway is putting on six extra trains to help people get to the gigs over the two days.

James Davies, from Great Western Railway, said: “If you’re coming back to Bristol, you’ll be absolutely fine.

“If you’re travelling from further afield you may need to consider alternative means of travel.”

Jim Reid, the Jesus and Mary Chain: Rock ’n’ Roll Star

There are a lot of similarities between us and Oasis: two brothers in the band, Creation Records, working-class kids, guitar band, etc. In the mid-90s, we couldn’t get arrested and had to watch their meteoric rise, but I couldn’t dislike the great music. Rock ’n’ Roll Star was on a compilation tape on the ill-fated US tour when we broke up. We’d had a punch-up on stage at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and back in my hotel room we were hanging around with a bunch of druggies. I was thinking “Where did it all go wrong?” when this song came on. I knew I’d remember that moment for the rest of my life. To me, Rock ’n’ Roll Star is like Johnny Rotten singing with Slade. It’s punk rock, but in 1994. I love the self-belief: Noel [Gallagher] wrote it before he was a rock’n’roll star but knew it was gonna happen. The difference between the Mary Chain and Oasis is that when we reformed we’d buried the hatchet a good few years before we got back together. I’m not sure if they have, but it used to amaze people how William [Reid] and I could be screaming with hatred at each other in the studio, then 10 minutes later it would be: “Do you want a cup of tea?”

Johnny Marr: The Hindu Times

It may come as a surprise to people that I’ve chosen this song, but I think it’s a great example of Oasis doing the thing they do so well. Even though the chorus hook is “And I get so high I just can’t feel it” – a classic Oasis line that only Noel could come up with and Liam could pull off – the melodic hook that makes it so definitive is the bit that follows: “In and out my brain / Running through my vein / You’re my sunshine, you’re my rain.” A “post-chorus chorus” is something that Noel does often and I’ve never heard in other people’s songs. When they recorded The Hindu Times in Olympic Studios, I told Noel I it was really good and he kind of shrugged. The next thing, it was No 1. At about the same time I watched from the side of the stage as they played it at the Manchester Apollo. I couldn’t work out if what I was seeing was a band totally at one with their audience or so elevated that they were on another plane. It was both, and I thought to myself, “This is what rock’n’roll means.”

Amy Macdonald: Acquiesce

I’m not proud of this, but I broke the news of the Oasis split. I was on the same bill as them in Paris [in 2009] and being young and naive I took it on myself to tell my Twitter followers what had happened [“Oasis cancelled again with one minute to stage time! Liam smashed Noel’s guitar, huuuge fight”]. By the time we got to the hotel it was headline news all over the world. My brother and his friends had spent all their money to come over to see them and were devastated. It felt like the end of an era. When I’d started going out with my sisters, pretending I was 18, I’d heard Acquiesce in an indie club called the Attic [in Glasgow] and I’ve listened to it ever since. When I hear it now, I always picture a massive crowd singing the words back at the band: it captures that feeling of being at a concert and everyone feeling united.

Jon McClure, Reverend and the Makers: Rockin’ Chair

Oasis started everything for me. Two brothers of Irish origin scrap like fuck: that was me and my brother. A few years later me and Chris [brother] ended up having a scrap in their dressing room at Wembley in front of Noel and Kate Moss and all these A-listers. It was as if life had gone full circle. The other side of Oasis that people miss is the quiet, sad, loner aspect to Noel’s writing. It’s in Talk Tonight, Going Nowhere, Underneath the Sky, Half the World Away … and Rockin’ Chair is probably the best example. “I’m older than I wish to be / This town holds no more for me” is Noel, in his bedroom, hating where he’s living and fed up with his life. I totally get that and when Noel gets in that mood he’s one of the best songwriters ever. The reunion feels like your mam and dad getting back together. People have moaned about dynamic pricing and such, but in very divisive times they’re gonna make millions of people very happy.

Jehnny Beth: Live Forever

Live Forever sounds so at odds with it’s time: 1994. I find it incredible that someone could wrap a “fuck you” inside a song so openly positive. In the wreckage left behind by Thatcher’s Britain and the shadow of Kurt Cobain’s pain, Noel wrote an insolent, unapologetic love letter of self-belief from a place of nothing to lose, against a generation of moaners who have everything and still find reasons to complain. The song is written to step over the corpses of the past, unearthing the flag of romance others have tried to bury. It’s a lesson in (working) class. The kind of optimism they summon is believable because it’s not polished or corporate. It’s radical. They’re not promising a future, they’re daring you to want one.

Devendra Banhart: Acquiesce

Acquiesce features Liam and Noel singing, which is unusual, but for me this song almost reads like a Bhajan – a [Hindu] devotional song – or a Khajana, where the lyric will be sung and the audience will sing it back. “I don’t know what it is that makes me feel alive / I don’t know how to wake the things that sleep inside / I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes” … that’s deep and questioning. Then the chorus: “Because we need each other / We believe in one another / And I know we’re going to uncover / What’s sleeping in our soul.” Even aged 13 I realised that what was being communicated was similar to the mystical and devotional poetry that I was surrounded by growing up [in Venezuela] with parents who were yogis. Oasis have been pigeonholed as working-class lads, but they sing about a deep spiritual longing, very similar to what was in those ancient books.

Michael Head: Don’t Look Back in Anger

I said hello to Noel in passing when he was working as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, but then when I heard Oasis’s music it just blew me away. When I was young, we had a transistor radio that all the hits came out of: the Beatles, the Stones and so on. Years later I was standing in a garage near my mum’s when Don’t Look Back in Anger came on their little radio and stopped me dead in my tracks like when I was a kid. Noel sort of reversed the David Bowie song, Look Back in Anger, to say “look forward”. I love that attitude.

Badly Drawn Boy: Supersonic

My brother Simon – who passed away in 2021 – was a massive influence on me and I remember us seeing a picture of Liam in the 90s and thinking “Who’s that guy?” Soon afterwards, Oasis changed the landscape of Manchester. Suddenly every night there were lads on stage trying to be the next Oasis. When I stood on the balcony at the Hacienda for the launch of Definitely Maybe, I thought Liam caught my eye. In fact, he was looking up at [the Lemonheads’] Evan Dando, who was standing next to me, but I’d always come away from Oasis gigs feeling I could do something with my life. Supersonic is about that: “I need to be myself / I can’t be no one else …” The line “I’m feeling supersonic / Give me gin and tonic” epitomises the swagger they had. When I was in London recording my debut album, Liam swaggered into the Met Bar. It was the first time we’d met, but we ended up in a room with 10 lads on a stag do playing guitars and singing songs. There was a panic at the time because Liam had gone “missing”, but all the time he was with me.

Luke Pritchard, the Kooks: She’s Electric

When my dad died, he left me his Les Paul guitar. Noel played one, too, and when I was 15 I got it out from under Mum’s bed, took it to school and learned Roll With It. Oasis were my gateway into rock’n’roll, and lately the Kooks have covered She’s Electric. The lyrics are like a conversation with a friend but through the medium of this beautiful, transportive song, sung with such meaning. We’ve supported Noel and Liam separately and I don’t think I’ve been as nervous in my life. When something’s that deeply embedded, you become the teenager again.

Fran Healy, Travis: Digsy’s Dinner

When I was at art school in Glasgow everything appealed to me about Oasis – working-class guys who’d got signed after a gig in King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut – and once I heard Live Forever I was deeply in love with them. Then suddenly we were touring and spending a lot of time with them. On stage, Liam was very “don’t you fuck with me”, but off stage he was a lovely guy. That thousand-yard stare on stage is a cover for doing one of the most vulnerable things a person can do: getting up there and singing. Digsy’s Dinner is Oasis at their most unvarnished. It’s aspirational: he’s singing about being in a bad situation but “What a life it could be / If you could come to mine for tea … We’ll have lasagne”. The simple beauty of that speaks to me, and I love the way the melody explodes when it gets to “These could be the best days of our lives”. It’s an odd song and the runt of the Definitely Maybe litter for some people, but for me it’s got everything.

Snail Mail (Lindsey Erin Jordan): Stand By Me

Stand By Me is the first Oasis song I became obsessed with. It still gives me full body chills listening to it. All the pieces just seem to fit together perfectly and simply, but it takes so much skill to be able to do that. I never knew that the opening line, “Made a meal and threw it up on Sunday”, was about Noel giving himself food poisoning [after his mother told him to “cook yourself a proper Sunday dinner” when he moved to London] but melodically the song changed my life. Their songs are so well done that they kinda sneak into your head. Even now when I’m writing songs I think: “Oh, is that a touch of Oasis?” I find them impossible not to borrow from in some way.

Pierce Callaghan, Gurriers: Slide Away

My dad had an Oasis live CD in the car when I was 13 and from then on they were my favourite band: massive melodies and a real drive to the songs. Gurriers – a Dublin word for “unruly young men” – fits with how rough and ready Oasis were at the time, like the story about them getting arrested on the ferry [to the Netherlands] for fighting. Definitely Maybe is full of attitude, but Slide Away has always made me emotional. The whole feeling is wanting to connect with someone, and if it’s just us against the world we’ll figure it out … but once you realise it’s written in the context of a break up [Noel and first fiancee Louise Jones] it’s gut-wrenching. There’s a bit in the Oasis: Supersonic documentary about a woman and her brother who spent the weekend watching them at Knebworth and singing along together, then he died a few months later. That’s always stuck with me: how so many of our relationships with friends or family are bound up by music.

Total Tommy (Jess Holt): Champagne Supernova

Champagne Supernova was one of the first things I learned to play on guitar. It’s a masterpiece in the way it’s put together: a classic structure, then another part and then another, like a double bridge. Lyrically, it’s reflective and then has that almost tongue-in-cheek “Someday you will find me beneath a champagne supernova …” bit. It’s just beautiful.

Juliette Jackson, The Big Moon: Wonderwall

Oasis songs always sound as if they have been written in minutes but are like everything you’ve ever heard and loved before, mixed together. I’ve no idea what a Wonderwall is, but for me this song has soundtracked iconic arms-round-shoulders moments at the end of family weddings and school discos. It sums up that universal experience we have with music, and taught a generation (including myself) how to play guitar and that songs can be basic and instinctive and still feel huge and meaningful. Every guitarist will have a relationship to the opening chords of Wonderwall – whether they love it or hate it, they will know how to play it.

Luke Spiller, the Struts: Roll With It

When I was 18 or 19, I was a cleaner at a rest home and would roam around with headphones on, soaking up the first three Oasis albums. When Adam [Slack, guitar] and I started playing we used to do Acquiesce, Rock ’n’ Roll Star and Cigarettes & Alcohol, which we’ve played in the Struts many times. Roll With It is my quintessential go-to Oasis song. Lyrically and sonically it encapsulates what they’re about. It starts off quietly then hits you with this Chieftain tank of a groove. This was the song in the infamous chart battle with Blur’s Country House and kinda says “You’re either with us or against us”. They lost the battle [Roll With It reached No 2] but won the war in terms of subsequent popularity. To me, the way they chose Roll With It knowing they had Wonderwall or Don’t Look Back in Anger in the locker is incredibly brave and brilliantly cocky.

Princess Superstar: Champagne Supernova

In the 90s, New York was a melting pot of music and, however unlikely it may seem, Britpop felt like an intense wave that reached the city. Even in the hip-hop scene we were obsessed with Oasis. Two gorgeous brothers, quintessentially British, punching each other – and they made amazing pop music. What’s not to love? To me they felt like a new version of the Beatles, Stones and Led Zeppelin albums my dad used to play, but filtered through the rich history of Manchester music such as the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Champagne Supernova just makes me feel good inside in ways I can’t explain. I don’t get high now, but back then we loved to sing “Where were you when we were getting high?” as we were doing just that.

Sonya Aurora Madan, Echobelly: Rock ’n’ Roll Star

We went to France with Oasis when we were both starting off, which was pretty wild. They were at the centre of a media storm and made sure they lived up to it, although they were really nice guys. In 1994, Echobelly and Oasis were playing New York clubs and went to each other’s gigs. I remember standing right at the front when Liam smiled at me, and Rock ’n’ Roll Star just epitomises the energy of that moment, and those times. Who joins a band and doesn’t want to be a rock’n’roll star?

My earliest reading memory
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. There wasn’t much to read – the prose is what’s now called “spare” – but I vividly remember the pleasure of poking a finger through the holes punched in the page. And that final twist!

My favourite book growing up
I was a fanatical member of the Puffin Club at school, and so many of those books embedded themselves in me; E Nesbit’s Dragons, Narnia, of course, the Molesworth books, which I barely understood and found hysterical. But my favourite were Tove Jansson’s Moomins, particularly the chilly later books, with their very particular melancholy. Other books seemed to be reaching for laughter or excitement, but there was a pleasure in all that sadness and solitude.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Great Expectations was my first “proper classic” and I was tremendously pleased with myself for getting through it, and startled, too, by how familiar the characters felt. The foolishness, the passionate friendships, the empty aspiration and unrequited love, it all made perfect sense to me, even across 120 years.

The book that made me want to be a writer
I’m not sure if I ever dared voice that ambition, even to myself, but I remember laughing hysterically at Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, and thinking what an achievement that would be, to make a reader laugh with marks on a page. In many ways, the early 80s was a golden age of comic writing but so much of it had a rather rather self-satisfied Oxbridge tone. Suddenly, here was an authentic working-class voice, writing with an almost supernatural such precision and insight into the teenage boy’s mindset. I loved it and, as with Great Expectations, turned the pages thinking “How does the author know?

The book or author I came back to
I’m a little nervous to admit this but I used to struggle with Jane Austen, recognising her subtlety and brilliance but finding that ironic tone a little relentless and, despite many attempts, never making it to the end. But in lockdown I picked up Persuasion and finally, after 40 years of trying, something fell into place.

The book I reread
If I ever find myself stuck or jaded, I pick up Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. The prose is just perfect, that atmosphere of a water-logged small town so vivid. There’s a warmth and generosity of spirit, particularly in the character of Aunt Sylvie, I find incredibly moving. I feel sure that it’s one of the very best American novels.

The book I could never read again
I’ve been lucky enough to adapt several of my favourite novels for the screen, but the process is prolonged, intricate and exhausting. The patient never survives the operation and I struggle to imagine the circumstances in which I would ever pick up Far from the Madding Crowd again.

The book I discovered later in life
I’m so pleased that Helen Garner is getting the praise and attention she deserves. I love her wonderfully frank and spiky diaries and nonfiction but there are two very different novels of hers that I think about all the time. The Spare Room is a tough, unsentimental book about the demands and limits of friendship. The Children’s Bach is wildly different, a spare, moving portrait of a loving family falling apart. Those final pages!

The book I am currently reading
I tend to read two books at a time, one fiction and one nonfiction. Yiyun Li’s memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, is extraordinarily wise, thoughtful and affecting, and the best case I can think of for the power of the written word. Alongside that, I’m reading the wonderful The Country Girls, my first Edna O’Brien but not my last.

My comfort read
Anita Brookner. There are no big narrative surprises – someone will inevitably be disappointed in a west London mansion block – but she’s a great prose stylist, often very funny and sharp and undoubtedly underrated.

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High in the hills of Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighbourhood, Flamingo Estate’s seven-acre garden is in full bloom. “LA is always beautiful, but right now we are spoiled,” says Richard Christiansen of the recent spell of good weather, which has summoned irises, begonias, roses and camellias. The Australian-born entrepreneur and author lives here with his partner, the company’s head of creative Aaron Harvey. Together they run operations for Flamingo Estate’s eponymous lifestyle brand, known for its colourful soaps, candles and organic farm boxes.

Each season, the couple throw a party at which they spotlight a Flamingo scent. Tonight’s solstice cookout is based around its bestselling candle, Roma Heirloom Tomato. “The house and garden are purpose-built to get Alice down the rabbit hole,” says Christiansen, who has arranged for each course to be served in a different area. “I love the idea of guests moving from space to space to animate the experience. It’s necessary for people to collide.”

The rosé is supposed to be the same colour as underneath a flamingo’s wing

Tonight’s guest list is a glamorous mix of creatives, including actress Laura Harrier, music executive Larry Jackson and stylist Djuna Bel. All are greeted by handsome waiters in custom uniforms as trays of playful appetisers (potato doughnuts and mini quiche tartlets, both with edible flowers on them) circulate. From there the party meanders through the green-striped living room to a citrus orchard at the end of the garden, where grill expert Burt Bakman has been smoking local bounty over an open fire. “It’s a bit of theatre,” says Christiansen. “We love to eat with our eyes, but also our ears; it’s nice for guests to hear the fire.”

Australian chef and food stylist Sandy Ho serves lobster noodles and green curried ribeyes with smoked mushrooms, onions, pineapple and asparagus in the garden pavilion, a space lined with explosive-pink rose trees. The table is dressed with mismatched crystal glasses, filled with the Estate’s own Pink Moon Rosé, which is no longer available to buy but is brought out on very special occasions from Christiansen’s secret batch. Says Christiansen of the vintage: “It’s supposed to be the same colour as underneath a flamingo’s wing.”

Dessert, a giant pink pavlova covered with berries, takes the group back up to the house to be enjoyed with a playlist of jazz and R&B classics (a “gift” to Harvey from 13-time Grammy winner John Legend). “Hospitality is about intimacy and effort,” says Christiansen. “It’s also a two-way street. You have to show up for the person who is cooking and serving, and they have to show up for you.”

The “forgotten” designer of Paris’s most iconic Métro station entrances and art nouveau buildings is to be given his rightful place in the city’s history with a museum dedicated to his work.

Hector Guimard left a distinctive mark across the French capital in the early 1900s, creating elaborate and monumental Métro entrances whose fans of iron and glass resembling unfurled insect wings were nicknamed dragonflies.

The remaining station surrounds of sinuous cast iron, with lamps resembling lily-of-the-valley flowers and topped with the stylised Métropolitain sign that Guimard also designed, feature in postcards, tourist photos and style books. When installed in the early 1900s, however, many Parisiens were scandalised.

One critic declared the green paint “un-French” and another said the ornate signs were “confusing to children trying to learn their letters … and stupefying to foreigners”.

Art nouveau went out of fashion, and by 1913 the transport authorities had dropped Guimard’s designs. By 1942, when Guimard died aged 75 in New York, where he and his American Jewish wife had sought refuge from the Nazis, he had already been forgotten and much of his work consigned to the scrap heap.

“It may be surprising to foreign visitors but the French have never really liked art nouveau,” said Fabien Choné, a Guimard collector and head of Hector Guimard Diffusion, a company involved in establishing the new museum. “There was great opposition to Guimard’s Métro entrances. While visitors saw them as marvellous symbols of the belle époque Métro, Parisians criticised it as what they called spaghetti style and couldn’t understand why tourists liked them.”

On returning to Paris in 1948, his widow, Adeline, an artist whose work had been displayed at the 1899 Beaux-Arts salon, worked tirelessly to preserve and promote her husband’s legacy, which included about 50 residential buildings.

She donated his drawings and smaller creations, including furniture, to museums, many of them in the US, and offered to bequeath the couple’s art nouveau home, the Hôtel Guimard, and its contents to the state and then to the city. Both turned down the offer and the building was converted into flats with the furnishings scattered.

In the wave of modernism that swept post-war Europe the style was sober and many Guimard creations were declared without historic or artistic value and destroyed. Of the 167 Métro entrances that he designed – described by Salvador Dalí, who painted Tribute to Guimard in 1970, as divine – only 88 remain.

Choné said: “After the war, each time the city did any work on the streets, they got rid of Guimard’s designs. Even up until the 1960s to 70s the logic was one of destruction rather than preservation.”

The museum will be established at the Hôtel Mezzara, a four-storey building in Paris’s 16th arrondissement designed by Guimard in 1910 and which features much of his signature ironwork, including a spectacular glass skylight and chandeliers.

The building, originally commissioned by Guimard’s friend Paul Mezzara, a rich textile manufacturer from Venice and later acquired by the education ministry and used as student accommodation until a decade ago, will undergo a €6m (£5.2m), two-year renovation before opening around the end of 2027.

Once open it will display known Guimard creations including art nouveau furniture and decorations as well as an archive of his designs and documents.

“It is absurd that there is recognition of Guimard at museums around the world, especially in the US, and nothing in Paris when he created some of the most important symbols of the city,” Choné said.

Nicolas Horiot, an architect and the president of Le Cercle Guimard, an association created 23 years ago to save Guimard’s designs and documents, said it had been a decade-long battle to get the state and Paris authorities to recognise the designer’s work. He said the museum would right a historic wrong.

“After the second world war, Guimard was completely forgotten. Art nouveau no longer interested people in the urban design of the 1960s and many of his pieces were destroyed,” he said. “The revival started in 1970 with an exhibition in New York, but it was a step-by-step process. We see this museum as repairing an injustice done to Guimard.”