David Hockney, who died on 11 June, aged 88, was never shy about experimenting with technology. In April 2020, then almost 83, he was interviewed by The Spectator's art critic, Martin Gayford, saying about his iPad that “I was just drawing on this thing I'm talking to you on.”

In his “provocative” book Secret Knowledge, published in 2006, Hockney suggested that old masters, such as Vermeer, had used optical aids in their paintings, says Michael Prodger in The New Statesman. So, Hockney saw no reason why he shouldn't use “fax machines, Polaroids, photocopies [and] high-resolution cameras” to create his works.

It was from a photograph that somebody else had taken that Hockney created what is arguably his most famous painting, A Bigger Splash, in 1967. The pink modernist building that forms the backdrop to the sun-drenched Californian swimming-pool scene came together fairly quickly, but Hockney laboured on the split-second splash in the pool for two weeks to get every drop right – an irony that wasn't lost on him.

In 1972, he painted Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which in 2018 set a new record for a painting by a living artist sold at auction. It fetched $90.3 million with Christie's in New York. And the comparisons with earlier artists didn't end with the use of technology. In leaving his native Yorkshire and “gloomy” London for California, Hockney has been compared with the painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Van Gogh and Gauguin – and later Matisse and Dufy, says The Times.

David Hockney is a national treasure

And while Portrait of an Artist represents the intersection of the two periods with which Hockney is most often associated – the “swimming pool period”, beginning in the 1960s, and the “double portraits” of the 1970s, these represent “a relatively small slice of his overall production”, notes the paper in its obituary. Hockney's more recent landscapes of northern France, including a 90-metre frieze called A Year in Normandie, are a case in point. That series of paintings can be viewed at the Serpentine Galleries in London until 23 August.

“I can't think of an artist so loved by millions today,” writes Andrew Marr in The New Statesman. “The man is gone, but the pictures live on. ‘Spring cannot be cancelled' was one of his more recent slogans. Nor can David Hockney.”

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British billionaire Joe Lewis's art collection could fetch millions disproves the notion that establishing a world-class art collection and amassing a fortune as a financial trader have little in common. The former Tottenham Hotspur owner's art collection is heading for sale with Sotheby's in London next month, where it is expected to make at least £150 million in total. That would make it, in some way, the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold in London, surpassing the £101 million record set last September by that of Pauline Karpidas, the widow of a Greek shipping magnate. “The range and quality [of the artworks for sale] show the incomparable ambition and sophistication of Joe as a collector, and also the assertiveness and boldness that he has always displayed as a currency dealer,” Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby's Europe, tells The Times.

Highlights of the Joe Lewis sale

Highlights of the Joe Lewis sale include a full-length portrait of Gertrud Loew, who was a young woman of fin-de-siècle Viennese society, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1902. Loew, later known as Gertha Felsovanyi, left Austria for the US in 1939 on account of her Jewish ancestry. During her absence, the painting was sold under duress and acquired by Gustav Klimt's son Gustav Ucicky, eventually ending up in the collection of the Klimt Foundation. It was later sold as part of a settlement between the Foundation and Loew's heirs. Sotheby's expects it to sell for around £30 million.

Another highlight is the sculpture Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, created in wax by Edgar Degas in about 1880 and cast in bronze in the 1920s, after the artist's death. That one is expected to fetch £25 million. Amedeo Modigliani's 1918 portrait Homme à la pipe is valued at up to £18 million, as is Egon Schiele's Danaë from 1909. Among the more recent works, Two Studies for Self-Portrait, painted by Francis Bacon in 1977, is valued at £12 million, and Woman in a Grey Sweater, painted by Lucien Freud in the late 1980s, is valued at £4 million.

Joe Lewis, who was born above a pub in Bow in 1937, has made and lost fortunes during his long career as a restaurateur-turned-currency trader. He cashed in when his bet that the pound would be forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism came good in 1992. Then, years later in 2008, he lost around $1.2 billion buying shares in Bear Stearns, right up until the moment the Wall Street investment bank collapsed. It was, according to a MoneyWeek article from the time, “one of the most misguided gambles Wall Street has ever seen”. That perhaps explains why this time Lewis tested the waters in March, when he offered through Sotheby's four paintings from the School of London – two by Freud, one by Bacon and another by Leon Kossoff. Together, they doubled their combined low estimate to realise a total of £35.8 million. That is as clear a sign as any that, with the upcoming sale, he might just be on to a winner.

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In the second series of the television series Mad Men, set in the early 1960s, advertising maven Don Draper and his wife, Betty, are taken to Rome by Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton Hotels group, to promote the latter's new hotel – the Cavalieri Hilton. Admittedly, the series was shot on a Hollywood set, but it is worth visiting the real-life Cavalieri Hilton – today the Rome Cavalieri, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel – to find out for yourself why it is regarded as the company's flagship hotel.

Rome Cavalieri is situated on Rome's highest hilltop, from which you can enjoy panoramic views of the city. Rome is, of course, famous for its many galleries and museums. But you don't even have to step outside the hotel to enjoy art and culture. Close to a thousand treasures, owned by the hotel's owners, are on display throughout the corridors and lobby. It is perhaps the best art collection displayed in any hotel anywhere in the world. The masterpieces to be found adorning the walls include Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Odysseus finds Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, painted around 1725. The array of sculptures, tapestries and antiques include some unexpected surprises – ranging from costumes once worn by the acclaimed ballet dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev to a commode that was owned by the king of Poland, Augustus III (1733 to 1763).

Inside the luxurious Rome Cavalieri

You are, of course, welcome to admire the artworks at your leisure. But the hotel also offer the option of joining a guided tour with an art historian. And while the paintings are special, they aren't the only things to give Rome Cavalieri its style and swagger. There's the sweeping spiral staircase in the lobby for starters and the upmarket wallpaper. Everything, in other words, that signifies wealth and opulence. But beneath the Italian glamour you will find an American dedication to detail, service and hospitality. The seventh-floor room in which I stayed was large, bright and it had a balcony that afforded a wonderful view over the Eternal City.

I also took full advantage of the fact that my room gave me access to the Imperial Club. This is a drawing room intended as a place of respite for a select number of the hotel's guests. Here, I was able to have breakfast as well as curl up with a good book, while sipping complimentary drinks on the sofa. All the rooms are not just comfortable, but outright luxurious as you would expect. But the cream of the crop are Rome Cavalieri's split-level penthouse suites. They are filled with their own artworks, including limited-edition Andy Warhols, and the living room is furnished with couches and other items that were designed for his own apartment by the late fashion-design icon Karl Lagerfeld. Perhaps the biggest attraction are the large terraces on the upper floor of the suite. As well as a covered area, ideal for dining, these contain Jacuzzis for lounging in while you admire the beauty of Rome.

Dine at Rome's only three-star Michelin restaurant

As well as the outstanding accommodation, the Rome Cavalieri has a lot to offer lovers of great food. The rooftop restaurant, La Pergola, is Rome's first – and only – place to be awarded three Michelin stars. This restaurant is open Tuesday to Saturday and it is in such high demand among Rome's cognoscenti that it is typically booked two to three months in advance – although hotel guests can pop in outside dining hours for an aperitivo.

The hotel's other restaurant, L'Uliveto, also offers a wide range of top-notch food and I particularly enjoyed the grilled Mediterranean octopus.

The pool bar where tennis legend Serena Williams found love

The facilities at Rome Cavalieri are extensive. There are two swimming pools – one indoor and an outdoor pool that is open in the spring and summer. The hotel also has a gym, tennis courts and various walking trails.

The latter is a favourite with the multitude of tennis stars who stay at Rome Cavalieri during the annual Rome Masters tennis tournament (the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, as it is officially known), which is typically held in May every year. Both tennis stars and fans appreciate the fact that the hotel offers them easy access to the Olympic stadium where the event is held – along with the possibility of other unexpected surprises. Tennis legend Serena Williams first met her future husband, the technology investor and co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, at Rome Cavalieri's pool bar, while Williams was competing at the 2015 Masters. So, it was perhaps not surprising that when Ohanian proposed 18 months later, during a surprise trip to Rome, he booked the pool and the bar, as well as arranging for the staff to strew the entire area with rose petals.

Matthew was a guest of Rome Cavalieri, where rooms start from €330 a night. For more information, visit romecavalieri.com or call +39 06 3509 2031.

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The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026, written by Dr Clare McAndrew, the founder of Arts Economics, a research firm, has added some detail to what we largely knew already – that the global art market returned to growth in 2025 following two years of falling sales values.

Global sales last year rose 4% year-on-year to an estimated $59.6 billion. However, that was still below the peak in 2022 when the art market rebounded after the pandemic and the number of transactions rose by just 2%.

The gains, which finally came in the second half of 2025, “were driven by renewed confidence… and strength at the high end [of the art market] in particular”, says Noah Horowitz, CEO of Art Basel, which organises art fairs around the world.

Sales at public auctions rose 9% from a year earlier, but much of the activity was confined to works priced above $10 million. Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-1916), for instance, sold for an astonishing $236 million last November with Sotheby's in New York. That's the second-highest-ever price paid for an artwork at auction.

In the dealer sector, sales rose 2% to an estimated $34.8bn, reversing two years of declines. Private sales at auction houses, however, dipped 5%. So, the art market recovery wasn't felt across the board.

Britain is a major art market

The UK has hung on to its position as the second-largest art market in the world, accounting for 18% of global sales by value ($10.5 billion), the same as in 2024. China, in third place, saw its share decline by one percentage point to 14% – a symptom, perhaps, of its struggling economy and property sector. Activity in other Asian and emerging markets also increased.

The US remains the titan of the art world. Its $26 billion in sales in 2025, up 5% year-on-year, translated into a 44% share of the art market – a one percentage-point uptick from 2024. Together, the US, Britain and China accounted for 76% of global sales by value.

“Policy unpredictability”, as the report puts it, from the White House kept the market guessing in 2025. Imports of art and antiques to the US, which fuels some major sales, rose 13% in value to $9.9 billion (and exports fell 1%) as buyers and sellers tried to negotiate their way around US tariffs.

This year has brought yet more uncertainty due to the conflict in the Middle East. “Markets do not move in isolation,” says Horowitz. “They reflect the ambitions, perspectives, pressures and uncertainties of the world around them.” Will the war be enough to reverse last year's uneven recovery? We don't yet know. The art market, McAndrew tells the Financial Times, operates in a “volatile geopolitical environment, particularly regarding cross-border trade, the full implications of which are still unfolding in 2026”.

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Last week was Marquee Week in London, which traditionally gets the spring season underway for the art market. And what better way to do that than to start with a collection of spring-themed prints produced by David Hockney on his iPad in 2011? The 16 digital drawings in The Arrival of Spring sale sold for a total of £4.5 million with Sotheby's last Thursday. What was more, they all sold for well above their pre-sale high estimate.

Hockney produced the vernal scenes in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, and the most expensive of the bunch captures the seasonal rush of verdant vegetation, with trees creating the backdrop. It sold for £486,400, including the buyer's premium – well above the £120,000 high estimate.

Sotheby's realised £154.1 million in total across its four major sales. Works by Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi, Anselm Kiefer, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Lucien Freud and Andy Warhol all passed under the hammer, but the highest-selling lot was a self-portrait painted by Francis Bacon in 1972.

Not to be outdone, Christie's total for the week came to £245.2 million, a 58% increase on the haul from last year's sales. The auction house also claimed the bragging rights to having sold the most expensive artwork of the week – King and Queen, Henry Moore's sculpture of a seated royal couple, cast in 1952-1953. Moore took for his inspiration a limestone carving in the British Museum of an ancient Egyptian ruler and his wife. “It is a strange and hypnotic work, the distorted heads evoking symbols of ancient royalty – the beak, the bird, the crown,” says Christie's.

Many of the same names that appeared in Sotheby's catalogues for Marquee Week also appeared at Christie's, including Giacometti, Freud, Warhol and many more. And the remaining three spots in the top-five highest-selling artworks of the week (after King and Queen and the Bacon self-portrait) were also sold by Christie's. Wassily Kandinsky's Le rond rouge (1939) fetched slightly more than £12.5 million, while Les grâces naturelles (c.1961) by René Magritte and Pablo Picasso's Le peintre et son modèle (1964) both sold for £8.5 million. They were all sold at Christie's 20/21 Evening Sales, which made £197.4 million.

Does a good Marquee Week mean the art market is bouncing back?

Bringing up the rear was the third of the “big three” auction houses, Phillips, which realised a total of £20.7 million from its Modern & Contemporary Art day and evening sales in London. Hammershoi's Interior of Woman Placing Branches in Vase on Table from 1900 and Mao (1973) by Warhol both sold for £1.6 million and both fell a little short of their upper estimates. Banksy's Happy Choppers (2006) fetched £1.5 million – the third-highest price in the evening sale. Still, Phillips remained upbeat. That bidders came from 30 countries “[demonstrated] continued resilience in the market for exceptional works of modern, post-war and contemporary Art,” it said.

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Collectors of rare books, and of those written by the Brontë sisters in particular, won’t mind that Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights takes considerable liberties with Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel, published in 1847 under her nom de plume, Ellis Bell.

Or that, in the words of The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, it has turned it into “a 20-page fashion shoot of relentless silliness”.

“Major screen adaptations have a long history of reigniting interest in literary originals, and this latest Wuthering Heights is no exception,” says Charles Ashton, a director at Cambridge-based auction house Cheffins.

“With an A-list cast and media frenzy, the film is introducing a younger, Gen-Z audience to the wonder of the Brontës,” he says.

That can only be a good thing for prices of related first editions and rare-book collecting more generally – even if there might not be quite so many “bodices ripped to shreds”, as Bradshaw puts it, in the original text.

Establishing provenance is important when it comes to starting a collection of rare first editions, as is the condition of the books and the printing editions.

“First editions remain the pinnacle, but early later editions, original cloth bindings and works published under the Bell pseudonyms are all highly desirable,” says Ashton.

“Other things to look out for are any author-inscribed title pages (which would be a great rarity), ownership signatures of famous people of the day or associates of the Brontës – or, indeed, any early edition in the original binding in really good condition,” he says.

A couple of years ago, Cheffins sold a first edition of Wuthering Heights for £46,000, along with a copy of Anne Brontë’s 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for £13,000 and an early edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë for £2,800.

Beware of unscrupulous dealers in rare books

Collectors also need to be wary of rare books that have been “overly restored or interfered with”, says Ashton.

The book’s authenticity can be called into question if it has been “repaired many times” and any inscriptions contained therein should also be verified as being real.

“There have been scenarios in the past where unscrupulous dealers may have added inscriptions, bringing up the values of the books, and these are not always genuine,” he says. “It’s really important… for people to do their homework before they buy.”

First editions do pop up for sale at the larger auction houses from time to time.

Sotheby’s has a “first American edition” of Wuthering Heights from 1848 for sale at £10,000. But a “young or new collector” might be better off keeping an eye on the more regional auctioneers, where prices can sometimes be “more affordable”, says Ashton.

“The books which we sell at Cheffins tend to come from large country houses where families are downsizing, or house clearance scenarios, which can often bring about some really exciting finds.”

Other highly collectable rare books

Other genres of books are also highly collectable. Science fiction and fantasy novels, for example, were some of the most sought-after at US-based Heritage Auctions’ rare book sale in December.

A three-volume first edition set of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien from the mid-1950s (pictured) sold for $250,000, including the buyer’s premium – more than double the previous auction record for an unsigned set of the works.

The three books in their original dust jackets – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King – were listed by Heritage as being in “very fine, unrestored condition”.

“Long recognised as the defining achievement of 20th-century fantasy literature, the record-setting result underscores the growing recognition of science fiction and fantasy as foundational pillars of serious rare book collecting,” the auction house said.

Elsewhere in the same sale, a rare autograph manuscript note written by Tolkien in the author’s distinctive hand in the form of a late-stage revision to The Return of the King, fetched $87,500, including fees.

In addition, a first edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes from 1914, sold for $37,500; an inscribed initial copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950) made $20,000; and a first edition copy of Dune (1965), Frank Herbert’s seminal novel that “reshaped modern science fiction”, sold for $13,125. The 610 lots in the sale made $2.1 million.

A more recent classic is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from 1997. Auction house Sotheby’s has a “first paperback edition” to “buy now” on its website, priced at £15,000.

“Combining cultural significance, scarcity, and strong... demand, this first paperback edition stands as an essential acquisition for collectors of modern literature and landmark first editions,” says the auction house.

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Of the major art fairs to visit London every year, Frieze London (14-18 October 2026) is the elite event – serious, monied and glamorous. The London Art Fair, held last week, is a little more relaxed. And welcoming the neophytes to the world of art collecting is the Affordable Art Fair – smiling, approachable and fun.

The first edition of the Affordable Art Fair was held in Battersea Park in October 1999 and it has since spread to 16 cities worldwide, with Houston, Texas, added to the list this year. But there are, in fact, three Affordable Art Fairs held in London – two in Battersea (spring and autumn) down by the River Thames and one in Hampstead in north London. The next Fair is in Battersea from 4-8 March 2026. Last week, I met up with Hugo Barclay, the Affordable Art Fair’s UK fair director, to find out more.

“We’re predominantly gallery-led, which means galleries take a space at the fair to promote their artists,” says Barclay. Artworks from 900-1,000 artists are typically on show across the galleries, so there is “a huge amount of stuff to see”. The Affordable Art Fair also goes out of its way not to make art “intimidating”. First-time buyers can buy a print for as little as £100, while the top end of the price range for artworks is £10,000. “So, the idea is you can afford at least something. However deep your pockets are, there’s going to be something for everybody,” he says.

Galleries have to “rotate 90% of their roster of artists” between the Spring and Autumn editions to keep the offering “fresh”. And galleries must also put prices on artworks, because negotiating a sale with a gallery can be “daunting” for the uninitiated. Can you still haggle, I ask.

That’s a “conversation you have with the galleries”, says Barclay. It “depends on the gallery and their relationship with the artist”, as well as demand for similar pieces.

The Affordable Art Fair is a grand day out in London

However, the Fair isn’t all about art. “It’s a day out,” he says. Visitors can buy “nice food and we do some talks, we do tours and workshops, as well as in the evenings to bring in the late crowd”. Weekends, in particular, are family-orientated. The Fair has activity packs for children, who can follow an “art trail” to learn about art.

Learning about art as a child wasn’t a problem for Barclay. Both of his parents were artists, who moved from Britain to southwest France. “One of my first purchases was a Sayed Raza,” an Indian artist who spent six decades working in France from the 1950s. “It’s such a beautiful, abstract work and I guess it just resonated with me,” he says. But buying art doesn’t have to be “love at first sight”. Sometimes, you see a work and it connects with you and sometimes, it doesn’t.

There has to be a “level of pragmatism” involved when “unpacking stories”, he says. Put another way, sometimes an artwork grows on you. Barclay now lives in Edinburgh with his collection of 60-odd pieces.

The appetite for art is growing

Can the lower end of the art market in London support three Affordable Art Fairs, I ask. “It’s worked so far,” he says. “We had our best-ever Fair in terms of art sales in October [at the autumn edition in Battersea]. We generated £5.5 million-worth of art sales. The media on the whole tends to focus on the top end, but actually, that isn’t a reflection of the whole market.” The Affordable Art Fair has commissioned market researchers ArtTactic to produce a report. “Everything that is going on in the world, it can create anxiety.” Barclay feels the therapeutic nature of buying art is also helping to drive sales at the Fairs. “There’s definitely an appetite,” he says.

And do the Battersea and Hampstead Fairs draw different crowds? “From what I hear from galleries,” the Hampstead crowd is “a little more discerning for whatever reasons,” while Battersea attracts people from the local area as well as Surrey – often “slightly younger families” who may be looking to add a splash of colour to a blank canvas they have bought in the form of a new home. The Fair also runs shuttle buses from Sloane Square, “so we get the Chelsea locals who come over as well”.

The dos and don’ts of collecting art

So, what are the “dos and don’ts” for anyone visiting the Affordable Art Fair for the first time? “Don’t come in a rush” is the first thing. “Come with an open-minded friend. I don’t think art is necessarily about you and the art in isolation,” says Barclay. “It’s about the dialogue with other people [about the art].” And the third thing is “probably about honing your taste”, he says. “Naturally, when you have 900 to 1,000 artists under one roof, there’s going to be a decent portion, possibly 80%, that maybe don’t resonate with you. And that’s okay.” But by filtering out those works, you can discover what you do like.

Can buying a work of art be viewed as an investment? “I’d probably steer away from investment when it comes to starting,” says Barclay. But do go out and explore. One of the pitfalls is assuming you can start collecting “from your sofa” via online auctions. “There’s nothing better than seeing work in person and talking to the gallery. At an art fair, you can do that at scale.” There may also be a visiting gallery from South Korea, for instance. You wouldn’t usually have that kind of opportunity on your doorstep. A quarter of exhibiting galleries “come from abroad”.

Another benefit of the Affordable Art Fair is being able to view works from recent graduates, particularly at the Autumn edition at Battersea in October. “We work with an external curator, who’ll go to lots of art schools and select some artists who she wants to showcase and then we give them their first platform,” he says. That’s a “really great opportunity” for the graduates to establish a name for themselves, because 20,000 people are going to see their work first-hand.

“You’re not going to get that on most high streets.” But “do start local,” says Barclay. “Most people don’t realise how much is available on their doorstep from a cultural perspective.”

Collectors can visit “open studios” to see and chat with the artists as they work and join mailing lists for galleries to find out when their shows are opening. Barclay is a trustee at Edinburgh Printmakers, a 60-year-old organisation.

“This is a good place to see exhibitions, see the artists, maybe do a printmaking course,” he says. “That’s a great way to hone your taste.” But otherwise, the Affordable Art Fair is “a really convenient place to see a lot” at once. If you are “curious and open-minded, definitely come along”.

The Battersea Spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair runs 4-8 March 2026, when artists Christine Relton and Tom Marine – who go by a joint artist name of Relton Marine – will be creating a bespoke installation. The Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead, runs 6-10 May 2026. Adult general admission is £14, visit affordableartfair.com for details.

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The winter of 2024/2025 ran on for an unusually long time in the fine-art market, which really only woke from its hibernation as summer got going. In May, as the flowers were blooming, Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Grande tête mince (1955), which had been valued at $70million, sent chills through the auction market when Sotheby’s found wealthy buyers were still sleeping. Then, the fine-art market woke up.

In July, Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day (1730s) sold for £31.9million with Christie’s in London to set a new high-price record for the artist. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the summer was also when the stock market took off and as the year progressed, wealthy collectors didn’t look back. Nine of the top ten most expensive artworks sold at auction in 2025 were sold last autumn.

In November, Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958) sold for $62.2million with Christie’s, which helped the auction house to its most profitable sales series in New York in three years, with a total of $964.5million. November was also the month rival Sotheby’s brought the hammer down on the most expensive artwork of the year – Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1916 – pictured) by Gustav Klimt, which sold for an eye-watering $236.4 million to set a new high-price auction record for a work of modern art and the second-highest price fetched for any artwork sold at auction ever. It was a standout year for works by the Austrian painter. Paintings by Klimt also fetched the second- and third-highest prices for artworks sold at auction in 2025. It was the perfect way to toast what was the opening night of Sotheby’s new headquarters in New York.

Fine-art market bidders get younger

In the end, what had looked to be another humdrum year at the start turned out to be anything but. Projected global fine art sales at Sotheby’s rose 15% from a year earlier to $4.3billion and across all departments auction sales rose 26% year-on-year to $5.7billion. The corresponding projected figure for Christie’s is $4.7billion, an 8% rise on 2024. And Phillips, the third of the “big three” auction houses, reported $725million in auction sales and global sales (with private sales added in) rose by a tenth from the previous year to $927million.

All three also reported rising demand from younger buyers. A third of buyers at Phillips last year were making their first purchases, while “Millennials and Gen Z” (aged 45 and younger) accounted for 40% of purchases at the auction house’s Dropshop online marketplace. Similarly, at Christie’s 46% of new bidders were “Millennials or younger”, a 5% year-on-year increase, while the auction house’s female client base grew by 10%. New buyers were mainly drawn to the luxury goods sales, including jewellery, handbags and wine, accounting for 38% of purchases – a trend confirmed by Sotheby’s, where 29% of bidders were aged under 40, although, perhaps surprisingly given prices, this cohort also accounted for 17% of buyers of fine art. It’s a trend the auction houses will like to see continue in 2026.

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Boarded-up shop fronts and permanently closed department stores have become a common sight across Britain in recent years. As large chains collapse, online retailers gain market share and out-of-town retail parks grow, city centres are at risk of becoming ghost towns. How can the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick maker survive changing thoroughfares?

High streets have been facing years of decline, exacerbated by Covid, as consumers’ confidence struggled amid the cost-of-living crisis, high inflation and high interest rates. This has forced more people to shop for cheaper deals online and on second-hand marketplace platforms such as Vinted and eBay.

“Britain’s high streets are in the middle of a painful reinvention,” says Tom Gray from brand experience agency Imagination. “The 11th-hour rescues of familiar names like Claire’s and Poundland may offer a glimmer of a lifeline, but in reality mark the end of a retail era built on uniformity and convenience.”

There is now a discernible shift towards a “post-stuff era” where “over-consumption, sameness and algorithmic e-commerce have dulled the excitement of discovery”, says Christopher Sanderson from strategic consultancy The Future Laboratory. “Retailers have failed to evolve beyond the ‘sell, sell, sell’ model, and consumers are now seeking emotional connection, cocreation and community.”

These advantages now belong to online retailers, argues Gray. Bricks-and-mortar shops “must offer something digital retail can’t – a sense of experience, emotion and belonging… The retailers that will thrive are reimagining their spaces as cultural and community hubs, not just transactional zones.”

Reimagining the high street as a creative experience

“Retailers must think like curators, not shopkeepers,” adds Sanderson. That involves thinking about retail as a way to connect people. Successful high-street models could focus more on cinemas, museums and pop-up events, transforming traditional shops into exhibition spaces, particularly if they aim to attract teens and 20-somethings, who are leading the charge to revive shopping centres. According to a 2024 report by analytics firm RetailNext, Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are more than twice as likely to shop in a physical clothing shop each week as the average consumer in Britain (28% versus 13%).

Le Bon Marché department store in Paris has taken a novel approach to retail by staging a theatre after it closes. In London, Victoria Beckham has curated an exhibition of her favourite artists at her eponymous brand’s shop, while LVMH’s Louis Vuitton has turned some of its shops around the globe into immersive art spaces through collaborations with artists such as Yayoi Kusama. The French luxury brand has also built a 30-metre-high shop shaped like a ship called The Louis in Shanghai, with dining and exhibition areas. It has even become a tourist attraction.

Prada-owned Miu Miu has launched several “storyliving” pop-ups, such as the one in Covent Garden last year, where the Italian fashion brand gave away free copies of classic novels by female authors.

“These are not gimmicks,” says Gray, but “blueprints for the future… The next decade will see the high street evolve from a place of purchase to a place of participation where the future won’t be purely commercial; it will also be social, creative and experiential. The winners will be those who see their stores as platforms for brand-building and IRL [in real life] customer engagement where commerce, culture and community overlap.”

Will small high street businesses survive?

Shops are likely to keep disappearing, however – for now, at least. High rents, often the highest cost for small businesses; regulation that has “increased in length and complexity” and can deter refurbishments; and the continued draw of online shopping are still headwinds, says Jean-Baptiste Wautier, an investor and co-founder of the Wautier Family Office.

With these macro trends, it is probable that high streets will continue to shrink in terms of point of sale and only favour big brands, which could hamper local businesses. “Only a major real-estate shock, like a major price drop and major deregulation, could invert this trend,” says Wautier.

Still, it’s hardly all gloom. Even though challenges remain, retail rentals rose 2.3% in the first half of 2025 across all sub-sectors and vacancy rates declined, according to estate agent Knight Frank. Retail investment is also shifting as “prime yields on high street properties have strengthened, and the best spaces are seeing competitive bidding”, says Sophie Levenson from Knight Frank.

The central London estates managed by real-estate investment trust Shaftesbury Capital provide a “glimpse of what all high streets would hope to achieve”, says Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell. “A carefully curated mix of different stores, from brands to unique retailers that appeal to the local demographic, mixed with a diverse menu of bars, restaurants and cafes. These experiences give people a reason to linger longer, and offices and residential spaces provide consistent footfall. It looks effortless, but every decision is carefully weighed, and every tenant [is] supported to thrive,” she adds.

Still, for all high streets to flourish, government support is crucial, and policy needs to shift from retail preservation to cultural regeneration. “Support should prioritise mixed-use zoning, flexible leasing for pop-ups and independent brands, and incentives for creative, wellness and community-led operators. Recalibrating business rates to reward [their] cultural contribution and [impact on sustainability] would better reflect how high streets now create value,” says Sanderson.

While town planners need to allow spaces to evolve to meet the shifting demands, “for investors, the upside lies in the infrastructure around retail, from tech-enabled platforms and urban logistics to regeneration-led property plays that blend commercial returns with social value”, says Livia Bernadini, CEO of retail technology company Future Platforms.

Still, spending power remains a key component of rejuvenating the high street, as people can’t spend as much as they used to. “Even though salaries went up (partially due to government pressure put on businesses to pay more), it’s completely disproportional to the rising cost of living… In addition, even though minimum wages have been rising”, fiscal drag continues, says Iván Marchena, an economist from broker Just2Trade.

The high street brands likely to thrive

High-street shopping’s future lies not in competing with online retail but in enhancing its offering. The brands that succeed will treat AI not as automation, says Sanderson, “but as augmentation, used as a tool for empathy, intuition and cultural resonance”.

The likes of Next (LSE: NXT), a bellwether for Britain’s retail industry, is a case in point. The clothing and homeware retailer has adapted well to technology and changes in consumption. It leveraged its bricks-and-mortar chain and catalogue infrastructure that included warehouses, delivery networks and consumer data to build a strong online platform that even hosts other brands.

“True omni-channel brands like Next are likely to continue to thrive because they understand how to harness brand, ease of use, availability and tech to their and their shoppers’ advantage,” says Hewson. “Brands that can continue to appeal to their shopper, to either evolve as their shopper ages or shift to appeal to a new shopper, will survive, but they need to have a clear USP [unique selling point] and never lose sight of the day after tomorrow.”

JD Wetherspoon (LSE: JDW), one of Britain’s most popular pub chains, can say it has remained loyal to its brand and customers as a bargain boozer with the same decor and menu in every venue.

Despite grappling with high energy and labour costs, the group posted a 4.5% year-on-year rise in sales to £2.12 billion for fiscal 2025 and plans to open 15 managed pubs and about 15 franchised ones this financial year. It is also planning to expand into mainland Europe for the first time with a pub at Alicante airport in Spain.

Brendan Gulston, co-manager of the WS Gresham House UK Multi Cap Income Fund, sees structural growth in “low-ticket experiential leisure” companies such as Hollywood Bowl (LSE: BOWL), which is “taking wallet share from consumers compared with traditional hospitality segments”. Firms that cater to niche hobbies and enthusiasts, such as Angling Direct (Aim: ANG), Britain’s leading fishing tackle and equipment retailer, are another “strong” area.

Angling, for instance, “benefits from both a loyal customer base as well as an omnichannel proposition”, and “ongoing e-commerce adoption/channel shift is a supportive dynamic for growth”.

Overcoming the doom and gloom

“These companies have delivered strong operating performance despite the broader challenges facing UK consumers, yet the sector as a whole continues to trade at depressed valuations,” Gulston says. “Crucially, their success is not dependent on a rapid recovery in consumer confidence or the macro environment, but if conditions do improve, we believe earnings will gain an additional tailwind – creating the potential for a sharp rebound in share prices and a rerating from current lows.”

Darius McDermott, managing director of FundCalibre, believes the outlook for household spending “isn’t as pessimistic as some might like to think”. Lower inflation coupled with strong income growth could boost households, which would in turn lift UK consumer stocks. “This creates a clear value opportunity as the outlook for consumers gradually improves,” McDermott says.

“Artemis UK Select Fund, one of the standout UK equity funds with a strong long-term record, has more than 20% invested in consumer discretionary stocks,” and counts Marks & Spencer (LSE: MKS) among its top holdings. “VT Tyndall Unconstrained UK Income, which has a bias towards mid caps, shows similar conviction, with almost a quarter of its portfolio in discretionary names.”

For investors looking further down the market-cap scale, McDermott points to the Premier Miton Tellworth UK Smaller Companies Fund, which has allocated 18% to the sector. “With UK retail names heavily domestically focused, small- and mid-cap funds, in particular, can provide an effective way to tap into the recovery story,” he adds.

Reports of the death of the high street appear exaggerated. As thoroughfares become more omnichannel and experience-led, high streets are set to remain vital hubs for shopping, communities and local culture. They will still, however, require a benign consumer economy to thrive.

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What do you buy somebody for Christmas who already has everything? Perhaps that somebody is a collector with a particularly niche interest. In both cases, the high street is effectively ruled out as a place to do your shopping. Even online retailers won’t be much help. But there is another hunting ground that tends to get overlooked in favour of the big shops, and that is auction houses.

Of course, the run-up to the big day is fraught enough without having to worry about waving a bidding paddle around or watching the clock count down on an online auction only to be pipped by a higher bid at the last second. That is why the “buy now” marketplaces offered by a handful of reputable auctioneers can be particularly interesting. Take Sotheby’s for example.

Christmas gifts for collectors at buy now marketplaces

“What sets Sotheby’s Buy Now marketplace apart is our curation,” says Cynthia Houlton, global head of demand generation and marketplace at Sotheby’s. You can find the marketplace on Sotheby’s website. Simply peruse the listings and add items to your basket. Just remember that VAT is not included in the listed pricing and the marketplace is global, so some items may take a little longer to get to you.

“Every piece is sourced to be the best of the best, from rare first editions and exceptional jewellery to objects with remarkable provenance,” says Houlton. “Clients come to us for treasures they simply can’t find anywhere else – whether that’s a coveted vintage Rolex watch, a gemstone-encrusted Van Cleef & Arpels necklace, or a Gibson guitar signed by Paul McCartney. It’s the destination for truly unforgettable holiday gifting.”

That McCartney guitar can be had for £21,368, and the Van Cleef & Arpels necklace is priced at £418,742. If your intended recipient has been particularly nice this year, perhaps they deserve an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance wristwatch, with an asking price of £447,863. For James Bond fans, Sotheby’s has a collection of first edition 007 novels for £84,281.

CJ Hendry's new juju collectables

In a similar vein, Dropshop allows living artists to sell new, limited-edition creations directly to collectors on a “buy now” basis through auction house Phillips. “What makes Dropshop truly special is its direct connection to living artists – each drop is a unique moment that brings the artist’s vision straight to the collector,” says Christine Miele, retail sales director for e-commerce at Phillips. “In today’s art world, that immediacy and intimacy are more valuable than ever before.”

The artist CJ Hendry is returning to the platform, having helped launch it a couple of years ago, with a collection of “juju” collectable toys that currently make up a “towering” Christmas tree in Hong Kong. In January, collectors will be invited to “adopt” a juju, with the proceeds benefiting a local charity. “It’s a bold, playful series in which fine art meets collectible culture,” says Miele.

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Summer is over, and the all-important autumn auction sales are upon us. For auction house Sotheby’s, this season is even more important than usual. In July, it reported a pre-tax loss of $248 million for the previous 12 months, double that in 2024. So, every sale counts – or does it?

The trouble that Sotheby’s is facing, like all auction houses, is the triple threat from political uncertainty, relatively high interest rates and shrinking demand from art collectors in Asia. That means consignors have been “loath to part with their most prized artworks – unsure of being able to attract top prices”, says The New York Times.

Fortunately, Sotheby’s has been able to get its hands on the $400 million art collection of Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics tycoon who died in June. It is selling the core of the collection in an evening sale on 18 November in New York and, of the 24 lots, it is the portrait of “a striking young woman with dark hair and pale skin, clad in a flowing, gauzy white dress, and patterned blue robe” that has attracted the most excitement, says Sarah Cascone on Artnet News. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-1916) by Gustav Klimt depicts the daughter of one of the Austrian artist’s most important patrons. If Sotheby’s is able to sell it for more than the $150 million it says the painting is worth, it would “obliterate” the current $108.4 million record price for a painting by Klimt, which was set by the sale of Lady With a Fan in 2023.

A roll of the dice for Sotheby's

The danger for Sotheby’s, as The New York Times notes, is that it has guaranteed the Lauder estate a minimum price for the painting. It is unclear whether Sotheby’s has offset that risk through third-party guarantors, which is standard practice. But still, “the question I would ask is if Sotheby’s is making money from this. Or are they losing money to create an appearance of confidence,” Jacob King, an art adviser, tells the paper. In March, Sotheby’s failed to sell Alberto Giacometti’s 1955 sculpture Grande tête mince, the “$70 million star” of the spring season. Art-market watchers will be watching to see if the confidence Sotheby’s has sought to convey with the guarantee is more than an illusion.

Last week, Christie’s offered a ray of hope that there are still deep-pocketed buyers out there, in Asia. It sold Buste de femme (1944) by Pablo Picasso in Hong Kong for HK$196.75 million (£18.9 million) – well above the HK$106 million (£10.1 million) estimate. Coincidentally, Lucien Paris is selling a second portrait of Picasso’s wartime muse, Dora Maar, on 24 October. It is the first time Buste de femme au chapeau à fleurs (1943), conservatively valued at €8 million, has been seen in public for 80 years.

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“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted on social-media platform X in February. It was an interesting choice of words, not least because those words have been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor, who, as The Guardian noted at the time, also “rode roughshod” over his country’s constitution.

But it does perhaps help to explain the US president’s, some would say, unhealthy interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark for the United States. And as for Canada, it was only on 27 May that Trump was reminding Canadians they would pay “zero dollars” to be covered by his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence shield if only they would “become our cherished 51st state”. Otherwise, their share of the bill would come to $61 billion, according to the man in the White House.

Napoleon, who was involved in his own real estate deal with the US in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, would probably approve.

Making America great

On 6 June, Trump got an opportunity to inspect an important historical artefact from that transaction up close when Sotheby’s in New York unveiled the green leather portfolio that is believed to have held the paperwork that transferred 800,000 square miles to the fledgling US. The land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains not only comprises the state of Louisiana today, but much of the territory of another 14 states and, as Trump may be interested to note, chunks of modern-day Canada. In return, the US paid France $15 million – a bargain at four cents an acre.

The portfolio displays in gold lettering the name of Francois Barbé-Marbois, the man who led the negotiations on behalf of Napoleon in order to, in the words of his boss, “prevent [the British from] ruling America as they rule Asia”. The papers it contained are today kept in the Washington Archives.

Sotheby’s put the portfolio on display to drum up interest in other Napoleonic relics from the collection of Pierre-Jean Chalençon (a French television personality and collector) that are appearing in its sale on 25 June in Paris. They include Napoleon’s hand-written codicil that distributed his “modest” possessions to his followers, which the deposed emperor wrote “in a moment of illness, paranoia and isolation” while in exile in Saint Helena, says Sotheby’s.

That is expected to fetch up to €500,000. There is also the ceremonial “sword and stick” used in his coronation in 1804, which has been given a pre-sale estimate of up to €400,000, and the grand portrait of the emperor in his robes, from the studio of François-Pascal-Simon Baron Gérard and estimated to sell for up to €300,000. But perhaps Trump, a fan of statement headwear, would be most interested in the headline lot – Napoleon’s bicorne hat, which the emperor wore en bataille, that is with the wings parallel to his shoulders to ensure he stood out in the public eye as well as on the battlefield. It is valued at up to €800,000.

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In 2024, nearly $7.7 billion less was spent on art than the year before, that’s a 12% drop in global sales, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report. Despite this, the overall number of transactions increased by 3%.

So activity and appetite haven’t fallen, but increased. Spending is down, yes, but participation is up.

The market isn’t shrinking, it’s shifting. Buyers are buying differently. The market is actually moving fast. Not collapsing. Reconfiguring.

The 12% global decline is largely driven by China’s 31% drop. A $3.77 billion contraction in one region accounts for nearly half the total global fall.

The global 12% decline isn’t evenly distributed, it’s front-loaded. If we were to strip that single figure out, what remains is perhaps a quiet reconfiguration: energy redistributed into smaller segments, younger buyers, and more intimate transactions.

So we don’t know how much of what we’re seeing is real, and how much has been distorted by that c. $4 billion rupture in China. The rupture itself was driven by a spike in non-payment – up 41% in China in 2024 – leaving billions in agreed sales unpaid.

Was the China drop so severe that it threw off the initial dataset? And did UBS fully account for that before drawing conclusions about things like buyer age, artist profile, price brackets? I haven’t yet had a chance to check this with UBS, and there’s certainly no accusation, but I think the question is worth asking.

Excuse me if I’m misunderstanding how these reports are consolidated, I’m not an analyst, but when non-payment is this widespread, it starts to raise structural questions. If a sale was originally recorded at auction, but the payment never arrived, was that sale removed everywhere it appeared? Can we still trust the reported increase in younger buyers, or were those figures partly driven by sales that later defaulted? Can we still rely on the price bracket analysis, or were those numbers also shaped by transactions that never completed?

All this underscores the risks represented by the art market’s lack of regulation. Money, value, and intent can move through it without friction, oversight, or traceability, leaving the market open to both exploitation and corruption (through laundering). This is why art companies sometimes draw sudden institutional scrutiny, with banks freezing accounts or HMRC launching reviews. But this same lack of regulation is also what makes the system vulnerable to something else now playing out in real time: people agreeing to buy artworks, then not paying.

Trust is the basis of all relationships, not just in the art world. The global art market fundamentally relies on trust because it’s unregulated. In most regions, that trust still holds. But in China, it’s broken down. And when trust collapses in an unregulated system, the surrounding structures – legal, financial, cultural – can’t intervene. They’re not designed to. There’s no enforcement mechanism. No fallback. Just collapse. The financial rupture is a symptom of something deeper: a collapse in trust that threatens the stability of the unregulated nature of the market.

Perhaps this is an indictment on the zeitgeist more generally – culturally, we’re less accountable. There’s more anonymity, less traceability. People can write a terrible comment online and then disappear. The shift is psychological, relational. It’s not just the market, it’s the culture.

In the West, defaults are rare and taken seriously. In China, their rise signals something more serious: a market teetering on the edge of credibility.

Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips have already been scaling back. Christie’s cancelled its spring Hong Kong auction in 2024. Sotheby’s and Phillips have reduced the size and ambition of their China-based sales. Several Western auction houses are shifting their focus back to New York, London, and Paris, where enforcement is clearer and buyer confidence is stronger.

The rationale for further retreat is clear. A market where sales don’t convert to payment isn’t just unprofitable, it’s reputationally dangerous. You can’t afford defaults on top lots. You can’t build long-term confidence in a system that doesn’t honour its own transactions.

At this scale, non-payment destabilises everything: consignors lose faith, buyers hesitate, brands erode. And without regulation, when someone defaults, no authority steps in.

Unless something changes structurally in China, it’s likely that major Western houses will keep retreating from the market.

The art market thrives on discretion – prices, buyers, terms – much of it stays hidden. That makes it easier for buyers to overcommit, delay payment, disappear, or even use non-payment as a post-sale tactic.

Enforcement is left to individual institutions. Each auction house or gallery is responsible for chasing its own defaults. There’s no collective mechanism. No shared blacklist. A buyer can default in one place and keep bidding elsewhere.

Buyers’ behaviour is changing

Happily, and it strikes me this is no coincidence, there’s a recalibration happening lower down the market, where relationship remains at the centre: more sales at lower price points, more activity in quieter corners.

Sales of work under £5,000 are up 13%. Smaller dealers – those with annual turnover under $250,000 – saw a 17% rise. And that figure matters, because it’s structurally trustworthy. These are relationship-led transactions: the kind where you agree to the deal, transfer the money, and the work changes hands. There’s little scope for non-payment. The relationship itself holds the exchange.

If the numbers can be trusted, there’s a shift happening – more young and new buyers are entering the market, and they’re not chasing big names or big prices. They’re finding work in smaller spaces, with emerging artists, through personal relationships and quieter transactions. The energy is moving away from spectacle and towards substance.

At the top end, the landscape is radically shifting. Take Marlborough Gallery, who closed in 2024 after nearly 80 years – not just a big gallery, but one known for exactly what the market claims to value now: long-term relationships, depth, trust, intimacy. And still, it didn’t survive.

Founded in 1946, Marlborough helped shape post-war British art. It represented Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach. Its legacy is inseparable from the evolution of modern British painting.

What distinguished Marlborough was its commitment to personal relationships with artists. This wasn’t a depersonalised gallery chain, it was a gallery built on trust and continuity. That it couldn’t sustain itself in today’s market points to something deeper: a structural shift in how art is sold, and what is seen as viable.

Marlborough’s roster included not only the giants, but also contemporary artists like Maggi Hambling and Catherine Goodman. Just months before closing, they signed Lorena Levi – an emerging artist we introduced to the market. They weren’t winding down. They were reaching forward.

Marlborough’s closure isn’t just one gallery shutting its doors. It marks a broader transformation. The market is shifting toward more intimate, relationship-based transactions – often at lower price points and outside traditional gallery systems. That decentralisation challenges legacy structures and forces a reassessment of how art is bought, sold, and valued.

In this context, Marlborough’s end becomes a marker of change. Even the most established institutions must adapt, or risk being left behind. Maybe some got too big. Maybe they lost the human thread.

What’s clear, whatever the reason, is that the momentum is now elsewhere. With smaller dealers. Younger artists. Quieter transactions. People want something human. And maybe it’s no surprise that people are turning to smaller dealers, quieter purchases, places where they can shake someone’s hand. Because when the relationship disappears, anonymity creates space for people to act without accountability. And as we move headlong into an AI-shaped world, that desire may only grow.

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I have just bought an original Vernon Ward – a large and beautiful oil painting of a vase of roses completed in the 1930s or 1940s.

How can you possibly afford an original Ward on a journalist’s salary, I hear you say? Or perhaps I hear you say nothing of the sort. After all, I suspect you haven’t the faintest idea who Vernon Ward is. He was one of the most recognisable English painters of the second half of the 20th century. He painted harbours, swans, flowers, birds and the odd slightly soppy Edwardian drawing room scene.

Not everyone could afford an original Vernon, but everyone could still enjoy him; his paintings were reproduced in huge volume. Think postcards, trays, jigsaw puzzles and thousands upon thousands of high-quality prints. Even now you’d be hard pushed to attend a house clearance that did not involve a Vernon Ward print.

His star rose as he aged (art critics being the relentless snobs they are, he was tainted by his commercialism in mid-career) and by the time he was being shown in a top gallery his health was deteriorating.

Anyone watching the market at that point might have thought that was the time to buy. A fabulous, extremely popular artist on the cusp of not just fame, but establishment acceptance, in ill- health?

Well, hello supply and demand. They would have thought wrong. My new painting cost me £250 — and I might have overpaid. As you read this, one of Ward’s sweet swan paintings is being auctioned. The estimate is £400-£500. They’ll be lucky. And the prints? There are 138 for sale on Ebay at the moment and many more elsewhere.

Vernon is popular with the Etsy sellers who turn house clearance odds and ends into “vintage” treasure. I am toying with one of his flying duck prints embedded in a “vintage handled serving tray” (£10) and my favourite of his prints (“Polruan Landing”) safely housed in a “oval frame convex glass bubble” (£19).

I’d have the latter hanging at home by now if I could find a courier willing to bring a fragile glass thing to me from Coventry for less than its purchase price.

The point here is that if you had bought into Vernon as a long-term art investment, based on his fame and momentum, it will not have worked.

The art market has become increasingly financialised

You will hear a lot about how investing in art is a great way to diversify your investments and to raise your long-term returns. London’s Maddox Advisory suggests that “blue-chip art” has outperformed the FTSE 100 by 402% over the past 20 years (an annualised return of 8.43%).

Masterworks, a US art investment firm, reckons that between 1995 and 2020 contemporary art prices rose by 14% a year. That’s more than the S&P 500, more than global equities, more than houses and more than gold.

No wonder everyone wants in. All art investment websites like to point to a Deloitte report which found that 85% of wealth managers suggest art should be part of a balanced portfolio. This makes a lot of sense when you run your eye down another Deloitte report pointing out the potential revenue streams available to those that facilitate it (think 10% of the transaction value for representing a client at auction).

And no wonder that, with everyone wanting in, the market has become increasingly financialised. Back to Masterworks. This is not just an art investment company, it is a fractional art investment company. It says it has compiled the “most complete database of paintings that have been resold throughout history”.

That allows it, the website tells us, to identify which artists are gaining momentum. It then buys work by those artists, creates shares in each piece and flogs those shares to investors, who can then trade them in a secondary market.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, if fractional momentum investing works in the stock market, why shouldn’t it work in the art market? Or indeed the sneaker market? Become a client of Rares, an investing platform, and you can buy a share of a shoe (sorry, “investment-grade sneaker”) which you can then trade with users of the same platform.

There’s a problem with all this, of course. It is the idea that you can create an art price index of any kind in the first place (let alone a sneaker index). Art price indices only include pictures that have actually traded publicly at auction. This is a small fraction of the whole, but mostly the part which is rising anyway, since we are more likely to sell assets that have gone up in value than those that have gone down.

Art indices, then, are less overall price indices than momentum measurers — and the majority of art purchases end up being, at best, Vernons and at worst, actual rubbish. It’s also impossible to say what any collectible is actually worth. In the end a genuine asset has a residual value. The price may be bid up way beyond that, but the value remains the same.

How can we value art as an investment?

The value of an equity is the sum of the dividends it will eventually pay you or someone else; the value of a sovereign bond is about the coupon it pays; and that of a house its potential rental income. They represent business, government and land respectively.

Art, sneakers and, for that matter, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have no potential income stream for us to value them on. Successful ones have done nothing more than won a short to medium-term popularity contest (with the exception, of course, of the very few pieces of art that have won a very long-term popularity contest).

They represent momentum, buzz and FOMO (fear of missing out). Note a survey from consultancy Oxford Risk suggesting that 36% of those who have bought cryptocurrencies in the last few years have done so despite knowing almost nothing about them.

These drivers can be intense. They can also lose you an awful lot of money. Momentum, buzz and FOMO can vanish as fast as they come – and when they do, equity investors will still have something, but fractional sneaker investors will not.

My advice? To the sensible, I would say if you are going to buy sneakers or artworks, at least skip the financialised version and buy a whole one (preferably two if they are shoes). Then at least you can look at it at home – which gives it some residual leisure value, at least.

To the not-so sensible I would say, if you want something pretty undervalued at the moment, I can do you a fractional share of an NFT of an original Vernon. Just email.

• This article was first published in the Financial Times

Last week brought exciting news for stamp collectors such as yours truly. Stanley Gibbons has purchased the world’s most famous and valuable stamp: the unique 1856 One-Cent Magenta from British Guiana. The rare-stamp dealer bought it at auction in the US for $8.3m. Even more exciting, however, is that the group will not only display the stamp at its flagship store on the Strand, but is also planning to allow “everybody to enjoy owning a piece of this unique and storied item through the increasingly popular concepts of fractional ownership and the creation of digital collections.”

The key phrase here is “fractional ownership”, an idea whose time has come in the digital age. A valuable asset such as a stamp, an artwork or even a music royalty-stream is difficult to break up and sell on to private investors. But the owner of the asset can create a form of special-purpose vehicle (SPV), which then sells “shares” of that asset to investors. The internet also facilitates the creation of a secondary market for the asset: buyers and sellers can arrange to deal with each other.

In art, for instance, there is a US platform called Masterworks, which is open to UK investors. The minimum investment for foreigners is $5,000 and you have to undergo an interview with the platform to check that you understand the market.

Nevertheless, the idea is simple. Find a blue-chip artist who has a strong market for their work and then sell shares in their paintings. Artists have included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Picasso, Banksy and Monet. The most recent deal I can see is for Agnes Martin and Untitled #12 (1988), an acrylic and graphite on canvas. This was sold for $5,218,650 on 29 June, 2020.

You can also download a detailed dealsheet which gives you more information on the work. This in turn highlights an estimate suggesting that the annual appreciation of similar works has been running at 14.3%. That estimate is in turn derived from a price database compiled by analysing three million data points from over 300,000 auction transactions going back to 1960. Around $68bn worth of art changed hands in 2019.

Do your homework on fees

According to research from Citi Private Bank, meanwhile, the broad art market has “risen at an annualised rate of 5.3% since 1985, similar to the return of developed investment-grade fixed-income (6.5%) and high-yield fixed-income (8.1%)”. To date on the Masterworks platform more than $150m in paintings has been purchased, with holding periods typically between three and ten years.

As with all fractional schemes you really need to do your homework on fees, how the assets are held in trust and your ability to sell out at some stage. But modern art strikes me as a blue-chip, inflation-proofed asset with little correlation to equities.

There is also a vibrant market in music rights, as any investor in the hugely successful music-fund royalty sector will attest; the key players are the Hipgnosis Songs and the Round Hill Music funds. The idea here is to tap income from the various music-revenue streams. Hipgnosis and Roundhill do all that hard work of music selection for you, but you can also trade in individual fractional shares of music-income streams via internet platforms. The pioneer in this sector is Royalty Exchange. It now sells shares not just in music but also in films and trademarks. Non-US investors can invest in the assets on this platform but they are subject to punitive withholding taxes.

A European alternative (based in Luxemburg) has emerged in the shape of ANote Music, an online web-based proprietary trading platform for transfers and/or trading of royalty interests. It offers two ways in for British investors. One is via its primary (mostly auction-based) market, where publishers and record labels sell a percentage of the future royalty generation of music catalogues that display solid profiles of historical royalty flows. Then there is its secondary market, where investors trade shares of music catalogues among themselves. ANote Music manages the platform, organising the listings in the primary market, receiving royalty payments from distributors and circulating them to investors.

The emphasis is more on niche European music markets than mainstream Anglo-Saxon ones. One recent deal sums up the model. The platform recently listed music from an Italian duo, Zero Assoluto. I’ve never heard of them or their songs but they seem big in Italy. What is interesting is the level of detail you see on these deals. In this case they are listing a 15% share of their royalties.

ANote reckons that over “a three-year period, Zero Assoluto’s catalogue has generated royalties averaging €41,480.59 and an impressive €39,988.04 over the past year. With a total listing valuation of €579,027, the listing is set at an entry multiple of 14.50 over the last 12 months’ royalties, resulting in an expected yield for investors of 6.90%.” That yield seems fairly standard for this platform. Although these income streams will vary over time, this should be a relatively inflation-proof bunch of assets and a focus on less mainstream music could prove a useful diversifier for the income investor.

The fashion for all things Jean-Michel Basquiat continues. Last week, the late American artist’s 1983 skull painting In This Case (pictured) sold for $93.1m at Christie’s in New York. Granted, it wasn’t the $110.5m high-water mark for the artist, set by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in 2017 for another of Basquiat’s skulls from 1982, Untitled. But it did, at least, provide a reassuring “first glimpse of the demand for high-end art as the world begins to emerge from the pandemic”, says Katya Kazakina for Artnet News. In all, Christie’s inaugural 21st Century evening sale brought in $210.5m, with the Basquiat accounting for close to half of that. But the theme of the evening was “a shift in taste [that] was unmistakable”.

Rather than the established artists making the usual headlines (Basquiat aside), the “fireworks erupted as buyers from all over the world chased after a new generation of stars”. Jonas Wood’s Two Tables with Floral Pattern (2013), for example, sold for $6.5m, well above its $4m high estimate. Nina Chanel Abney’s Untitled (XXXXXX) (2015) fetched more than three times its high estimate at almost $1m, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Diplomacy III (2009) made nearly $2m. In fact, ten new artist records were set that evening (including one for a $17m digital non-fungible token (NFT), naturally). By contrast, “the sales that came in under their estimates tended to be the more established names”, says Tess Thackara in The Art Newspaper. Works by Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter and Christopher Wool missed their low estimates (although Kippenberger’s lot set an artist’s record for a sculpture).

An art-market superstar

Still, Basquiat reigned supreme. “Basquiat was always an art-market star,” says James Tarmy on Bloomberg. In the mid-1980s, he was making $1.4m a year, “even as his dependence on narcotics spiralled our of control”, leading to his death, aged 27, in 1988. And yet, “despite decades of market success, prices for Basquiat’s work have only truly taken off in recent years, driven by demand from a small group of billionaires”. In This Case was bought for just under $1m when it last appeared at auction, in 2002, before it was sold to last week’s seller, Giancarlo Giammetti, co-founder of fashion label Valentino, for an undisclosed sum in 2007. Incidentally, a second Basquiat in the sale, Untitled (Soap) (1983-1984), fetched $13.2m, while Sotheby’s sold Basquiat’s Versus Medici (1982) for $50.8m, also last week.

Christie’s will be hoping the art market is thirsty for more. This weekend, the auction house, this time in Hong Kong, is exhibiting four works by the artist in a bid “to reveal Basquiat’s oeuvre to the Asian public”, culminating in a sale on Monday of Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face) (1982), valued at up to HK$170m (£15.6m). Up and coming though the new generation may be, they still have a way to go before they outshine Basquiat.

The $25,000 fridge door

A fridge door was one of the odder items to be auctioned last week in New York. But it is “an important artefact in the story of New York City”, says Will Pavia in The Times. The door (pictured) had belonged to artist Keith Haring. On it are scribbled the names of the many people who attended his “legendary parties” in the 1980s, when Haring’s flat was the “hub of artistic life in Lower Manhattan”. Jean-Michel Basquiat appears to have signed “JM” down the bottom, just below “Madonna loves Keith” (the singer sometimes slept on Haring’s sofa when she was struggling to make ends meet). Graffiti artists LA II (Angel Ortiz) and Fab Five Freddy (Fred Brathwaite) also left their marks. Guests were even encouraged to write on the walls.

In 1990, Haring died of Aids, aged just 31, and the flat was let out again. The walls were repainted by the landlord, but the fridge remained, says James Barron in The New York Times. One “sweltering day”, the new tenant returned home to find the refrigerator had “conked out” and had been dumped in the back alley “to be picked up with the garbage”. She hastily recovered the door and, when she moved out in 1993, stored it at her parents’ home. There it stayed until 2010, when her mother shipped it to her. It sold for $25,000, reports website Highsnobiety. Pop artist Andy Warhol’s name was also on the fridge door. A moose head he owned was another bizarre object to appear in the sale with Guernsey’s auction house last week – that one, says Highsnobiety, sold for $5,000.

Auctions

Going…

American businessman, art collector and museum founder Solomon Guggenheim was an avid admirer of “the father of abstraction”, Wassily Kandinsky, acquiring his first work by the Russian artist in 1929. Over the years, Guggenheim collected 150 works by Kandinsky, one of which was Tensions calmées (1937, pictured). This great masterpiece of abstraction stands as one of his most important works, says Helena Newman of Sotheby’s. Last seen at auction in 1964, Sotheby’s expects it to fetch £18m-£25m on 29 June in London.

Gone…

Pablo Picasso’s Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) (1932) sold for $103.4m at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale in New York last Thursday. The painting depicts his muse, Marie-Thérèse, “as a winged goddess, a modern-day Nike” and was the first artwork to break the $100m mark at an auction since the spring of 2019. Mark Rothko’s penultimate painting, Untitled (1970), also sold that evening, for $38.1m, as did Vincent van Gogh’s Le pont de Trinquetaille (1888), for $37.4m. In total, the sale brought in $481.1m.

A fortnight ago, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, the first purely digital artwork to be sold by a major auction house, fetched $69.3m. That was a high price indeed for a non-fungible token (NFT) – a concept so fresh that Christie’s didn’t even try to put an estimate on it. Never mind that that figure wasn’t the $92.2m that a fusty old “masterwork” by Sandro Botticelli fetched in January. That painting had taken 500 years to get to that price, a new record for the Renaissance artist. Beeple’s artwork, the NFT, took 25 days from its completion (“minting”) to the moment the virtual hammer came down. Even Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, was shocked, as a video of the final moments of the online auction shows. Banksy must be kicking himself for having mostly stuck to walls.

That said, earlier this month the burning of an “original Banksy” was filmed so that it would live forever after in the digital realm only as an NFT. The work, entitled Morons, had previously been valued at $95,000, according to NME. The newly minted NFT sold for $382,000.

But is it art? And does it matter? “It took the world centuries to stop talking (and thinking) about the artiness of art and denigrate the discussion to the level of pure dollars – whereas the newly minted NFT space still hasn’t got... around to the art part of the conversation since its inception,” says art dealer and writer Kenny Schachter on Artnet News. Schachter boasts that he even turned his own grandmother into an NFT and “sold her for a few grand”.

If NFTs prove to be a short-lived fad – a symptom of too many young people with too much time and too much money – then so be it. Traditional artists are cashing in now and it’s giving the artists, particularly the younger ones, a platform from which to be noticed. Even established figures such as Damien Hirst are, as James Pickford puts it in the Financial Times, “planning to jump on the NFT bandwagon”. Last week, Hirst revealed details of a “secret art project”, called The Currency, to be sold later this year, which “challenges the concept of value through money and art”. It will be based on 10,000 works of art on paper, made five years ago and stored in a vault, and created with the same technology as used by Beeple.

That’s no surprise – Beeple’s success almost defies comprehension. “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” says the BBC’s art critic Will Gompertz. “But then nor did someone paying $450m to buy Salvator Mundi in 2017, an over-restored wreck of a painting that some… attribute to Leonardo da Vinci… Everydays: The First 5,000 Days will go down in history either as the moment before the short-lived cryptoart bubble burst, or as the first chapter in a new story of art.” In a three-decade-long career, “I’ve never seen anything” stir things up so rapidly, says Schachter. “You ignore this movement (and it’s nothing less) at your own expense. Trust me.”

A lockdown-driven splurge on things

The Sandro Botticelli and the Beeple artwork (pictured above) may seem “worlds apart”, says Andrea Felsted on Bloomberg. “But their desirability is driven by similar factors… an undiminished appetite among wealthy collectors for prestige investments, as well as an influx of younger, tech-savvy buyers whom galleries and dealers have managed to reach online.” These buyers have, to an extent, saved the art market despite the closure of art fairs and galleries. At $50.1bn, global sales of art and antiques in 2020 managed to avoid the $39.5bn previous low set in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009, according to a report for Art Basel and UBS Group. Global online sales rose to a record $12.4bn last year, double the value of 2019. Many collectors have seen their wealth rise during the various lockdowns, and “those with money to spare have splurged on things”.

The frenzy has spilled over into the “riskiest” and “wackiest” assets, including digital ephemera and media, cryptocurrencies, collectables such as trading cards and even trainers, says Erin Griffith in The New York Times. Artists Grimes and Steve Aoki made millions from their digital artwork, even before Beeple’s headline-grabbing sale, while in the music world, US electronic DJ Justin Blau, known by his stage name 3lau, was “blown away” by the $11.7m he made selling NFTs related to one of his previously released albums. The reselling of collectable trainers has “exploded” on online platforms, such as StockX, and trading-card sales have taken off, too. One autographed card from 2000, featuring American football star Tom Brady, sold for a record $1.3m this month, while a similar card fetched half a million dollars in January. “Predicting when and how the party will end is anyone’s guess.”

Auctions

Hermès handbags were the best-performing collectables of 2020 for the second year in a row, according to the latest edition of Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report. The Hermès handbags sub-index of the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII), which tracks the prices of the designer fashion accessories, rose by 17%. A regular feature of auction sales, Hermès handbags benefited from a heightened “appetite for relatively affordable luxury pick-me-ups during the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in Asia where many bag collectors are based”, says Knight Frank’s Andrew Shirley. The record-setting sale of the year took place in Hong Kong in November, where a Hermès Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Retourné Kelly 2 handbag (pictured) sold for HK3.4m (£327,300) with Christie’s.

Over the past ten years the sub-index has gained 108%. Fine wine finished the year in second place in the KFLII, rising 13% due in part to Bordeaux prices “firming up” despite the pandemic. The value of classic cars gained 6%, watches 5%, and collectable furniture 4% – all against an average of 3% for the KFLII. Indeed, the sub-index for rare whisky, the standout winner of the past decade with growth of 478%, fell by 4% in 2020, while art was by far the biggest loser of last year due to the pandemic-induced fall-off in auction sales, down 11%. However, sales of works by younger “red-chip” artists did better than most, particularly in Asia.

Daylesford's Kingham Hamper, £2,000

daylesford.com

Abel & Cole The Merriest Jolly Hamper, Organic, £285

The organic food-delivery service has a range of organic Christmas hampers. This one comes stuffed with "indulgent organic staples, all produced in small batches from artisan suppliers", says The Independent, including everything from Champagne to award-winning ham and stilton. It's all delivered in a reusable fabric-lined hamper and the fresh food is kept chilled with bags of wool to cut down on waste. The last order date for Christmas delivery is 18 December.

abelandcole.co.uk

Betty's Perfect Christmas Hamper, £80

This Christmas hamper, presented in a traditional wicker basket, hails from the well-known Harrogate Caf Tea Rooms and bakery, and is "particularly good value", says The Independent. It's filled with "top-notch" goodies, including marzipan fruits, Yorkshire gingerbread, a bottle of chardonnay and Christmas coffee, and a "knockout" Christmas cake. Order by 20 December for Christmas delivery.

bettys.co.uk

Selfridges Selection Christmas Day Hamper, £1,000

"Selfridges has curated ten smart grey wicker hampers for 2019," says Good Housekeeping. This one is bursting with produce to help you celebrate the day in style covering everything from your morning fizz to your late night snacks. Highlights include Selfridges' selection of fine wines, spirits and champagne, smoked salmon and caviar, and an excellent selection of cheeses from the Fine Cheese Co. Last order date for Christmas delivery is 23 December.

selfridges.com

Fortnum & Mason The Windsor Hamper, £1,000

Fortnum & Mason is "the go-to destination for decadent delights all year round, but particularly at Christmas", says Vogue. The Windsor hamper contains a collection of outstanding products to create a truly extravagant feast, including a whole York ham, organic smoked salmon, a selection of chocolates, preserves and cakes, plus their famous teas as well as vintage port and wines. The last order date for UK Christmas delivery is 20 December.

fortnumandmason.com

Paxton & Whitfield Three Cheese & White Wine gift set, Selfridges, £55

One for the cheese lover in your life Selfridges has partnered with Paxton & Whitfield, which has been selling fine cheese and wine from its shop in Jermyn Street in London since 1797. The hamper features three British cheeses cheddar, goat and stilton along with a bottle of Paxton & Whitfield's sauvignon blanc.

selfridges.com

Expand your range of beauty products

The John Lewis Beauty Advent Calendar is filled with iconic beauty brands including Laura Mercier, Charlotte Tilbury, Sisley, Dermalogica and Clinique. It's a perfect way to try new products and, when the season is over, the calendar would make a pretty box for jewellery or keepsakes.

Price: £150

Contact: johnlewis.com

A children's favourite served with chocolate

Charbonnel et Walker is one of Britain's oldest chocolatiers and has been producing quality chocolates since 1875. It now holds a royal warrant and is based in Old Bond Street in London. Its Peter Rabbit-themed Advent calendar is available from John Lewis.

Price: £20

Contact: johnlewis.com

A festive feast from Fortnum & Mason

Fortnum's Feasting Advent Calendar isan ideal way to get into the festive spirit as it's filled with the store's famous teas, chocolates, biscuits, jams and even a quarter bottle of Champagne to help see you through the stresses of the season.

Price: £200

Contact:fortnumandmason.com

One for whisky lovers

The Very Old & Rare Whisky Advent Calendar is an ideal present for the whisky enthusiast. It is presented in a bespoke walnut case and the 24 30ml bottles represent some of the world's finest whiskies, matured for decades from revered producers, many from distilleries no longer trading.

Price: £9,999.95

Contact: masterofmalt.com

And for those who have everything

Inspired by the luxury jeweller's flagship store facade and designed by artist Pat Vale, Tiffany & Co's Advent Calendar is an exclusive luxury gift. Behind every door is a gift box containing Tiffany's jewellery, including diamond pendants and the new Tiffany 1837 Makers watch. The gifts range in value from £100 to £13,000. Did we mention its exclusivity? There was only one example available for sale in the UK, from Harrods, and it will have set the lucky buyer back £104,000.

The Alpine A110 beat the Porsche Cayman as What Car's favourite sports car of 2019. Is it possible for its successor, the A110 S, to improve upon perfection? What Car's John Howell thinks it is. Stiffer anti-roll bars and springs combined with wider tyres results in a machine that's sharper and allows for greater control. "The S grips harder and leans less than the standard A110, so you can carry more speed through turns and get it to change direction quicker."

The steering feels more responsive and better connected, but being more balanced hasn't taken away from its charm. "The core character of the car is the same, but the way it goes about its business has suddenly gained a heap of extra focus and precision," says Stephen Dobie in Top Gear.

The stiffer set-up and larger tyres have also allowed it to gain some serious speed. Another 39bhp takes total power to 288bhp, giving the car a much "perkier edge" and taking it to a top speed of 161mph. The A110 S also beats its main Porsche rival in a sprint, taking only 4.4 seconds to reach 62mph. The fine-tuned machine starts at £56,810.

The car's design remains elegant and understated. The A110 S's subtly retro vibe has been maintained, but tweaks to some details black badging in place of chrome, a new wheel design and a drop in ride height add "a smidgen of extra assertion", says Dobie. In all, the improvements to this new model have made it a great road car , as well as working excellently on the track. It's a purer version of its predecessor faster, tighter and more agile. "By tightening it up, Alpine hasn't blurred the magic," says Howell, "but brought it into sharper focus."

Price: £56,810. Engine: 1,800cc, turbo. Power: 288bhp. Torque: 236lb ft. Top speed: 161mph. 0-62mph: 4.4 seconds

Even if you have no interest in cars, or don't drive at all, the words "Rolls-Royce", "Aston Martin" or "Bentley" will still conjure up images of luxury and refinement. The equivalent brand in the camera world is Leica. Some of the world's most renowned photographers count themselves fans, as does the Queen. Sadly, with even used Leicas costing several thousand pounds, Leicas are a luxury most of us aren't able to afford.

The good news is that there are Leicas you can buy without having to take out a second mortgage or sell a kidney the D-Lux range of budget Leicas, part of a collaboration with Panasonic. Its latest model, the D-Lux 7, is based on Panasonic's LX 100 Mark II, which was released last year. Technically, the D-Lux is a "compact" camera as it has a fixed lens and a slightly smaller sensor, though a bigger one than you'd typically find in many "point-and-shoot" cameras. For purists, this means it isn't a "proper" Leica, but it will be perfectly good enough for the rest of us.

The D-Lux 7 is compact enough to stuff in a coat or trouser pocket and the image quality is much better than you'd get on a smartphone. You can operate it in silent mode and with automatic eye-recognition, and it will produce compelling photos, even in challenging dimly lit environments. It also produces crisp videos at up to 4K quality. You can't connect an external microphone, but this isn't really a problem as the internal one is good enough for most uses.

The camera also comes with a variety of filters and modes that you can play around with. The limited range of the lens (equivalent to 24-75mm) means that this is a camera to complement rather than replace a DSLR, but I enjoyed using it enough to buy a second-hand copy of the original LX 100 from eBay. The current model has slightly better image quality than the original Panasonic.

Leica D-Lux 7, RRP £995

"Everything about the Lotus Evija is wild, from its outlandish styling through to its extortionate price tag," says Rob Clymo on Gizmodo. It will cost £2m when it goes on sale in 2020 and all 130 of the electric "hypercars" will be made at the sports car-maker's home in Norfolk. Lotus says the car is good for 250 miles on one charge and, provided you have access to the new extra-powerful 350kW charging points, the Evija can refill its tank in just 18 minutes.

The design has some radical flourishes, so you know it's going to be fast. "Very fast." The Evija weighs just 1,680kg, even with a "beefy" battery and four motors driving the wheels, and produces 1,973bhp, powering the car to more than 200mph.

Lotus actually took its inspiration from fighter jets, says Ray Massey for the Mail Online. You can see almost all the way through its "Venturi tunnels", which generate aerodynamic downforce that helps to keep the car earth-bound. The tunnels are edged in red LED light, giving the effect of a fighter jet's afterburners. If you do see the Evija bearing down on you in your wing mirror, you'll see the logo has been cleverly designed to read "ALIVE" when read backwards. You will also notice the Evija has no wing mirrors of its own. That would slow it down. Instead, it has pop-out cameras that are integrated into the front wings.

Norfolk residents who spot one in tests will feel like those old Navy pilots who caught glimpses of the secret SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, says Ollie Kew in Top Gear magazine. "What the heck was tha... oh, it's gone." All in all, "you've never sat in a better assembled Lotus than this. It doesn't even smell of fibreglass and panic".

Power: 1,973bhp. Weight: 1,680kg.Battery: 2,000kW. Range: 250 miles.Top speed: 250mph

Ditch the rickety deck chairs and spruce up your "outdoor lounge", says Mick Sharp

"The purest form of human pleasures" is how philosopher Francis Bacon described spending time in his garden. According to outdoor furniture specialists billyoh.com, green-fingered Brits will spend the equivalent of three working years of their lives mowing, trimming, weeding, pottering about and generally ensuring everything in their gardens is rosy. And that doesn't include leisure time spent enjoying the garden.

Despite our somewhat changeable climate, we aren't easily dissuaded from attempting an as adventurous and al fresco a lifestyle as the elements will allow. And catering for that desire is big business. "The garden has become a focal point for many families," says Carol Lewis in The Times's Bricks & Mortar supplement. Vicky Angell, a partner and buyer for outdoor living at John Lewis, says gardens are increasingly used as an "outdoor lounge" and "living space". Rather than making do with some rickety deck chairs and a teetering trestle table, people "are really investing in their garden furniture", Angell tells Lewis. Spending on gardens was 27% higher last year than in 2017, analysis by John Lewis Finance shows, with sales in the company's outdoor-living departments more than doubling over the last four years. Here are a few of this year's best garden accessories.

"All of the flavour, none of the labour" is eco-friendly solar-powered cooking equipment firm GoSun's catchy tagline for its GoSun Grill. This is "a grill for modern times" that is cool to the touch, heats to 260 degrees even under cloud cover, and allows you to steam, bake and roast without having to worry about empty gas tanks or scraping burned carbon off the cooking surface. It's portable too so you can, in effect, cook anywhere as there is no fire hazard. Brett Tortorello on feast.media says he feels like "a good person" when he uses the GoSun. "Call me crazy, but I feel I'm doing a real service to the environment when I'm cooking on this grill." £699, gosuneurope.com

The Husqvarna RC320Ts AWD ride-on mower combines ease of use and excellent handling with power and performance. The manufacturer perhaps better known for its motorcycles says that "the all wheel drive (AWD) rider with a high-torque V-twin engine is a pleasure to operate and delivers great results". It has a turn-key start, LED lights and can be fitted with 94cm and 103cm cutting decks. And if you thought a mower was just for summer, think again. "Thanks to attachments such as a snow blade, trailer, moss rake and spreader," says radmoretucker.co.uk, "it can help maintain your garden all year round." £6,240, redbanduk.co.uk

If a traditional, old-school swimming pool is not eco-friendly enough for you, and taking a dip in "life-sustaining water and connecting with nature" is more your style, the Swimming Pond Company has the answer. Its ponds integrate beautifully with the landscape, offering the opportunity to swim in fresh, clear water without a trace of chemicals. The ponds attract and sustain a wide array of wildlife, "drastically increasing the biodiversity of your garden", says company founder Paul Mercer. "A swimming pond is something beautiful to look at all-year round," says Catherine Howard in Country House magazine, "and perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist." From £75,000 + VAT for an 80 sq m pond, theswimmingpondcompany.co.uk

To the outside world you just look like a cool dude/dudette with sunglasses. What the outside world doesn't know is that you are, in fact, wearing a pair of Bose Frames, an ingenious new design of shades with a micro embedded speaker in each arm. Available in two styles, Alto and Rondo, with a variety of coloured lenses, they're Bluetooth-enabled, leaving you "free to hear and interact with the world around while discreetly listening to music", says Bose. The sound quality is superb, says Ryan Waniata on digitaltrends.com it seems as as if the sounds have been "magically beamed within the boundaries of your skull". £199.95, bose.co.uk

If your idea of the perfect summer's evening is to tilt your Panama hat at a rakish angle, sit back and relax in the sunshine, the silence punctuated only by the gentle cork popping on another bottle of Dom Perignon 2006, it's probably best you don't go within a country mile of Marshall's Tufton portable Bluetooth speaker. The Bletchley-based amplifier builder has its own hallowed place in rock history, a true British global success story based on a simple USP: Marshall = Loud. The Tufton will rock your socks off. "If you even edge towards top volume," says Audley Waugh in The Mail on Sunday's Event magazine, "it will blast across your neighbourhood and you will stop being invited to barbecues". Sounds like a win-win situation. £349, marshallheadphones.com

Rutherford and SonBy Githa SowerbyDirected by Polly FindlayRunning at the National Theatre until 3 August

Industrial chemist John Rutherford Jnr (Sam Troughton), estranged from his father as the result of a marriage to a working-class woman, Mary (Anjana Vasan), is forced by necessity to return home. He has developed an invention that could potentially revolutionise the way glass is made. John Snr (Roger Allam) wants him to use the invention to save the family firm. John Jnr believes he is entitled to patent it and sell the secret to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, John Jnr's siblings, curate Richard (Harry Hepple) and spinster Janet (Justine Mitchell), have their own plans for the future.

The main theme of the play is the impact that the burly patriarch, who is clearly a manipulative bully who will accept nothing less than blind obedience, has on his children and employees. But the victims of his bullying are not entirely sympathetic either. His elder son is petulant and self-centred, the foreman Martin (Joe Armstrong) is dog-like in his devotion to his "master". Predictably, this subservience only acts to make John Snr even more of a monster. Tellingly, the only character to win his respect is the one who treats him in the same way he has treated others.

The play was written in 1912, a time when Britain was still considered an economic superpower, but there is a pervading sense that, like the firm, the country's best days are now behind it. As John Snr admits, the formerly prosperous glass factory now makes a loss and faces the very real prospect of either going out of business, or being sold to a rival. While he is able to marshall various excuses for that unfair foreign competition, unsympathetic bankers and shareholders only concerned with short-term profits but one gets the impression that the real reason for the factory's troubles lies with its owner, particularly in his feudal style of management and resistance to change.

The play is marked by some strong, compelling performances, especially from Roger Allam. Justine Mitchell also delivers a strong performance as the daughter who has been ruined by her father's desire to keep her tied to him. At the same time, the

play's atmosphere is enhanced by a wonderful set, which perfectly evokes a gloomy soot-stained drawing room in a mansion in the north of England. Some of the stronger accents could have been toned down a little, but it's easy enough to understand what is going on. This play is definitely worth catching, and one that works equally well as a piece of drama and as a snapshot of economic and social life in the Edwardian period.

Mick Sharp explains how to get the joys of a live music concert in the comfort of your own home with theNaim Uniti Atom married toQ Acoustics 3050i 2-way speakers.

Naim's Uniti Atom is more sci-fi than hi-fi. It's a beautiful black box that acts as a one-stop solution that will satisfy pretty much all of your musical desires. All you need to add is a pair of speakers I chose a pair of Q Acoustics 3050i floorstanders, introduced one to the other with a set of QED Reference XT40 cables, stood back and listened

The sound that emerged from the Q's precision drivers left me speechless. If you're looking for a set-up that has the "wow" factor, look no further. "A compact multi-source music player that will seduce you with its amazing quality and outstanding feature set," is how Naim puts it. Rob Boffard on themasterswitch.com calls it a "wonder box" that "far surpasses streamers that cost more. Nothing can match the dynamism and electricity of the Uniti Atom." I concur.

What Hi-Fi gave it a five-star review, praising its class-leading sound clarity. The Atom has a coaster-sized volume control on top and a full-colour LCD front panel that displays the album artwork as it plays. Even the remote is unhappy to accept a mere bit part: it has a proximity-sensitive control and springs to life as your hand approaches the controls. "The Atom is a little like that annoyingly good-looking friend who commands all the attention," says What Hi-Fi.

Q Acoustics 3050i speakers: punching above their weight

"They never get flustered," says Jay Garrett on stereonet.co.uk, keeping dynamic signatures in check and "shepherding overlapping instruments into a spacious soundstage". Visually, they play nicely with your furniture, being available in arctic white, carbon black, graphite grey and English walnut.

This set-up makes for an aural marriage made in musical heaven and it may be the only system you will ever need.

Q Acoustics 3050i 2-way speakers,acceptstereo amplifier input 25-100w; frequency30-44kHz.

Price: £645 See hifix.co.uk

You almost certainly wouldn't get Jeremy Clarkson to agree, but there is a stack of evidence to suggest that cycling is "a good thing". According to independent pro-cycling organisation Cycling UK which has championed the cause of cycling for 140 years in excess of three million bikes were sold in 2016, with the UK accounting for more sales than in any of the other 27 European Union countries, apart from Germany (four million). If cycle use rises from its current level of 2% to 10% by 2025 and 25% by 2050, the cumulative benefits in terms of savings from reduced congestion and pollution and accidents and improved health and so on "would be worth £248bn between 2015 and 2050 for England".

If you're serious about biking then a made-to-measure machine is the way to go. Artisan makers Peter Bird and Robert Wade say their understanding of what is required of "a living, breathing bicycle" is second to none "because we not only design them, but also hand-build the frames that's the difference". They will custom-build your bike at their Shropshire-based company to your precise measurements, down to the millimetre, to get the exact sizing of frame, seat-post, saddle, handlebar stem and crank length to suit you.

The duo's "exquisite attention to detail and the sheer creativity involved in their builds" is seriously impressive, says Oli Woodman on bikeradar.com. The frames are designed to fit you and respond to your riding style, and each comes with a solid silver head badge and a hallmarked solid silver number plate. "We encourage each customer to have as much involvement in the process as they would like," Peter Bird told Cyclist magazine.

This kind of specialist cosseting doesn't come cheap, but may not be quite as expensive as you'd imagine either expect to pay in the region of £2,900 for your very special bicycle. There's also a waiting list to contend with, so plan ahead if you fancy treating yourself or a loved one on their next birthday.

See bicycles-by-design.co.uk

The classic Jeep Wrangler still looks great. Now it's great to drive on ordinary roads, too. Sarah Moore reports.

Jeep occupies a unique space in the off-road market, says Matt Prior in Autocar particularly now that Land Rover has "temporarily limped out of that arena and hasn't told us how it's going to stroll back in". Jeep has argued that it's the only "true off-road company in the world". While there might be a few companies that have something to say about that, for now, it looks like it's the one that knows how to look after its icon, says Prior.

There's no doubting the Wrangler's off-road ability, says Steve Sutcliffe in Auto Express. The truth is "it can do stuff and go places that most owners wouldn't even contemplate, let alone attempt". But it's the new Wrangler's on-road refinement that actually proves most surprising of all. "We drove the 2.2-litre diesel four-door, all 2,044kg of it, and found it to be remarkably competent on the roads around the Lake District, decently civilised and, overall, just a much better driving experience than we expected."

"It feels unflappable, unstoppable," says Prior. "Sure, there are compromises on the road. It would be impossible for there not to be. So, if you only want to drive around suburbia, for heaven's sake don't buy a Wrangler. If you want the real thing, don't buy anything else."

Model: Jeep Wrangler Overland 4dr 2.2 Multijet-II. Price: £48,365. Engine: 2.2-litre, 4cyl turbodiesel. Power/torque: 197bhp/450Nm.Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, four-wheel drive. 0-62mph: 9.6 seconds. Top speed: 112mph

The results of Volt's collaborative efforts with components maker Shimano are bearing fruit in the form of this funky-looking foldable electric bike, the Axis, says Richard Peace on Electric Bike Report.

At the heart of it is a Shimano E6000 crank drive motor, a "dependable, high-quality choice for city and leisure riders". You can shift gears electronically by pressing the up and down arrows on the handlebars, or switch to automatic changing mode, where the system will decide when to change for you.

But what it lacks in folding sophistication, the Axis makes up for with its 250w Shimano Steps battery and motor, says Rupert Radley in Cycling Weekly. "It's impressively slick, and I was pleasantly surprised that it took less than ten minutes of riding to work out exactly how the system works". In other good news, there is no shortage of torque when setting off from lights or at junctions, and the motor and battery were more powerful than the Brompton's, "pulling me clear of the line faster than most cars".

Price: £3,099 fromvoltbikes.co.ukWeight: 16kg without batteries;18.65kg with batteryFrame: high-gradereinforced aluminiumFrame size: 20 inchesMax assisted motorspeed: 15.5mphPower: 36V standard 418WhDistance: 60+miles under Eco PAS modeCharge time: 3 to 4 hours

If you want better photos than the ones you get on your smartphone, consider Fujifilm's X-T3.

As the cameras on smartphones get ever-more impressive, many people believe that dedicated cameras may end up going the way of CD players and iPods. But phone cameras still suffer from mediocre image quality, poor performance when light is low, slow focus and fixed focal lengths (which means that if you want to zoom in, you have to accept a reduced image quality). So there is a place in the market for stylish, feature-packed cameras that deliver incredible image quality. Fujifilm's X-T3, released towards the end of last year, is a good example.

More importantly, the quality of both the still images and videois excellent, even in low light.I have used it to take photos of an afternoon in Greenwich Park and a writers' group in a dimly-lit pub, and it focused fast and accurately, producing photos that were both clear and sharp. Similarly, a recording of a one-man show shot from the back of a pub theatre in Islington produced some outstanding footage. Mirrorless cameras have a reputation for having a limited battery life, but it is possible to get more than 1,200 individual shots on a single charge. The X-T3 also has a huge range of features, such as simulation modes, which allow you to replicate the look of film. You can tweak everything from the colour to the amount of noise reduction that the camera will apply.

Dedicated photographers and enthusiasts who want to treat themselves to the cutting edge in photography won't regret spending the extra cash on this excellent camera. A budget version, the X-T30, is released next month.

Body:£1,349With 18-55mm F2.8-4 lens:£1,699

The new BMW M850i coup is ferociously fast yet soothing to drive.

The BMW M850i xDrive is a monster, says Ollie Kew on Top Gear. "A big, brash, flashy coup booted up the road by a 4.4-litre V8 mated to a pair of turbos." It is "a 1,965kg multiplex of screens, speakers and leather chairs that just happens to have four-wheel drive and do a 0-62mph sprint in 3.7 seconds".

As well as new turbos, the much-revised version of the V8 features new piston and cylinder bore coatings, and runs higher fuel pressure for better ignition, says John Barker on Evo. On a test drive in north Wales, the engine "fires and settles to a traditional, deep, burbly V8 idle, as opposed to the M5's lighter, flat-plane crank thrum, and once moving, the note melts away." Once on to A-roads, "what impresses is the remarkable ride quality. We know these roads and how tricky these surfaces are, but the M850i is untroubled, soaking up the detail and maintaining body control on the bigger bumps, too."

Interior quality is also "difficult to fault", says Taylor. The fit and finish are "excellent", as are the ergonomics with multiple ways to control the latest iDrive 7.0 infotainment system, from voice, gesture and finger-tracing scribing to good old-fashioned buttons.

Like most modern BMWs, it's also got "fabulous" seats finding that sweet spot of support, multi-hour comfort, a decent low-set position and ample adjustment, says Top Gear's Kew. "In comfort mode, the ride soothes your backside." In fact, the whole car "soothes your weary brow".

Price: £100,045 Engine: 4,395cc bi-turbo V8 Power: 523bhpTransmission: Eight-speed auto, all-wheel drive 0-62mph: 3.7 seconds Top speed: 155mph

If you're after a go-anywhere cruiser, the Allures 45.9 firmly ticks that box, says Graham Snook in Yachting Monthly. The raw battleship-grey aluminium hull "might not to be everyone's tastes", but it's "insanely practical" it won't crack or craze, it doesn't fade or need polishing, and in ten years' time it will pretty much look the same, other than a few more scuffs and scrapes.

She's "a handsome vessel", says Tom Dove in Sail Magazine. The 45.9's long waterline, plumb bow and flat sheerline follow the current design trends for performance cruisers, while the deckhouse has a clean, smooth line that melds into a wide, functional cockpit.

The rig is a versatile double-headed sloop with an anchor bowsprit that allows you to set a big asymmetric spinnaker in light conditions. A single person can move out and tend all the controls, while a crew of two will find sailing this boat especially easy, says Dove.

There are three accommodation layouts to choose from for the interior. Cruising World's test boat was a two-cabin model with a large single head to port off the companionway, and with a technical room aft of the head, which is "really terrific", says Herb McCormick for Cruising World. The interior layout "belies the workmanlike appearance of the robust topside". In other words, "it doesn't look like an expedition boat but rather a contemporary cruising boat with accoutrements that wouldn't feel out of place on a modern, French production model".

All in all, the 45.9 feels "indestructible" in the water, says Snook. She "gives me all I want in a cruising yacht and so much more".

Length overall: 48ft 4in. Loaded water length 45ft. Beam: 14ft 6in. Draft: 9ft 6in (board down); 3ft 6in (board up.) Displacement: 28,224lb.Ballast: 10,707lb. Fuel/water (gallons): 165/111. Engine: 60hp Volvo. Designer: Berret-Racoupeau.

'75

Showing at the Soho Theatre, London, until 2 February thenthe Southbank Centre for a one-off show on Tuesday 28 May

With the debate over the withdrawal agreement and the backstop dominating the headlines, one might thinkthat another show about Brexit is the last thing anyone would be interested in. Kieran Hodgson's one-man show about Britain's entry into Europe provides a welcomeand amusing new angle on the topic, however.

The referendum outcome, combined with the revelation that his parents voted Leave, sends Kieran into a nervous breakdown, but also causes him to consider whether he is the one detached from reality. In an effort to understand Britain's relationship with Europe, Kieran decides to do some research on the events leading up to the 1975 referendum, with the help of a mysterious German librarian.

The core of the play is the recreation of key moments in the period from 1963, when Britain first formally applied to join the then EEC, until the 1975 referendum, when British voters backed continued membership of it, telling the story through impersonations of many of the key figures and with short comic skits. Politicians who make an appearance include prime ministers Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson (as well as a cameo from Margaret Thatcher); French leaders Charles De Gaulle and Valry Giscard D'Estaing also appear, as well as Enoch Powell, Roy Jenkins and Tony Benn (who provides a reminder that in the 1970s a lot of opposition to the EEC came from the left).

As you might expect, the show comes down firmly on the side of the Remain camp. Still, even hardened Brexiteers will appreciate that Hodgson is self-aware enough to poke fun at his own over-reaction, especially his brief infatuation with Ted Heath (complete with photo of him playing on the piano at the former PM's home). Over the course of the play he is forced to acknowledge that Leave voters aren't monsters, and some of their points may even be valid. He also concludes with the optimistic message that Brexit doesn't necessarily mean an end to goodwill between Britain and its cousins on the continent.

This is reflected in the speeches selected. Roy Jenkins' defence of parliamentary democracy, and the right of MPs to disagree with both their constituencies and their party, is delivered with passion and brio. However, it is the pragmatic, pipe-smoking Harold Wilson who ultimately is the hero of the piece. Indeed, one feels that David Cameron could have learned something from his gentle reminder to other European leaders, during the re-negotiation that preceded the vote, that failure to listen to British concerns would almost certainly result in the UK leaving the EU.

Overall, this is an entertaining, and strangely moving, take on Brexit. Certainly, it is more likely to be successful in changing people's minds than other takes on the topic.

From Advent-style gin dispensers to luxury PJs, Sarah Moore has plenty of quirky gift ideas for the festive season.

Cramming a compact projector and Bluetooth speaker into a device the size of a drinks can is no mean feat, but the boffins behind this Kickstarter-funded Nebula Capsule have achieved it, says Lucy Hedges in Metro. The device promises HD quality, fast charging and Google Assistant.

£312 from Anker.com

Those who like to go a little off-piste will appreciate the unusual aesthetic of this drinks cart, says Bianca Barratt in the Evening Standard. Oval shaped and featuring asymmetrical shelves, it'll provide a talking point if conversation is runningdry.

£326 from OutThereInteriors.com

If someone in your life likes the odd festive tipple, why not indulge them with some flavoured gin (and more), says Alice White in The Mail on Sunday. Upmarket department store Fortnum & Mason is offering this Advent-style collection of 12 festive single-estate spirits.

£59.95 from Fortnumandmason.com

Anything that manages to be both practical and eye-pleasing is worth your immediate and undivided attention, says Fashion Beans. The Stig backpack from Swedish luggage brand Sandqvist does just that, "effortlessly combining brains and beauty with a roomy build".

£109 from Sandqvist.com/en/en

£449.99 from Dyson.co.uk

The Leatherman Juice CS4 is a multitool the size of a chocolate bar, says Simon Barnes in The Sunday Times. In other words, it's small, but it manages to pack in 15 tools, including a saw, four screwdrivers, scissors, two sets of pliers, a knife and, most importantly , a bottle-opener and a corkscrew.

£104.95 from Leatherman.co.uk

All of Alex Monroe's jewellery is "beautifully delicate and lovingly crafted", says Emma Barnett in The Sunday Times. This 18ct "In-Beetweeny Bee" necklace showcases his signature design, is handmade in England, and comes with an adjustable chain.

£995 from AlexMonroe.com

Staying in is the new going out, Ccile Gavazzi Dacc of luxury pyjama brand Morpho + Luna tells Drapers Online. Pyjamas are a "self-indulgent and emotional purchase that make you feel special and elegant".

£530 from MatchesFashion.com

Dripping with trendy retro charm and a design reminiscent of a rocket, this diminutive Smeg coffee dispenser spits out "an authentic cup of joe", says Lucy Hedges in Metro. You can make up to ten cups in one go, and it will even give you a prompt when it needs cleaning.

£179.95 from SmegUK.com

Peterloo

Directed by Mike LeighCertificate 12A

Director Mike Leigh is known for kitchen-sink dramas, such as Secrets and Lies, and for genial period pieces such as Mr Turner. The two collide in Peterloo, his account of the 1819 massacre. Waterloo veteran Joseph (David Moorst) returns home to his family in Oldham to a world of high unemployment and falling wages. The protectionist Corn Laws have pushed up the price of food, making it harder to make ends meet. With the authorities cracking down on dissent, reformers are divided between those pushing for an armed uprising and those, like orator Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear), who want peaceful change.

Leigh does a good job of detailing the various economic and political issues that brought matters to a head at Peterloo. Chief among them was the recession that immediately followed the Napoleonic Wars, creating unemployment and driving down the wages of those lucky enough to find work. The film also points out that, while industrialisation raised overall living standards, it also reduced the status of skilled workers. The corrupt political establishment, who were willing to give huge sums to the Duke of Wellington, but were opposed to making any political concessions, also played a big part in the discontent.

Another theme is the divide between the upper middle-class reformers, represented by Hunt and the staff of the Manchester Observer, and mill-workers who were either starving or living in poverty. Although Leigh ultimately endorses Hunt's non-violent approach, he is not afraid to emphasise Hunt's aloof, snobbish and self-important side. He shows that the reformers lived in a world far removed from the ordinary person, not averse to keeping the servants in their place even while campaigning for the downtrodden. Similarly, the outrage of the organisers at their arrest seems slightly petulant set against the large number of dead and wounded protesters.

The problem with Peterloo is that there are just so many individual stories that, despite the two-and-a-half-hour running time, there is no single character who commands our attention. There are a lot of intriguing plot threads that end up being left hanging. Some of the performances are so over-the-top that they end up being a distraction from the plot. We see the magistrates sentencing someone to hanging for stealing a coat, and later urging soldiers to attack unarmed protestors, for example it's hardly necessary to have them gurn and rub their hands with glee like pantomime villains.

Overall, Peterloo is a solid costume drama that shines a light on a significant piece of social and economic history. With a bit of trimming and some more focus on one or two key characters, it could have been a much better film.

The iPhone XS, Apple's newest smartphone, is heftier than older models, but the benefits make the extra baggage worth it, says Ludo Oliver.

"Last year, Apple did something out of character: it introduced the usual update to the iPhone, the iPhone 8, while simultaneously introducing the iPhone X with a flurry of hype," says Nilay Patel on tech website The Verge. What made the iPhone X so extraordinary, he says, was that it was a "total rethinking" of Apple's all-conquering smartphone.

Apple has no intention of letting its lead slip with the iPhone X, it has ushered in "the future of phones". You just have to look at its influences, which are already all over the industry.

Last month's Apple release came in two parts. The first is the iPhone XS (pronounced "ten ess"), which is an update of the internal components of the iPhone X. The second is the iPhone XS Max, which boasts a giant, 6.5-inch screen the largest ever produced by Apple. It is also the most expensive, priced from £1,099 for 64GB, while the 512GB model costs from £1,449.

Debate has been raging online about the size of the new iPhones, with some Twitter users arguing they are too big for women's hands. So, is the iPhone XS too big? In short, no, says iNews' Rhiannon Williams, who has been "a fan of larger phones for years".

Yes, the iPhone XS Max does demand two hands and how much enjoyment you gain from it hinges on how accustomed you are to larger handsets. But Williams argues not being able to text one-handed is worth the hassle because of the benefits when it comes to watching films and playing games. "While some men may be annoyed at the larger dimensions making it harder to put in a pocket the answer is simple no one's forcing you to buy one."

It's more than just the size that makes it awkward, says Gareth Beavis on TechRadar. "The iPhone XS Max's design is deceptive. Pick it up and the rounded sides of the handset make it feel noticeably thick." Considering the size and the price, surely you would want to be able to hold it securely. But there's "no questioning the fact that you're getting a huge amount of display real estate".

If price is an issue, wait for the cheaper, "volume driver" iPhone XR, out this month. Apple has shaved off some of the more expensive elements, but the iPhone XR is still an impressive package.

Price: from £999 for the iPhone XS, £1,099 for the iPhone XS Max, £749 for the iPhone XR see Apple.com/uk for details

If your Ariel Atom 3.5 is starting to feel a little out of date, you're in luck. The car maker has revealed the fourth-generation Atom for 2018, and it is due to make its debut at this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed. The new Atom 4 is the fastest version yet of one of our favourite cars, says Vijay Pattni on Top Gear. Although it looks much the same, it's actually a completely new car from the ground up.

Engineers set out to create a car with less body roll, less dive and a better all-round ride, says Safet Satara on Top Speed. They added "beefier wheels", new suspension components and optional Ohlins dampers. The result is an "all-new cornering experience" that is "sharper and edgier" than ever before. Slotted inside the Atom 4 is a new engine, too, says Pattni. And it's a good one the 2.0 litre, 320bhp four-cylinder i-VTEC turbo from the new Honda Civic Type R. "It's faster than before, and indeed faster than ever."It'll do 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds and 0-100mph in 6.8 seconds.

The Ariel is more for a bit of fun on a Sunday drive than anything else, says Satara. Now it will take you further, and in more comfort, than before. Low-weight, high-power, rear-wheel-drive, and a manual transmission. "What can possibly go wrong?"

Price: from £39,975; 0-62mph: 6.8 seconds; Engine: 2.0-litre VTEC four-cylinder; Torque: 310 lb ft

A three-hour play with only three actors about the rise and fall of an investment bank that doesn't directly deal with its high-profile demise might seem like a hard sell. But even if you have no interest in finance, you should definitely go and see The Lehman Trilogy, now running at the National Theatre.

Adapted by Ben Power from Stefano Massini's play and directed by Sam Mendes, it tells the story of how three brothers, Hayum "Henry" (Simon Russell Beale), Mendel "Emanuel" (Ben Miles) and Mayer (Adam Godley) Lehman emigrated to America from Germany and founded a small store that would in time become a major investment bank.

The trilogy is essentially three smaller one-hour plays, each one focusing on a single generation of the Lehman family, with some overlap between them.

In the first play, the trio set up a clothes shop in Montgomery, Alabama, but they soon realise that there is a gap in the market for a firm which can act as middlemen between the cotton plantations of the South and the factories of the North. Even when the Civil War threatens to disrupt their business they manage to survive and then prosper in the immediate aftermath. Realising that the future lies in New York, they move from Alabama and broaden their business into other commodities.

The second part, covering the late 19th century and the run up to the Wall Street Crash, details the Lehmans' moves away from commodities and into banking, under the direction of Philip Lehman, Emanuel's son. Philip's foresight and analytical mind enables him to correctly anticipate which industries will need capital, so enabling the bank to prosper by helping finance them. Sadly, even he is unable to resist the lure of the 1920s stockmarket boom, and his attempt to become an investment company leads to the bank facing near extinction as markets start to tumble.

In the final part, Bobbie Lehman takes over the reins from his father. However, while his ruthless attitude and injection of outside capital ensure the company's survival, it also means that the family are forced to relinquish control of "their" institution. Meanwhile, his cousin, Herbert Lehman (Mayer's son), gives up banking for politics, ironically becoming part of the effort to tame the unbridled capitalism that caused the crash and the subsequent Depression. When Bobbie dies in 1969, he is succeeded by an outsider. The firm quickly becomes dominated by traders and is bought and sold repeatedly until its demise in 2008.

As you'd expect, the play uses Lehman's evolution as a metaphor for wider changes in America's economy and society. Another major theme is the conflict that the Jewish community (and indeed all immigrants) face between assimilation and holding on to tradition. This is underlined by frequent references to Jewish scripture, with Bobbie's attempt to turn the firm into an international powerhouse likened to the Tower of Babel. Similarly, while Henry's death in 1855 results in the shop being shuttered for ten days, by the time of Bobbie's demise in 1969 the traders can only afford to tear themselves away from the their screens for just three minutes of reflection.

The three actors use a mixture of narration and acting to tell the story, playing multiple roles, both male and female and young and old, as required, using body language and accents to distinguish characters. If Beale, Miles and Godley weren't so convincing and versatile, this could have been a problem, but their performance is so strong that the audience is able to suspend their disbelief. Limiting the cast to three actors (plus a brief cameo by Dominik Tiefenthaler who plays a janitor) enables the play to flow much more quickly than would be possible had there had been breaks to allow for multiple entrances and exits.

Similarly, the decision to stage the action in the boardroom of Lehman on the eve of its final collapse also helps keeps the play moving at a fast pace. Another benefit is that it ensures that the bank's ultimate collapse is never far from the audience's mind. This is particularly useful when Bobbie refuses to take part in a private post-crash rescue effort because he believes that the authorities will only act once there have been enough bankruptcies to satisfy the public's need for a scapegoat. To this day, many Lehman insiders argue that the Federal Reserve allowed Lehman to collapse in order to help pave the way for a larger bailout.

The way the set is designed also allows Sam Mendes to effectively deploy special effects at key moments, for instance by having the stage revolve. The only downside to this is that occasionally the actors end up delivering their lines behind a glass wall, which means that they end up muffled.

Overall, this is an intelligent, moving play that will appeal to a wide range of people, and should be on your list of productions to see.

The Lehman Trilogy is adapted by Ben Power from the play by Stefano Massini and is directed by Sam Mendes. It runs at the National Theatre until 20 October. Tickets are available from nationaltheatre.org.uk.

The Post

DVD, £8.95

Buy at Amazon

There are plenty of films about heroic whistleblowers or fearless journalists, but few about business leaders who put principle above profit. The protagonist of The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg, is Katharine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post.

Played by Meryl Streep, Graham attempts to turn around the fortunes of the ailing publication by floating it on the stock exchange in order to raise money for overdue investment. The problem is that as a woman in a man's world, she isn't taken seriously by the bankers or her advisers.

Shortly after her company goes public, Graham is confronted with a huge dilemma. The Nixon administration has served The New York Times with an injunction designed to prevent the publication of a leaked copy of the Ellsberg Papers, which reveal that successive governments have been lying about the US army's odds of success in Vietnam.

However, thanks to some smart detective work, editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) has managed to track down Ellsberg, who provides another copy of the report. Naturally, Bradlee is eager for the Post to go to print, both to defend free speech, but also to demonstrate that it is a serious rival to The New York Times.

Graham's advisers, however, are strongly opposed to getting involved, arguing that the bankers could use it as an excuse to pull out of the offering, while she and the entire editorial team could end up in jail for contempt of court.

To make matters worse, the revelations would ruin the reputation of her close friend Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), a former secretary of defence. Will Graham be willing to sacrifice friendship, her position as a Washington insider, and possibly the financial future of her paper (since the bankers are threatening to pull out) to reveal the truth and preserve a free press?

Even if you don't know much about American history, neither Graham's decision, nor the overall outcome, is ever in doubt from the start. It's also hard to argue that Graham was as courageous as Ellsberg, who eventually ended up facing criminal charges, or as quick-witted as Bradlee, who managed to gather a team to pick out the juiciest bits of a multi-volume report in a single afternoon. But Spielberg still does a good job of building up the tension. There is also an interesting snippet about the US newspaper industry: Graham notes that The New York Times's financial firepower stems from its local monopoly.

Overall, The Post is a strong, entertaining historical drama that delivers a new and unfamiliar twist on the history of the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration.It's easy to see why the film was nominated for Best Picture and Streep for Best Actress.

The sun won't hang around for ever: get your sizzle on while the blue skies last with the best barbecues around, says Chris Carter.

The bad news is the longest day was last week. The good news is July begins on Sunday. So, if you are yet to indulge in a spot of alfresco cooking, or your old barbecue is frazzled, there's still plenty of time to get your sizzle on. In fact, July and August tend to be the hottest months in Britain anyway. So if May the sunniest on record, according to the Met Office is anything to go by, there should be plenty of blue-sky days to come before autumn rolls around again.

Charcoal or gas?

Friends have fallen out and neighbours have gone to war over this question. They needn't have bothered. "Charcoal is obviously the best," says The Times' food editor Tony Turnbull "ideally single varietal and from a hand-coppiced wood in Oxfordshire or something". Some enthusiasts invest in charcoal "libraries" of oak, apple and ash chips for various grilling needs, "as if they are culinary curators rather than middle-aged wannabes overseeing a sausage incinerator". But there's no doubt. Charcoal gives you the best flavour, especially if you throw on some branches of rosemary or a sprig of thyme for added aroma.

That said, Turnbull confesses to having bought a "gas-fired beauty". It's "an age thing", he says. "I got fed up with spending hours waiting for the charcoal to come up to heat while watching the rain clouds moving in." Well, we all have our crises of faith.

Charcoal it is. And charcoal's charcoal, right?

Er, no. "You may think that one bag of charcoal is almost identical to another," says Olivia Abel on Business Insider UK. But you would be wrong. "There are actually many different types and styles of charcoal to choose from." For starters, you have your briquettes, lump charcoal and flavoured briquettes. Last year, barbecue maker Weber introduced its first briquettes and "the barbecue world buzzed with excitement", says Abel. They are a great all-rounder. The reviewer on Mad Meat Genius, a reviews site, also gave it the authoritative thumbs-up: "We are very pleased with the performance and longevity of Weber charcoal briquettes. It passed our uncontrolled experiment with flying colours." So, there you are. An 8kg bag costs around £13 in Britain. We look at some of the best barbies to fire it up in below.

Everdure Fusion charcoal

Heston Blumenthal's achingly hip Everdure Fusion charcoal can be plugged in, which not only makes lighting the coals as simple as pressing a button, but it also powers pop-up rotisseries, says Wired. In just a few moments the charcoal starts to smoke and within five minutes the coals are red hot. After ten, it's ready for cooking. If you prefer the authentic taste charcoal offers, but hate the uncertainty and waiting around, "it's brilliant". As for the rotisserie, two clamps securely grip whatever it is you want to cook up to 15kg. It will gently turn at the press of a button. The porcelain enamel "firebox" also makes cleaning more akin to scrubbing a roasting tray. "Expensive and excessive, but if you've got the budget you won't be disappointed." This is "space-age style for the modern Neanderthal". £899, EverdureByHeston.co.uk

Weber Genesis II E-310

"Big Weber barbecues are the ones you see keen cooks drooling over in department stores," says Expert Reviews. "The engineering, durability, cooking performance and hi-tech extras all combine to make this a world-famous brand with serious kudos." Take the gas-fuelled Weber Genesis II E-310, for example. It feeds up to eight people and boasts solid, precision-controlled dials. The porcelain-enamelled grate is hard-wearing and has a round centre that can be removed and replaced with Weber's griddle and wok set (which costs extra). It is also compatible with Weber's app-controlled temperature-monitoring system, iGrill (not included). You stick the probe in and it tells you when your food is ready. £797, JohnLewis.com

Big Green Egg

A barbecue as well as a culinary institution, the ceramic Big Green Egg grill and smoker emerged in the 1970s and has won over a cult following in the years since, says the Evening Standard. Temperatures can be accurately controlled over long periods thanks to its many levels, its thick cast-ceramic walls and heavy lid with two vents. In fact, it can cook slowly for ten hours on just one load of charcoal perfect for slow-roasting meats, such as pulled pork. The Egg is also up to the task of searing steaks, and you can even cook pizza and bread on it.The Big Green Egg may be expensive, but it "offers enough alfresco possibilities to last a lifetime". £1,275,JohnLewis.com

Napoleon Triumph 495

The Napoleon Triumph 495 is "beautifully made with really heavy grills, and plenty of space, including a useful cupboard underneath", says The Daily Telegraph. What's more, if you're torn between buying a charcoal or a gas barbecue, with the Triumph, you can have both. An optional extra allows you to place a charcoal-loaded plate over the gas flame, which you then turn off once the coals have got going. It also comes with a rotisserie. Nor do you have to lug around "hideous" gas cylinders: Napoleon makes built-in barbecues that can be hooked up to the main gas supply. £699.99, KeenGardener.co.uk

Ozpig

The charcoal-fuelled Ozpig may be portable, but it will just as well stay put in your garden for use as a full-time barbie, says The Independent. It also doubles up as a campfire cooker. So, whether it's chilli or chargrilling you're doing, the Ozpig can do both, thanks to a swivel cooking surface where you can either apply food directly to the grill or use a pan atop the heat source. The legs and chimney do fit into the barrel, and it comes with its own carry bag, but the whole barbecue weighs around 17kg, so "you don't want to be hiking too far with it on your back". If you're a rotisserie fan, there's even an attachment you can buy for it. "It's sturdy, steady and for serious campfire and portable cooks." £299, BBQ-barn.co.uk

And for those who have everything

"The Nissan Smokin' Titan is one hell of a name for one hell of a machine," says Joe Finnerty in The Sun. A modified Nissan Titan XD Gas King Cab, which would otherwise cost $36,590 in America, the beast made its appearance at the 2018 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March. It is "the ultimate BBQ accessory". The pick-up truck has been fitted with a six-burner stove, a fridge-freezer and wooden cutting boards for prep on its custom flatbed. The trailer, pulled by a "hefty" V8 engine, features a built-in barbecue smoker, a kitchen sink and water storage, plus boxes to keep your wood pellets and chips. There's even a spice rack to keep your meat seasoned, and Titan's premium sound system "so you can get the tunes pumping" at your party.

Time to put on a Steve McQueen turtleneck and get ready to press the pedal to the metal, says The Sunday Times. The Ford Mustang was relaunched three years ago, but a newer version has now arrived. It has a more powerful five-litre, V8 engine, and its official 0-62mph time of 4.8 seconds is on a par with a modern Porsche Carrera, one of McQueen's favourite cars. That's not all that's different, says Autocar. The aerodynamic front splitter is now bigger, "because the one thing the Mustang always lacked was a square jaw". It's angrier, too a third of early orders are for the "Fury Orange" paint job. And it's available in right-hand drive.

Equipped with the GT's standard active exhaust system, the note emerging from behind you is harder than before, says Evo although if you are looking to avoid an Asbo, "a quiet mode lets you start the car in relative silence to avoid awkward interactions with your neighbours". In "normal mode", the throttle is still a little slovenly at low revs, but it livens up in "sport", and this will, after all, be the default mode if you want to explore the Mustang's best side.

The 2018 Mustang's trump card for British buyers is its value for money, says Octane. You can get into a 410bhp, V8 fastback for just over £38,000 for the manual version. The government will sting you heavily in extra tax for the first six years of ownership, but never mind. "We think the V8's noise alone makes it worth the hefty additional penalty." The writing is on the wall when it comes to big petrol engines. Make hay while the sun shines.

Price: £38,165 (manual fastback GT). Engine: 5,038cc, V8, petrol. Power: 410bhp at 7,000rpm. Torque: 390lb ft at 4,600rpm.Top speed: 155mph. 0-62mph: 4.8 seconds.

Electric cars will never catch on, will they?

They already have. The number of electric cars on roads worldwide rose to a record high of 3.1 million in 2017, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The figure, which includes battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell passenger light-duty vehicles, is a 57% rise compared with 2016. Support from policymakers and the car industry suggests this trend will continue. The IEA estimates there will be 125 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030. In the UK, more than 120,000 have already been sold, according to What Car?.

Should I join them?

There are benefits. Electric cars are clean and quiet, have lower running costs, are exempt from congestion charges and are free of road tax (for completely electric cars under £40,000). There are government subsidies to help you past the generally higher asking price; insurance tends to be pricier, but annual servicing cheaper; and, despite their reputation, they are fun to drive. They "ghost along very quietly, and they tend to be very nippy indeed", as Which? puts it. Today, the best electric cars produce 0-60mph times to rival supercars, and even offer seven-seat variants, says Auto Express. "Times really are changing."

Isn't range an issue?

Not as much as it was. Most electric cars can travel for around 150 miles between charges, and the best ones up to 300 miles, although if you do a lot of motorway miles you'll find that the battery runs down faster than estimated range figures would have you believe. If short urban trips take up most of your driving, however, an electric car should do the job.

Where do I charge it?

If you have a garage or off-street parking, then you can charge up at home. (Which? recommends that you get your domestic electricity circuits and wiring checked by a qualified electrician before starting.) If you don't have such parking, there are government incentives available to get a charging station set up near your home. Otherwise, you'll have to rely on the national charging infrastructure, which is still in its infancy and will need to expand if electric car use does. Zap Map and similar websites and apps will guide you to your closest charging points, but there's no guarantee the one you go to will be working or will be suitable for the particular technology your car uses (Teslas, for example, use a lead incompatible with other chargers); the spot may well be occupied, and charging can take 30 minutes or longer. But if you have an electric car, you'll soon figure out your own strategies to work round these issues, says Steve Fowler in Auto Express. Just check out all your options locally.

What should I buy?

If you regularly make long journeys and don't have chargers at both ends, there are other options. Hybrids, for example, charge the battery from a conventional engine and from regenerative breaking technology. PHEVs are hybrids that you can charge by plugging them in and they give you better all-electric range than standard hybrids. It will all ultimately depend on what you need your car for. What Car magazine has a What Fuel? online calculator to help you decide what is best for you. When comparing costs, bear in mind that many manufacturers offer a choice between owning the battery or leasing it, says The Sunday Times. Batteries wear out and are expensive to replace, though the technology is improving all the time. But all in all, it's hard not to conclude that fully electric cars will in time "dominate the driving landscape", says Auto Express. Below we look at six of the best fully electric cars you can buy today.

A smart interior and great handling make the BMW i3 one of the most appealing electric cars on sale today, says What Car?. Its ground-breaking use of super-light carbon fibre and aluminium offset the weight of the battery pack that's mounted beneath its floor, and it has a realistic range of 100-125 miles. In addition to the fully electric model, BMW offers a Range Extender version with a two-cylinder petrol engine that can generate extra power for the car's batteries. The eye-widening acceleration, upmarket interior and infotainment system make this a very desirable package. But there are better and cheaper alternatives. Price: £34,075.

Need space for seven? And all the modernity and clever-clogs tech the Tesla brand has become famous for? Step this way, says Car magazine: the Model X is half crossover, half MPV, but all Tesla electric car. Famous for its cleverly hinged gullwing rear doors that open even in the tightest of car-park spaces, the interior is roomy for five and the rearmost third-row seats are fine for children on short journeys. It's pricey though, costing from £75,000 for a Model X 75D entry-level model.

You may have seen the headlines about the Tesla Model S accelerating faster than Ferraris, says James Mills in The Sunday Times. However, the car lined up is usually the P100D, the top-of-the-range version that costs £126,900. For most drivers, the P75D, which costs from £64,700, will offer all you need from an electric car. It has an official range of 304 miles and to drive it feels as smooth as any premium car. The spacious, minimalist cabin, dominated by a giant touchscreen, is an oasis of peace, and the four-year warranty for the car, and eight years of cover for the battery and drive unit, will give you additional peace of mind.

The Renault Zoe is the best-value electric car you can buy, says James Mills in The Sunday Times. The official driving range is 250 miles, which, Renault says with refreshing honesty, in the real world is more like 186 miles in the summer and 124 miles in the winter. Every Zoe comes with the same power train, so you just choose a trim level to suit your preference and budget. What you get is a practical four-seat hatch with a reasonably sized boot and assured road manners. It will make an excellent substitute for a VW Polo or Ford Fiesta if you rarely make long trips. Price: from £18,745.

The Volkswagen e-Golf offers everything you like about Golfs, only in a cleaner, silent electric package, says Car magazine. It'll cost you, but for the money you get all the usual VW attributes first-rate build quality, clever connectivity and generous packaging. The range is 186 miles, making longer commutes and journeys more of a realistic possibility than previous models, and there is joy to be derived from the beautifully finished cockpit, brisk acceleration, and "serene, vibration-free driving experience". This could be the ideal stepping stone, in that the car mixes conventional looks with cutting-edge technology: if you're on the cusp of going electric, the Golf might well be the car to convert you. Price: from £32,075.

The star of the show: the Nissan Leaf

The Nissan Leaf is the car that really "kick-started the electric-car market", saysAuto Express. The five-door, five-seater hatchback became an instant success, thanks to its family friendly layout and similarity to conventional cars. The modest range of about 80 miles between charges has more than doubled over time following a raft of improvements, and the time required to charge the battery has continued to drop you can charge it from empty to 80% in as little as 40 minutes. It is "one of the best electric cars you can buy today".

What Car? chose the Leaf as its electric car of the year for 2018. It isn't much more expensive than the Renault Zoe (see above), yet is much better to drive, more spacious inside and the range is more than enough for most commutes.It is also generously equipped, has a bigger boot than rivals, is easily fast enough for regular motorway driving and should prove extremely reliable if previous-generation models are anything to go by. Price: from £25,990.

The Q9FN(above) is "the best TV Samsung has ever made", says Caleb Denison on Digital Trends. It offers the "most pleasurable set-up experience available today" and, once you've got it out of the box, delivers a "killer picture" on its QLED screen that manages to be intensely bright while still maintaining deep black levels. But it is about so much more than picture quality; it's also a joy to use and its smart TV system is "better than ever", with apps such as Netflix loading immediately. It "does everything", and is quite simply "one of the most rounded TVs you can buy today".

Price: £5,999 for the 75-inch version from Samsung.com.

If 75 inches isn't enough for you, a projector is "the best way to get a truly massive cinema-like image in your living room", says Nick Pino on TechRadar. JVC has always been "the projector brand to follow", he says, with "black levels that will beat your local cinema screen". The DLA-X5900 might not be 4K, but with JVC's eShift technology, "you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference".

Price: £3,999 from Richer Sounds.

The trouble with many a flat-screen TV is that it produces a flat sound, too. So add a bit of "oomph" to your soundtrack with the Sonos Playbase. The space-saving speaker is "designed to look like it was cut from a slab of granite", says Ced Yuen on Trusted Reviews, and sits discreetly under your TV. It boasts six drivers, three tweeters and one woofer; but add further Sonos products and "you can build as big a system as your house (or wallet) allows", from a formidable surround-sound system to a multi-room audio setup.

Price: £699 from John Lewis.

It's no good having top-of-the-range visuals if you're not sitting comfortably. And if you're watching England, you'll need a cool beer. The Premier Home Cinema Chair is made from soft Italian cowhide leather and is electrically adjustable so you can get settled in the perfect position, with a massage function for when things get stressful. The armrests contain a storage box and cupholder that can either be refrigerated or heated to keep your beverage at just the right temperature.

Price: £1,274.99, DrinkStuff.com.

You can't be at home for every game, so when you're out and about and one is about to kick off, pack the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. It's "all the tablet you need", says Tom Morgan on Stuff. It's impressively thin and light, at 6mm and 429g, so you'll have no trouble using it one-handed. You get a "gorgeous OLED" screen with "the deepest blacks and impeccable contrast" with "a clarity that LCD still struggles to match". Viewing angles are "fantastic" and brightness is "beyond impressive", so you'll have no trouble following all the action even in the brightest sunlight.

Price: £499 from Currys.

Molly's Game (15) Directed by Aaron Sorkin DVD £7.99, Blu-Ray £14.99

Businesses come in all shapes and forms and, as this film based on a true story makes clear, running a high-end poker game is not so very different from running a technology start-up or hedge fund. After a freak accident ruins her skiing career, the protagonist, Molly Bloom (played by Jessica Chastain), sets off for Los Angeles for a gap year. A few chance encounters lead to her becoming the PA to a developer who runs poker games. After he steals her wages, she decides to run her own game. Things turn sour and she ends up bankrupt.

Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay and makes his directorial debut, gives us a huge amount of detail about the mechanics of what Bloom did. This helps us appreciate the huge number of business decisions she had to make on a daily basis, including how much credit to extend to gamblers, the value of intangible assets such as client lists, her approach to regulatory risk and how to deal with an attempted hostile takeover from gangsters.

Sorkin's approach doesn't work so well when it comes to Bloom's emotional journey. From the start she comes across as a cold character, and we don't get a sense of any vulnerability, even when her business is collapsing around her. Worse, Sorkin overcompensates with a schmaltzy scene towards the very end. The film is still a cut above the average biopic, but it would have benefited from a director who was willing to take a more subtle approach to some of the exposition.

The new Oculus Go promises to bring virtual reality to the masses. Sarah Moore reports.

Oculus Go marks, in many ways, "the dawn of a new era in virtual reality", say Michelle Fitzsimmons and Gerald Lynch on Tech Radar. This is "VR for the casual gamer, the relaxed consumer of media, the person without the time, money or interest in setting up a PC to power a higher-end headset".

But despite its budget price (£199 for 32GB on-board storage, £249 for 64GB), the Oculus Go delivers impressive results, says Matt Kamen on Wired.co.uk. It has a single 5.5 inch, 2,560x1,440 LCD panel with a pixel density of 538ppi. From the home screen, which puts you in one of multiple 360-degree vistas, to the various games and apps optimised for the Go, the quality of the visuals is "startling", says Kamen. But it's the Go's integrated physical features and nifty design tricks that "really make it stand out". Built-in speakers push audio down the head straps, while the embedded mic allows for chat and conferencing features, making the VR experience a "near-premium" one.

The Go offers "what VR insiders call three degrees of freedom", says Janko Roettgers in Variety. The action will happen all around you, but you can't truly lean in, or walk within a game, as you could with higher-end VR devices like the Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR. Similarly, you can point the controller at objects, and swipe through menus with a built-in trackpad, but you won't be able to reach out, or bring your virtual hand up to your face. The battery lasts for just two and a half hours, and you can't use it while charging.

But for the price, the Oculus Go is "almost a no brainer", says Roettgers. Once high-end, all-in-one devices become available to consumers, virtual reality will "truly unleash its potential". Until then, the Go is "a great entry-level VR device".

If you're thinking of taking to the seas for the summer, this could be the perfect option, says Sarah Moore.

British yachtmaker Princess Yachts has succeeded in balancing luxury with performance, says Lauren Hill on Elite Traveler. Now considered the flagship of itsS Class range, the Princess S78 is "powerful yet elegant".

Its design combines the benefits of a flybridge with the sporty profile and large sunroof of a sportscruiser, says Chris Jefferies on Boat International. All the accommodation is below deck, with an "amidships owner's suite" that stretches across the entire 5.76m beam, as well as two further double cabins and a portside twin cabin, taking the total guest accommodation to eight people. The aft crew quarters also allow for a staff of twopeople.

Two large sunpads are "ideal for those looking to soak up some rays", while the split foredeck seating area is an ideal spot for watching the sun go down with a cocktail in hand. The flybridge also features an L-shaped seating area and barbecue.

The S78's silhouette is "unmistakably S Class", says Stef Bottinelli on Yachting & Boating World, "from the trapezoidal stateroom and knife hull windows to the pronounced rear haunches and swept back fly screen". It is fitted with MAN 1,900mhp engines and the resin-infused hull delivers "exceptional" performance with a top speed of 39 knots. The hull is "optimised for greater lift and less drag", allowing for lower planing speeds and greater efficiency; the hydraulic bathing platform and 4.45m tender garage with "integrated tender launch system" become the perfect base for watersports.

Finally, the S78 features what's said to be "the most high-tech music system" on any superyacht on the market, says Hill. This is the "ultimate yacht for entertaining".

Price: from £2.935m. Fuel capacity: 6,000 litres. Top speed: 39 knots. Engine: Twin Man V12 (2 x 1,900mhp). Length overall (including pulpit): 24.66m.

Cannondale's bikes have long been popular with endurance riders. Its new model will continue to impress, says Sarah Moore

The Cannondale Synapse Hi-Mod Disc is one of the most searched for bikes on the internet, points out Stu Bowers in Cyclist. And "the reason is fairly obvious look through past reviews and you will struggle to find anything but high praise for Cannondale's endurance bike".

Cannondale designed the new model "conscious that the endurance rider still wants a lightweight, responsive bike, the same as a bike racer", designer David Devine tells the magazine. "These aren't passive bikes they're made to be pushed and so the Synapse gets the same construction tech as our lightweight race bikes... There's not a whole lot of fluff... Its inherent beauty is in how simple and refined it is."

And the redesign has worked the way Cannondale has managed to move its endurance bike closer to a race bike in terms of handling and responsiveness while dialling in more comfort is "very impressive", says David Arthur on Road.cc. Comfort has been improved thanks to wider tyres, a new seatpost and refined frame design. And the lighter frame certainly makes a big difference: the 7.25kg bike is one of the lightest disc-brake-equipped endurance bikes the review site has tested "it's knocking on the door of some race bikes". With all models disc only, Cannondale describes the reduction in weight as "getting disc brakes for free", which is a nice way of looking at it, says Oliver Bridgewood in Cycling Weekly.

Thankfully, Cannondale's engineers have a knack for translating geometry into great handling, says Bridgewood. "We found descending on the Synapse an absolute joy Our tester was able to take the bike down a number of technical descents and when really digging into tight switchbacks the Cannondale Synapse carves beautifully like a slalom skier." The Synapse was "easily one of our best rides" of 2017.

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New-England-based Hinckley has been making boats since 1928, originally building and maintaining the lobster vessels of local fisherman in downeast Maine, says Ariana Rockefeller on Forbes.com. Lately it has been making fashionable runabouts and picnic boats. Now it has unveiled the Dasher the world's first fully electric luxury motor yacht. It has remained loyal to its classic designs, but is a bang-up-to-date craft with 3D-printed titanium hardware and "artisanal teak", which is actually an epoxy composite hand-painted to look like the real thing, but which keeps the boat's weight down.

Indeed, the Dasher is the lightest boat the company has ever produced, says Matthew Kronsberg on Bloomberg. The craft is driven by twin 80hp electric engines powered by lithium-ion batteries made by BMW. Together, they propel the boat to a top speed of around 27mph, with a range of 40 miles (if pootling along at the yacht's 10mph cruising speed). Range anxiety shouldn't be a problem, however. The touchscreen console boasts a GPS display with the boat's location and "a circle that grows or shrinks in size, indicating your remaining range at any given time, depending on how fast you're going and how far you've gone".

Like the Tesla Roadster, the Dasher is "a market-ready vision of what post-petrol transportation could look like". One advantage an electric boat has over an electric car, however, is ease of charging marinas "already provide a well-established charging infrastructure thanks to ubiquitous dockside power sources". Recharging takes four hours "about the time it takes for a leisurely lunch at the marina and a swim at the beach".

Musicals about finance are rare; those that portray financiers in a positive light are even rarer. Rothschild and Sons, which finished its run at north London's Park Theatre on Saturday, tells the story of the banking dynasty.

The story begins in the mid 18th century when Meyer Rothschild (Robert Cuccioli) returns home to Frankfurt to take over the family store and marry Gutele (Glory Campton). However, his plans are thrown into question by the need to live in Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto and the laws that limit the number of Jewish marriages. While an encounter with Prince William of Hesse (Tony Timberlake) solves the second problem, he still has to grapple with the fact that he is very much a second class citizen.

However, a combination of chutzpah, ingenuity and willingness to be an intermediary between Prince William and his bankers mean that Meyer gradually accumulates influence, eventually persuading the prince to allow his sons to conduct business on the prince's behalf. So when Napoleon's victories force Prince William into exile, the Rothschilds are the only ones who can make sure that the prince's debtors don't take advantage of the situation to renege on their debts. As part of this scheme, Nathan (Gary Trainor), the cleverest son, is sent to London, where, after a few stumbles, he becomes a successful financier in his own right.

As the Napoleonic wars reach their climax, Britain and its allies desperately need funds that the market is unwilling to lend to them. Nathan spots an opportunity to advance the cause of liberty, by proposing that the Rothschilds lend money to Britain at a discount provided it pressures the rest of Europe to end the ghettos. This scheme is opposed by Meyer, who argues that Europe can't be trusted and that mixing idealism and money could cost them everything. This sets off an epic confrontation between father and sons that could determine the fate of Europe.

A slightly shortened version of a show by the team behind Fiddler on the Roof, Rothschild and Sons isn't quite as musically impressive as the more well-known show. Still, it tells a moving story of oppression and the ability of free enterprise to tear down walls both metaphorical and literal. It even contains an investment lesson, with Nathan Rothschild losing money when he follows a "hot tip" to speculate in tea. Director Jeffrey B Moss also takes advantage of the compact stage to produce a show that packs a punch.

The Park Theatre has impressive record of arranging transfers to the National Theatre, so there is hope that we've not seen the last of this show yet.

"If you don't play video games, you're not just missing out, you're wilfully ignoring the most rapidly evolving creative medium in human history," according to TV critic Charlie Brooker. Here are seven to get you hooked.

Super Mario Odyssey

Mario has been with many of us since childhood, says Sam Loveridge in GamesRadar. This latest incarnation is a "beautiful homage", yet with plenty that's fresh and new. There's almost too much to explore in Mario's evolving and intriguing world. This is the "Mario of the future" and the most "glorious" of his adventures to date. (Nintendo Switch.)

Life is Strange: Before the Storm

If sifting through the fallout of a family tragedy doesn't sound like the usual stuff of video games, that's because this is no typical game, says Darryn King in 1843 magazine. The purpose is to explore the inner life of the central character, and there are codes to crack and conundrums to puzzle through on the way. This is an exceptional game that doesn't only "dazzle the senses" but also "ensnares the heat". (Available for Microsoft Windows, PS4 and Xbox One.)

Shadow of the Colossus

The aim is to slay the baddies and win the princess, says Keza MacDonald in The Guardian. Yet as you drive your sword into the ogres and aggressive lizards, this game elicits a feeling not of triumph, but of uneasy self-reflection on the selfish and destructive nature of possessive love. It's a game of "extraordinary beauty and quiet profundity". (PlayStation 4.)

Prey

This wonderfully atmospheric science-fiction adventure aboard an alien-infested space station will make you feel clever and paranoid, and will excite, intrigue, and, at least once in the story, absolutely terrify you, says Kirk McKeand in The Daily Telegraph. There are some glitches in the game play, but not enough to stop this being one of the most interesting and special video games of the past year. (Microsoft Windows, PS4, Xbox One.)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Zelda is "one of the greatest games of all time", says Tim Martin in 1843. In its open world you can go anywhere and do anything; you can sink for hours at a time into a kingdom of glorious vistas and undiscovered corners that "enables the most joyfully lateral kind of puzzle solving". This game reinvigorates the open-world format. (Nintendo Switch.)

Night in the Woods

It may look like a cutesy platform game, but this acclaimed indie adventure is a much darker tale than it first appears, says the GameCentral column in Metro.It's essentially a social-realist version of a community-simulation game and a "heartfelt exploration of depression and angst in a small-town, working-class community". It's also very funny and one of the most impressive games of the past year. (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC.)

Okami

This new release of an ageing game lacks much that is actually new, but still it remains one of the best games ever made, says Ian Dransfield on Trusted Reviews. Okami is a role-playing game where you run around as the goddess of the sun, taking on quests, exploring and discovering hidden secrets. The world created is "genuinely beautiful and enchanting", and the game play not po-faced but full of wit, imagination and playfulness. It's fun for all the family. (Microsoft Windows, PS4, Xbox One.)

The Bre-X scandal rocked the mining world in the mid 1990s. A small Canadian firm claimed to have discovered a massive gold deposit in Indonesia, sending its shares rocketing at the peak, Bre-X was worth over $6bn. But the discovery was a fraud: Bre-X's geologist had been tampering with ("salting") samples by adding gold dust. As the fraud unravelled, the geologist apparently committed suicide by jumping from a helicopter over the jungle, the company collapsed and the chief executive who professed his innocence died in mysterious circumstances.

Gold is a fictionalised version of this sorry tale. Hard luck and an economic downturn destroy the family business of prospector Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey). After a strange dream, Wells pawns his remaining jewellery in order to meet up with an old friend, Miguel Acosta (dgar Ramrez), who believes there is a huge gold deposit in a volcanic region of Indonesia.

Initially, they find nothing and Wells nearly dies from malaria, but recovers to be told that they struck gold. His fortunes are transformed, he's courted by Wall Street bankers. But the money goes to his head, destroying his relationship with his girlfriend, Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard), while his firms starts to face multiple challenges from rivals.

Director Stephen Gaghan and screenwriters Patrick Massett and John Zinman do a solid job of keeping the audience entertained without dumbing down the business aspects too much. The cinematography, period detail and the exotic locations do a fine job of putting the viewer alongside Wells as he struggles to move from has-been to contender.

McConaughey gives a compelling performance as a hyperactive, chain-smoking protagonist who's determined to have the success his father failed to achieve, even when it might have been easier to sit back and cash in on his apparent good fortune. Indeed, the big criticism that can be levelled against Gold is that Wells is too sympathetic. Even the moments of hubris and excess that precede his downfall are brief and tame. A twist at the end falls flat. But despite some unfavourable reviews, this is an intriguing film that's worth seeing.

What the press said

Reviews have been mixed. "The film has neither the steel and wit necessary for satire, nor the insight for an engaging human drama in the style of something like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," says The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "Gold is simply a dull chore steeped in strike-it-rich clichs, a flaccid tale of capitalist cat-and-mouse that shirks the opportunity to say anything remotely of interest," says Patrick Smith in The Daily Telegraph.

"Proudly sporting a pot belly, snaggled teeth, and receding comb-over, McConaughey turns in a gonzo performance," says Peter Debruge in Variety. But "some will surely label it a disaster over the tonal risks it takes".

Directed by Stephen Gaghan, starring Matthew McConaughey. On general release across the UK