To help out ideas-strapped parents in London, Family & Friends Railcard, which saves a third off most adult rail fares and 60% off kids’ fares, has compiled ten free activities and days out to keep families entertained in the capital city. 1. Make a date with a dinosaur at the Natural History Museum With over 80 million specimens spanning billions of years, it’s unsurprising that this attraction has over five million visitors every year – and best of all it’s...

By Linda Marric @linda_marric Kelly Reichardt’s films are beautifully crafted poetic pieces feature unusual stories about unusual people. By her own admission, her films are “glimpses of people passing through”. Reichardt’s painstakingly long takes and repetitive quotidian scenes are what makes her productions into masterpieces of modern cinema. The Night Moves’ director is back with another understated study of rural America with the critically acclaimed Certain Women. The film, which won Best Film at last year’s London Film Festival is...

A devastated eight-year-old girl with autism has been made an exact replica of her precious blanket to replace her life-long comforter after a global appeal. Bella Mildon had never been apart from the fleecy green teddy bear quilt ever since nurses wrapped her in it when she was born prematurely weighing just 3lbs. But the green fleeces had deteriorated with age and Bella, who cannot speak, self-harms and has the mental age of a one-year-old child, was desperate without them....

By Tom Moore Wayne Rooney surprised the audience at the Academy Awards last night after appearing on stage to collect the Oscar for Best Picture on behalf of Moonlight Director Barry Jenkins, despite not playing any part in the film. Rooney, dressed as a young black man growing up in Miami held the Oscar aloft and celebrated another trophy to add to his cabinet. Some took to Twitter to question why Rooney was collecting the trophy ahead of the man who...

Not great news for 16-18-year-olds hoping to get some decent A-levels, as the government has decided that ensuring this age group gets good grades had taken a back seat, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Money has recently been clawed back from schools, after the government ditched its plan to make every school an academy and decided that the funding should be returned to central government rather than used in other areas of the educational system. Now the think-tank...

With National Noodle Month recognised throughout March, this week’s recipe is a fresh, satisfying Thai salad. Created by Andy Oliver (Som Saa) in collaboration with Singha Beer, the recipe is designed to be paired with a cold beer and seems ideal for the warmer months. Serving four as part of a shared Thai meal, this dish takes less than an hour to prepare and cook and can be made with pork and seafood, too. Ingredients Serves four as part of...

British Airways has held off Apple, Microsoft and PayPal to be crowned the top business superbrand of 2017. Despite successive strikes making the headlines and unpredictable poll results disrupting the economy BA was ranked top in a survey of marketing experts and thousands of British business professionals. The airline outperformed nearly 1,500 others in the sixteenth annual poll, with Apple retaining second spot and, in its strongest performance since 2011, US tech giant Microsoft moving up to third. Fellow US tech giants, PayPal...

Having just watched the last two episodes of Taboo back to back as part of my Sunday evening wind down, I can only conclude that it is a tour de force by Tom Hardy, his writer Steven Knight ( who wrote the unusual, excellent and wonderfully named film 'Locke') his Father Ed 'Chips' Hardy, the superlative cast and the BBC. This is what TV is supposed to be, a visceral experience that leaves you desperate for the next episode. Taboo...

Getting rid of a beautiful grand piano may seem sacrilegious. But sometimes, sadly, they just aren’t usable anymore. Even working pianos can be difficult to sell, and as transporting them is a difficult and dangerous task for anyone other than professional piano movers armed with “heavy duty slippers, shoes, blankets, skids, trolleys and ramps”, they can soon become elephants taking up vital room in your home. Old pianos, particularly those that are beyond repair, are extremely difficult to sell. Robert...