Port Eliot Lit Festival
St Germans, Cornwall
Books have become the new rock’n’roll, goes the thinking. But in reality books are a solitary pleasure while rock’n’roll is messy, loud and communal. That’s why Glastonbury is a riot of mud and mayhem and the Hay festival is all straw hats and civility. However, the third Port Eliot Lit [...]

Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Harper Perennial £9.99, pp624
‘Only a fortunate land is confident enough to dispense with heroes,’ writes Hughes-Hallett in the prologue to her absorbing study of the hero. In many ways, our current obsession with celebrities is the antithesis of the worship of heroes. The hero is a remarkable figure, towering over [...]

Nelson and Napoleon never met, but a new exhibition shows how these small men once towered over Europe
Nelson and Napoleon
National Maritime Museum, London SE10; until 13 November
Although Nelson and Napoleon never met, the National Maritime Museum has had fun composing this exhibition to mark the bicentenary of Trafalgar.
The exhibition places the men in their [...]