Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tessa Whitehouse, Reader in 18th-century Literature and Director of Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature, Queen Mary University of London

Reading is very subjective, but one thing most book lovers can agree on is that 2025 was a notable year for fresh, inventive, affecting storytelling. Books translated from their original language are proving increasingly popular as readers seek out global perspectives beyond their own, as evidenced in this year’s International Booker win, Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, which is included here.

We also bring you five other novels our academic experts have chosen as their favourites this year. From a Mrs Dalloway for the service economy, to a dreamlike encounter between people across time, place and mortality, do our academic picks chime with yours?

Pick A Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa

This slender little novel is both a reverie and a dash of icy water to the face that will make you think twice about tuning out from your surroundings next time you get a mani-pedi. We follow the owner of a low-price nail bar through a workday from turning on the fluorescent lights to pulling down the metal shutter.

In this Mrs Dalloway for the service economy, the painful intersections of the personal and the political are inescapable for the “Susans” (the name each employee must adopt), but as invisible as the workers themselves to many of their customers.

Slight in length, light in touch, full of humour, and closely observed, Pick A Colour can be read in a single, intense afternoon. But the troubling thoughts it raises through its memorable characters linger long after your Christmas nail polish has all chipped away.

Tessa Whitehouse is reader in English and director of Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

Perfection is a curious sort of novel. There is no dialogue and almost no conflict between the two central characters, Anna and Tom, digital nomads who spend their days in Berlin designing websites and always appear together, almost like a single entity.

In a sequence of beautifully written, perfectly observed chapters, Latronico itemises and describes their apartment, their social media habits, their limited perspective on Berlin, their sex life, their futile attempts at meaningful political activism, their growing disillusionment and desire for relocation – the repetitive consumption and socially structured habits of a globalised lifestyle built around image and taste.

The result is a remarkably astute and compelling novel – social realism at its sharpest – as Latronico nails the manners of the millennial generation and that brief period of optimism, from 2006 to 2016, when we felt digital media might make a positive difference and lifestyle choices seemed imbued with an optimistic ethical resonance – soon shown to be hollow.

James Miller is a senior lecturer in creative writing and English literature

Old Soul by Susan Barker

At first, Barker’s novel seems a gorgeously written adaptation of one of my favourite gothic tropes: the vampire. The story opens with two strangers, Jake and Mariko, who meet at Osaka airport. They have both lost loved ones in strange and brutal circumstances but in common, each of the deceased encountered a mysterious, dark-haired woman just before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko, and then disappeared.

As the plot advances, Barker takes familiar tropes and themes in unexpected directions, turning this novel into an unforgettable tale of cosmic horror. There is the terrifying lore of “the Tyrant”, different timelines and settings from Wales to New Mexico, not to mention a cast of unreliable narrators who become more vibrant, twisted and compelling as the novel advances. Ultimately, this is a story about our societal obsession with becoming famous and being seen – Barker’s novel goes a step further and asks: who gets to witness? Who gets to record? And for what purpose?

Inés Gregori Labarta is a lecturer in creative writing

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett

There is no shortage of contemporary novels with first-person narrators who are women, often writers, struggling to keep themselves together in the face of late capitalism, the internet and the patriarchy. Claire-Louise Bennett’s Big Kiss, Bye-Bye is narrated by a woman, a writer, but beyond that, all similarities to other works in this category disappear.

The narrator’s interior world is made up of thoughts about and responses to others – her friend and ex-lover Xavier, her old schoolteacher with whom she had a relationship as a teenager, and another old schoolteacher who has recently emailed her.

It is a novel of extraordinary noticing, but it is a noticing that has such rhythm and intensity that it enters your very bones as you read. It is as unrepeatable as a dream, and like a dream stays with you way beyond the ability of words to account for it.

Leigh Wilson is a professor of English literature

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

The English translation of We Do Not Part followed Han Kang’s 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her earlier Greek Lessons (2011, translated into English 2023) considered loss of sight and speech through the arresting metaphor of burial in snow.

We Do Not Part reconsiders this metaphor, employing the destructive and creative force of a snowstorm to convey the danger of lost histories. Kyungha reluctantly agrees to house sit and look after the much-loved pet bird of her sick friend, Inseon, and travels in snow and darkness to reach her rural cabin.

The novel is at once a dreamlike encounter between people across time, place, and mortality; a recollection of the women’s friendship and childhoods; a personal history of the impact of the 1948-49 Jeju massacre (an intense period of anti-communist violence and suppression that resulted in thousands of deaths); and a portrait of the rural South Korean landscape in bleak winter. The prose is crisp and poetic, the dialogue sparse, and the protagonist introspective and self-questioning. An intelligent, graceful, bruising novel and an encounter with the rural and the local.

Jenni Ramone is an associate professor of postcolonial and global literatures

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

At a time when many literary novels are becoming shorter and increasingly opaque, the luminous Dream Count – Adichie’s first novel in a decade – bucks the trend. Expansive and richly detailed, it follows the lives of four African women, moving fluidly between the US and Nigeria.

Set at the onset of the Covid pandemic, the pause in ordinary life creates space for the women to reflect and dream, deepening the novel’s engagement with memory and personal history alongside its comparative exploration of women’s experiences in different parts of the world.

Like many recent novels, films, and television series (Conversations with Friends; Girl, Woman, Other; Derry Girls), the women here both contrast and complement one another, offering nuanced insight into what it means to be Black and female and with varying degrees of privilege.

The novel skilfully intertwines universal aspects of the female experience, such as cultural pressure to marry and produce children, with a post-#MeToo focus on sexual violence rooted in stark racial and gendered power inequalities.

Roberta Garrett is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and Cultural Studies

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

Delicately woven over a period of 33 years, this collection of 12 short stories comes from the heart of the Muslim community in southern India. Rendered nearly invisible in the nation’s literary imagination despite its substantial presence, Heart Lamp offers a necessary intervention into the silences of Indian Muslim women’s interior lives.

It maps the emotional landscapes and the intricate layers of marginalisation through caste, class and gender expectations embracing the politics of location. Mushtaq, an activist, inevitably represents Karnataka’s “Bandaya Sahitya” (Rebel Literature) movement, rooted in anti-caste, feminist and secular traditions.

The stories juxtapose modern India’s patriarchal structures with the obscured lives of women through literal and metaphorical veils where pain, suffering, injustice are critiqued through razor sharp realism mingled with sentimentality and humour. Deepa Bhasthi’s translation performs its own quiet rebellion, refusing to italicise Kannada words or append footnotes.

Prathiksha Betala is a PhD researcher in contemporary feminist dystopian fiction

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Seven of the best novels of 2025 – chosen by our literary experts – https://theconversation.com/seven-of-the-best-novels-of-2025-chosen-by-our-literary-experts-271885

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ming Gao, Research Fellow of East Asia Studies, Lund University

Distinctive in taste and famously divisive, durian is not everyone’s choice of fruit. This was certainly the case for some Chinese explorers when they first encountered it during the Ming Dynasty’s early maritime voyages.

One record dates back to 1413, when a translator called Ma Huan travelled to what is now Malaysia on a trip with diplomat and admiral Zheng He. In his travelogue, Ma described durian as a “stinky fruit” that smelled like “rotten beef”.

But fast forward six centuries and this tropical fruit has settled into Chinese daily life. China is now the world’s top importer of durian, accounting for around 95% of global demand. Its imports surged to a record high of nearly US$7 billion (£5.2 billion) in 2024.

Such is the popularity of durian in China that governments across south-east Asia, where most of the world’s durian is produced, are using its export as a tool of political and economic influence.

For years, gifting top-quality durians to Chinese officials has been one way south-east Asian governments have sought to cultivate goodwill. On a visit to Beijing in 1975, for example, former Thai prime minister Kukrit Pramoj gifted 200 durians to Chinese leaders.

More recently, in 2024, Malaysia’s King Ibrahim offered Chinese president Xi Jinping two boxes of premium durians during a state visit. This included the prized Musang King, a variety that is often referred to in China as the “Hermès of durians” – a nod to the exclusive Hermès fashion brand, which is known in China for extreme prestige.

The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, and Malaysia’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had also been filmed earlier that year sat together tackling a durian with a knife and spoon. The traditional way to eat a durian is to open the fruit and consume the flesh by hand.

However, durian is more than just a symbol of friendship between south-east Asian states and Beijing. China’s massive demand for durians has boosted domestic economic growth across the region, turning some previously poor agricultural areas into sites of prosperity.

According to Eric Chan, a Malaysian durian farmer who was interviewed by the New York Times in 2024, revenue from durian sales to China has transformed his town. Chan said durian farmers there have been able to rebuild their houses from “wood to brick” and can now “afford to send their children overseas for university”.

South-east Asian countries have also used China’s appetite for durian to strengthen their economic relationships with Beijing. Vietnamese durian exports, for instance, have been credited with opening access to the Chinese market for other domestically produced agricultural goods.

And Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, has openly announced that he sees durian exports as a way to secure follow-up Chinese investments. “Durian diplomacy is not just diplomacy – it is durian business,” said Hamidi in November. “We need to work with Chinese businessmen to further develop Musang King plantations in Malaysia, and we should also strengthen downstream industries together.”

Food silk road

For China, the durian trade is part of a broader strategy. Since taking power in 2013, Xi has repeatedly stressed that his country must safeguard its food security. Researchers describe the resulting approach as a “food silk road”, an emerging network of investments and trade agreements designed to diversify China’s food imports across many regions of the world.

Durian from south-east Asian countries is thus one part of a much wider flow. New Zealand exports most of its premium gold kiwifruit to China, with the Chinese market an equally important destination for Chilean cherries. Reports suggest that shipments of Kenyan avocados to China are also increasing.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, and the subsequent global chaos that was unleashed by his sweeping tariff campaign, has enabled China to consolidate these relationships. In the first quarter of 2025, for example, Chinese imports of agricultural products from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations reached nearly US$7.5 billion – a 14% increase from the same period in 2024.

According to Chatham House, a UK-based international affairs thinktank, Trump’s erratic policies have led to declining perceptions of the US among south-east Asian officials. This may see countries in the region, including traditional US allies such as the Philippines and Thailand, shift further towards Beijing’s sphere of influence in the near future.

China’s durian boom has delivered rapid growth in south-east Asia, but it has also produced several unintended consequences. The establishment of new durian plantations, for example, has led to deforestation in Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia. This has disrupted local habitats and ecosystems, posing a risk to endangered animal species such as the Malayan tiger.

As the Chinese market continues to grow, south-east Asian countries will also need to prepare for rising foreign control over supply chains and regulatory uncertainty in an unstable global economy. The challenge for these states moving forward will be to capture the benefits of Chinese durian demand while managing the expansion of the industry.

Ming Gao receives funding from the Swedish Research Council. This research was produced with support from the Swedish Research Council grant “Moved Apart” (nr. 2022-01864). Ming Gao is a member of Lund University Profile Area: Human Rights.

Tabita Rosendal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. China’s durian craze has turned this tropical fruit into a tool of diplomacy – https://theconversation.com/chinas-durian-craze-has-turned-this-tropical-fruit-into-a-tool-of-diplomacy-271675

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dušan Radunović, Associate Professor/Director of Studies (Russian), Durham University

A landmark film in Russian cinema, Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin may have first been shown in Moscow on December 24 1925, but its enduring appeal and relevance are evident in the many homages paid by film-makers in the century that followed. So what made this film, known for its cavalier treatment of historical events, one of the most influential historical films ever made?

The story of the making of the film provides some answers. Following the success of his 1924 debut Strike, Eisenstein was commissioned in March 1925 to make a film that would mark the 20th anniversary of Russia’s revolution in 1905. This widespread popular uprising was triggered by poor working conditions and social discontent swept through the Russian Empire, posing a challenge to imperial autocracy. The attempt failed but the memory lived on.

Originally titled The Year 1905, Eisenstein’s film was envisaged as part of a nationwide cycle of commemorative public events across the Soviet Union. The aim was to integrate the progressive parts of Russian history before the 1917 Revolution – in which the general strike of 1905 assumed central place – into the fabric of the new Soviet life afterwards.

The original screenplay envisioned the film as the dramatisation of ten notable, but unrelated, historical episodes from 1905: the Bloody Sunday massacre, the antisemitic pogroms and the mutiny on the imperial battleship Prince Potemkin, among others.

Filming the mutiny, recreating the history

The principal photography started in summer 1925, but yielded little success, after which the increasingly frustrated Eisenstein moved the crew to the southern port of Odessa. He decided to drop the loose episodic structure of the script and refocus the film on just one episode.

The new screenplay was solely based on the events of June 1905, when the sailors on the battleship Prince Potemkin, at the time docked near Odessa, rebelled against their officers after they were ordered to eat rotten meat infested with maggots.

The mutiny and the follow-up events in Odessa were now to be dramatised in five acts. The opening two acts and the closing fifth corresponded to the historical events: the sailors’ rebellion and their successful escape through the squadron of loyalist ships, respectively.

The two central parts of the film, which describe the solidarity of the people of Odessa with the mutineers, were written anew and were only loosely based on historical events. Curiously, over the century of the film’s reception, its reputation as a quintessential historical narrative rests mainly on these two acts. What accounts for that paradox?

The answer may lie in the central two episodes, particularly the fourth, with its poignant depiction of a massacre against unarmed civilians – including the famous scene of a baby in a runaway pram, bouncing down the steps – that imbue the film with powerful emotional resonance and grant it a sense of moral high ground.

Also, while almost entirely fictional, the famous Odessa Steps sequence integrates many of the historically grounded themes from the original screenplay, namely those of widespread antisemitism and oppression of the Tsarist authorities against its people.

These events are then emphatically visualised through Eisenstein’s idiosyncratic use of montage, in which reiterative patterns of the suffering of the innocent foreground the theme of the faceless brutality of the Tsarist oppressor. The film’s universal moral message is thus rendered in a form that is at once visceral and widely readable.

The Battleship Potemkin can be seen as an act of collective memory that sparks and manages an emotional reaction in the viewer, through which the past and the present are negotiated in a particular way. But, a century on, Eisenstein’s negotiation of the past, so insistent on establishing an emotional rapport with the viewer and recreating history, is inseparable from our own acts of remembrance and history-making.

From the vantage point of 2025, Eisenstein’s Potemkin, with its revolutionary idealism and the promise of a better society, has lost much of its appeal in the wake of the betrayal of the same ideals, from the Stalinist purges of the 1930s to the ongoing devastation of Ukraine. What contemporary viewers need is the revitalisation of the film’s original message in new, ever-changing contexts, urging resistance to power and oppression, and expressing solidarity with the marginalised and oppressed.

Echoes in modern film

It is fitting that this year saw the BFI (the British Film Institute) release a restored version of Battleship Potemkin, for the film has had such a profound and pervasive impact on western visual culture that many viewers may not realise how deeply its language is rooted in mainstream cinema.

Alfred Hitchcock famously adopted Eisenstein’s rapid, chaotic editing techniques in the shower scene in Psycho (1960), where the horror emerges less from what is shown than from what is suggested through montage. He also makes an explicit nod to Eisenstein in the film’s second major killing, in which the murder takes place on the staircase of the Bates house.

This was a scenario later echoed in many films, including Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) by Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Nicholson himself had earlier enacted a violent confrontation on a staircase in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), while Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019) would become emblematic for a controversial dance sequence on a flight of public steps.

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), likewise, appears to owe a stylistic debt to Eisenstein, with two pivotal deaths occurring at the base of a now-iconic Georgetown stairway. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) gestures toward Eisenstein in parody, but it is Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) that remains the most explicit homage to the Odessa step sequence, with its baby in a runaway pram scene, which places Eisenstein’s influence centrally at the heart of modern Hollywood cinema.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Battleship Potemkin at 100: why Sergei Eisenstein’s powerful silent film remains unforgettable – https://theconversation.com/the-battleship-potemkin-at-100-why-sergei-eisensteins-powerful-silent-film-remains-unforgettable-270133

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Genevieve Johnson, Associate Lecturer in history, Newcastle University

A newly unveiled statue in North Shields is casting fresh light on the extraordinary life of Mary Ann Macham – a woman whose courage carried her from the brutality of slavery in the US state of Virginia to freedom on the banks of the River Tyne on Christmas Day, 1831.

With the help of a friend in Virginia who was enslaved to the harbour master, Macham (who was enslaved on a plantation) hid beneath a tree and in the forest for six weeks while men on horses and bloodhounds searched for her. She was then smuggled to the harbour, where the second mate of a ship stowed her away with the cargo.

After many weeks at sea, including a stop in the Netherlands, Macham reached Grimsby. There she was taken by road to North Shields and welcomed by two “Miss Spences” on Christmas Day.

The Spence family were Quakers and committed abolitionists who offered her refuge and support. Macham’s story, dictated to members of the Spence family, was later published in the Christmas 1950 issue of Tynemouth Parish. Her powerful account survives today, with the original text available through the African Lives in Northern England website.

Macham lived in freedom in North Shields for the next 62 years. She worked in the Spence household and married a local man, James Blyth. Though her story is little known nationally, exhibitions about her have been held at the Old Low Light Museum in North Shields and the Discovery Museum in Newcastle. Local newspapers have told her story with pride and affection.

Macham’s story is an early example of a pattern which continued for most of the century, of Black American fugitives from slavery or anti-slavery activists coming to Britain and Ireland to work, lecture, publish and live.

Other figures such as Frederick Douglass, whose legal freedom was paid for by Quakers in Newcastle, and Moses Roper, who lectured far and wide, eventually settling for a time in Wales, are fairly well known. There are several possible explanations for why Macham’s story hasn’t had the same recognition.

First, there is still a distinct lack of attention paid to Black British history in general, particularly anything before Windrush, the ship that brought the first large group of Caribbean migrants to the UK in 1948. Second, Macham was not, as far as the records show, an abolitionist or anti-slavery activist in the traditional way of public lecturing, as Douglass was. She told her story knowing it would be shared, but otherwise it seems she used her freedom in Britain as simply that – freedom.

Where she lived is another possible explanation for the relative ignorance of her story. Less attention is paid to diverse histories in north-east England compared with, for example, London.

Why people came to Britain

Several factors made Britain attractive as a place of freedom. There was no legal chattel slavery in Britain and Ireland (though much continued in the British colonies), and the landmark Somerset v Stewart case of 1772 ruled that an enslaved person must be held to be free by virtue of their presence on British soil.

Fugitive and formerly enslaved people came consistently to Britain and Ireland throughout the 19th century. Arguably, nowhere were they more warmly received and, to an extent, understood than in the most industrialised, and therefore often most deprived, areas of the country, where workers made up a large portion of the population.

In the 19th century, the north-east was a thriving hub of anti-slavery activity, playing host to many Black abolitionists and playing an active part in publishing Black literature and facilitating freedom. Examples of this include the local Quaker sisters-in-law Anna and Ellen Richardson, who raised funds for the freedom of Frederick Douglass, and the Spence family, who welcomed Macham in North Shields and helped her start her new life.

Work on Black histories in the north-east include research by the local African Lives in Northern England Project and by Northumbria University’s Brian Ward, who published a book about Martin Luther King’s visit to Newcastle in 1967 and the wider historical context.

Many workers in industrialised places in Britain in the Victorian era – such as Manchester, the coal fields of Wales and the north-east of England – also claimed to feel “enslaved”. They saw parallels between their condition and that of the American slave, an idea perpetuated in contemporary literature such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).

Of course, the experience of a white, free workforce cannot realistically be compared with the life of those in chattel slavery. However, the feeling of oppression, capitalist exploitation, poverty and mutual support among struggling people meant that regions like the north-east were ideally placed to welcome those fleeing persecution and seeking refuge.

The sentiment that fostered a welcoming atmosphere in North Shields for Macham persists to this day. Following the exhibition about her at the Old Low Light Museum in 2019, £800 was raised through fundraising to lay a stone at her grave, which previously only held the name of her husband.

The stone was laid in 2020 by students from John Spence Community High School – named after the family who helped Macham. This and the statue stand as a lasting tribute to her courage, and the hearts of the community that welcomed her on Christmas Day in 1831 and continues to honour her.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Genevieve Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Freedom for Christmas: the extraordinary journey of an enslaved woman to Britain – https://theconversation.com/freedom-for-christmas-the-extraordinary-journey-of-an-enslaved-woman-to-britain-272099

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University

A large Swedish study reported a lower risk of dementia among middle-aged and older adults who consumed higher amounts of full-fat cheese and cream. The findings may sound like welcome news but they need careful interpretation.

The study followed 27,670 participants for 25 years, during which 3,208 developed dementia. Among people without a known genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease, eating more than 50 grams of full-fat cheese per day was associated with a 13%–17% lower risk of Alzheimer’s. No such reduction was seen among people who carried genetic risk factors for the disease.

Consuming more than 20 grams of full-fat cream per day was linked to a 16%–24% lower risk of dementia overall. No associations were found for low-fat or high-fat milk, fermented or non-fermented milk, or low-fat cream.

These findings are notable given longstanding public health advice to choose low-fat dairy to reduce cardiovascular risk. This matters because heart disease and dementia share many risk factors, including high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.

When evidence from previous studies is combined, analyses suggest that cheese consumption may also be linked to a lower risk of heart disease, and that full-fat dairy does not necessarily increase cardiovascular risk. Several other studies have explored whether similar patterns apply to brain health, but the results are mixed.

Evidence overall suggests that studies conducted in Asian populations are more likely to report benefits of dairy consumption for cognitive health, while many European studies do not. One possible explanation is that average dairy intake tends to be much lower in Asian countries, meaning modest consumption may have different effects than higher intakes.

For example, one Japanese study reported a reduced dementia risk among people who ate cheese, but overall consumption levels were very low and the research was sponsored by a cheese producer. In contrast, another Japanese study funded by government grants found no protective effect of cheese.

Some long-term European studies have also reported benefits. In a Finnish study of 2,497 middle-aged men followed for 22 years, cheese was the only food associated with a lower dementia risk, reduced by 28%.

Consumption of milk and processed red meat was linked to poorer performance on cognitive tests, while fish consumption was associated with better outcomes. A large UK study following nearly 250,000 people found that eating fish two to four times a week, fruit daily and cheese once a week was associated with lower dementia risk.

However, these studies have important limitations. What people eat is usually self-reported, and changes in memory can affect both eating habits and how accurately people remember what they have eaten. To deal with this, the Swedish researchers took two extra steps.

First, they excluded anyone who already had dementia when the study began. Then they repeated the same calculations after removing people who went on to develop dementia within the first ten years of the study. This did not mean starting the study again or recruiting new participants. It simply meant re-checking the results using a smaller group of people who remained dementia-free for longer.

The reason for doing this is that the early stages of dementia can subtly change behaviour long before diagnosis. People may eat differently, lose appetite or struggle to recall their usual diet. By focusing on participants who stayed cognitively healthy for many years, the researchers reduced the chance that these early changes were influencing the results.

Another important question is whether substitution played a role. Some of the apparent benefits may reflect replacing red or processed meat with cheese or cream, rather than an effect of dairy itself. Supporting this idea, the Swedish study found no association between full-fat dairy and dementia risk among participants whose diets remained stable over five years.

Most importantly, foods should not be considered in isolation. Dietary patterns matter more than individual ingredients. Diets such as the Mediterranean diet, which is consistently associated with lower risks of both dementia and heart disease, include cheese alongside vegetables, fish, whole grains and fruit.

In the Swedish study, people who consumed more full-fat cheese and cream were also more educated, less likely to be overweight and had lower rates of conditions linked to dementia, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes. All of these factors independently reduce dementia risk.

This suggests that higher cheese intake tended to occur within healthier overall lifestyles, rather than alongside excess calorie consumption or poor metabolic health.

Overall, the evidence does not support the idea that full-fat dairy causes dementia, nor that fermented milk products reliably protect against it. Full-fat cheese contains several nutrients relevant to brain health, including fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2, as well as vitamin B12, folate, iodine, zinc and selenium. These nutrients play roles in neurological function and may help support cognitive health.

That said, the data do not justify eating large amounts of cheese or cream as protective foods against dementia or heart disease. The most consistent message remains that balanced diets, moderation and overall lifestyle matter far more than any single item on the cheese board.

Eef Hogervorst has receives funding from grants investigating food and dementia such as Alzheimer’s Research UK, The Newton Trust/British Council and from Merck to investigate the role of omega 3 and folate to prevent dementia. She also acted as advisor on dementia, lifestyle and hormones for UK (NICE) and European (ESHRE) boards and is frequently invited to give public and scientific lectures on these topics

– ref. Can eating high fat cheese and cream reduce dementia risk, as a new study suggests? – https://theconversation.com/can-eating-high-fat-cheese-and-cream-reduce-dementia-risk-as-a-new-study-suggests-272138

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation

In 2025, there was a lot of excellent art and culture to rave about.

Anora, a film about a sex worker who gets caught up in the world of a Russian oligarch’s son, won best picture at the Oscars. Nnena Kalu was the first disabled artist to win the coveted Turner Prize for her hypnotic multimedia work.

Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, a tale about the ongoing fallout of the Holocaust in 1980s Holland, won the Women’s Prize For Fiction – a book that was loved by the arts team.

Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection about the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, won the International Booker. Flesh by David Szalay, an exploration of modern masculinity, won the Booker.

We consulted with our academic experts to whittle down the year’s cultural offering, presenting you with lists of the best books, films and albums. But here are the novels, movies, dramas and music that really left a lasting impression on the Something Good team.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

I’ve learned a lot about Korean history – and the trauma that still lingers – through literature.

This year, I read Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, a haunting indictment of the US-backed Jeju 4.3 massacre, and Yeji Y. Ham’s The Invisible Hotel, which examines inherited trauma through the Korean ritual of “washing bones”.

The book that stayed with me most, though, was Susan Choi’s Booker-shortlisted Flashlight.

Set in motion by the disappearance of Serk – a Korean man raised in Japan – on a Japanese beach in 1978, the novel traces how his life led to that moment, and the emotional fallout for his interracial American family. Moving from pre-war Japan to 1980s America, Flashlight is both an intimate family drama and a sweeping meditation on identity, imperialism and the hidden currents of history.

It recalls, and is a great companion to, Min Jin Lee’s seminal novel Pachinko in its exploration of Korean life in Japan and the lasting scars of post-war East Asia. Drawing on the real North Korean abductions along Japan’s coast in the 1970s, Flashlight is, as our reviewer Sojin Lim writes, “an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that rewards close reading”.

Honourable mentions

The epic work of musical fusion that is Lux, by Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalia.

The film Friendship is a surreal, absurd and surprisingly deep mediation on male mental health.

Fundamentally is a darkly funny novel about an academic forced to test her theories while running a UN programme to de-radicalise Islamic State brides. Nussaibah Younis draws on a decade of real-world experience peace-building in the Middle East.

Naomi Joseph, Arts and Culture editor

One Battle After Another

I have a bad habit of finishing my popcorn before the trailers have even ended. But during One Battle After Another, I barely touched it. I couldn’t risk drowning out a second of the dialogue with my munching.

This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth film, and to my mind, his best yet. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, a former member of the radical collective the French 75, now a permanently stoned single father. His daughter’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (an astounding performance by Teyana Taylor), once led the group. After her arrest, she became a “rat”, cutting a deal with Lockjaw (an unrecognisable Sean Penn), the collective’s sworn enemy.

Anderson reveals the French 75’s past in jagged flashes: migrant holding cell breaks at the Mexican border and bank robberies to fund their activism, interspersed with the present-day lives of the revolutionaries, now scattered and on the run.

Watching One Battle After Another felt like splashing my face with ice water again and again. And forget about just 2025 – the much-talked-about car chase is one of the most electrifying moments I’ve experienced in a cinema ever.

Honourable mentions

Watching Severance season two I lost more hours than I care to admit trawling Reddit for Lumon theories.

Love in Exile by Shon Faye is a whip-smart and deeply researched book exploring love and self-worth.

Mayhem by Lady Gaga is camp, dark and gloriously theatrical.

Anna Walker, Senior Arts and Culture Editor

Slow Horses

I have to confess I am bereft ever since season five of Slow Horses ended. I waited dutifully for the new episode to drop every week (how terribly old-school – but the delayed gratification just made it even more delicious).

Every episode is a joy, mixing top-thrills espionage with top laughs. From the snooty idiot toffs in charge of MI5, to the bored office bantz and casual gun-slinging at Slough House (an arms-length office for demoted loser spies), all the real-world grimness is leavened by the japes, sarcasm and arm-punching that go on.

Best of all is the obnoxious Jackson Lamb and his unparalleled insults, grubby mac and two-thirds-gone bottle of whisky. (Sir) Gary Oldman is just superb – you can practically smell his stinky socks from your telly – and he never overplays it. That Lamb tries so very hard to hide the fact that he does actually care about his little band of MI5 misfits, just adds a layer of unexpected tenderness. There had better be a season six.

Honourable mentions

I saw Christmas Comes to Moominvalley, a magical festive show, this week with an entranced 11-year-old.

Patti Smith’s Horses at 50 is an extraordinary album by a trailblazing genius.

I read our review, then immediately bought the book, then watched the film Train Dreams. It’s one of those dreamy, ambiguous, richly visual films you can’t get out of your head afterwards, but the book haunts you more.

Jane Wright, Arts and Culture Commissioning Editor

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

– ref. A story about North Korea and Japan, an exhilarating political film and a funny spy thriller – the three best releases of 2025 – https://theconversation.com/a-story-about-north-korea-and-japan-an-exhilarating-political-film-and-a-funny-spy-thriller-the-three-best-releases-of-2025-272471

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth University

This year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas is an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 tale of vampiric horror and haunted sleep, The Room in the Tower.

The unnamed narrator begins the story by relating a recurring nightmare he has suffered for 15 years. In the dream, he has been invited to the mansion of the Stone family. The dream begins pleasantly, with card games, cigarettes and light conversation. But it always takes a turn when the family’s fearsome matriarch, Mrs Stone, tells the narrator that he’ll now be shown to his room for the night – the titular room in the tower. Upon entering the room, he is overwhelmed with abject horror, and wakes up before he sees the object of his fear.

While visiting a friend one stormy summer’s day, the narrator finds himself at the very home he saw at least once a month in his dreams. Sure enough, he’s led to the room in the tower, where he finds a hideous portrait of the demonic Mrs Stone. The portrait is removed from the room at his request, but leaves curious bloodstains on the narrator and his friend’s hands. During the night, however, the narrator’s sleep is once again disturbed by the nightmare made manifest.

Many ghost stories take place in bedrooms. One of the BBC’s first ghost stories adapted for television was M. R. James’ Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, which features a bumbling academic terrorised in his hotel room by a ghost quite literally wearing a bed sheet. Horror comes from a twisted reversal of what we expect to see and experience, and since the bed should be the place of utmost safety, it is ripe to be distorted into a place of existential dread.

Sleep, too, is a state of pure vulnerability. Those few breathless seconds after waking from a nightmare remind us just how defenceless we are. No tale of the supernatural from the early 20th century examines the way our troubled sleep can haunt us quite like The Room in the Tower.

Benson grew up with ghosts. His father, Edward Benson, was the archbishop of Canterbury. He was good friends with novelist Henry James, and allegedly told his son a spooky story he’d heard that James later turned into The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Benson’s mother was Mary Sidgwick, whose brother Henry was a founding member and first president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). The SPR’s aim was to investigate strange and paranormal phenomena, with particular interests in thought transference (or telepathy), visions and hallucinations, and ghosts and hauntings.

Begun in 1882, the SPR almost immediately set about collecting a massive amount of data under their Census of Hallucinations. They sent out a questionnaire to the public, and received thousands of responses over several years, some with fascinating anecdotes about being terrorised by ghosts and monsters in the middle of the night. The SPR compiled these in an issue of their periodical in 1894.

To read them in light of The Room of the Tower, it seems that Benson, too, knew what it feels like to be haunted by hallucinatory sleep disorders. Indeed, perhaps he even took direct influence from some of the anecdotes. The narrator in The Room in the Tower, being visited by a vampiric monster at the end of the story, describes himself as being “paralysed” – a typical sensation of sleep paralysis, which is often accompanied by a terrifying hallucination.

In Benson’s story, the narrator sees a “figure that leaned over the end of my bed”. In the SPR’s Census, a respondent referred to as Miss H. T. describes a horrifying visitation similar to the experience of Benson’s narrator. She wrote that she had seen the same figure three times, just as the narrator has the same nightmare over and over again. It would happen the same way every time; she would believe herself to be awake, and she would see a shimmer in the air that gradually solidified. Paralysed, she couldn’t move or scream to defend herself as the shape “took the form of mist and then developed into a dark veiled figure, which came nearer to me” and bent over the bed. Finally, the paralysis would lift, and the figure disappeared just as Miss H. T. threw her hands out towards it.

What both the Census and The Room in the Tower show is that ghosts don’t need to come from graveyards, gothic houses, or local legends. Often the most terrifying encounters, the experiences that prove most fruitful for ghost stories, are those our sleeping minds conjure up on the ethereal boundary between dreaming and waking.

The Room in the Tower will air on BBC One on Christmas Eve at 10pm, and will star Joanna Lumley as the terrifying Mrs Stone. For those of us prone to experience troubled sleep, it may well summon a nightmare of our own.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Alice Vernon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hautings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation – https://theconversation.com/the-room-in-the-tower-the-real-hautings-that-inspired-this-years-bbc-ghost-story-for-christmas-adaptation-272309