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It never gets old: the lagoon, the water-lapped maze of streets and canals, the salt-worn, crumbling buildings and campi (squares) hidden away like secret pockets. Whether enshrouded in winter fog with impending high waters or under the warm, beating sun, Venice is truly unforgettable. Although I have called Tuscany home for 14 or so years,

“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” So said Virginia Woolf at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1928, where she was giving a blistering lecture on why a woman couldn’t have written the 1,225-page War and Peace.

Situated in 28,000 acres of Yorkshire Dales national park, beside the trout-filled River Wharfe, are the crumbling ruins of Bolton Priory. Next to it sits The Hall at Bolton Abbey, its extraordinary ancestral house. The estate’s ruins inspired paintings by the Romantics, including Landseer and Turner; in his poem “The White Doe of Rylstone”, Wordsworth

The Financial Conduct Authority has raised concerns over the adequacy of challenger banks’ defences against financial crime, after a “substantial” increase in suspicious activity reports filed last year. The remarks come as the watchdog attempts to toughen its approach against money laundering, which the National Crime Agency estimates costs the UK £100bn annually. “Challenger banks

French prosecutors have issued an international arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn and four people linked to an Omani auto dealer following an investigation into whether they helped divert funds from carmaker Renault to its former chair and chief executive for personal use. The warrants were issued against Ghosn, who was the architect of Renault’s alliance

The UK government will miss its manifesto target of building an additional 300,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s and is imposing unrealistic goals on English cities, business groups and councils have warned. To meet the pledge the 20 largest cities would need to increase their existing home-building targets by 35 per cent. But

When Jane’s husband died in a climbing accident in the Alps, she faced not only shock and grief but a daunting pile of paperwork. “It’s hard . . . having been married 43 years then all of a sudden your partner is not there any more and the world is on your shoulders,” says Jane, 72, who lives in

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Introducing: the FT Climate Game Marc FilippinoGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, April 22nd, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Elon Musk really wants to own Twitter, and he’s putting his money where his mouth is. Richard

If Twitter’s board initially thought Elon Musk’s offer to buy the social media company for $43bn was just a stunt, it has now found itself on the defensive on multiple fronts. After the world’s richest man revealed on Thursday how he plans to fund his takeover bid, Twitter’s directors are under pressure to come to

The writer is chief economic strategist at Netwealth The Bank of England reaches the milestone of a quarter-century of independence in early May. After some initial benefits, it is hard to claim that the experience has been an unbridled success. There are strong reasons this milestone should trigger a fundamental rethink of the Bank’s remit

The first French presidential election I ever followed closely took place in 1974, and it was a captivating affair. I remember the television debate between the standard-bearer of the moderate right, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and the Socialist party candidate, François Mitterrand; Giscard d’Estaing landed a decisive blow on his adversary when he declared: “Vous n’avez

Russian forces are likely to renew their attacks on Ukraine’s capital city if they succeed in their fresh offensive in the east of the country, the mayor of Kyiv said. Vitali Klitschko said President Vladimir Putin was unlikely to be satisfied with victory in the Donbas region, where Russia has redeployed the bulk of its

When Amazon launched Alexa — its voice-activated virtual assistant — in 2014, it was met with scepticism. Why did an ecommerce company think it could create smart home technology? It didn’t help that the first Amazon Echo device, shaped like a can of Pringle snacks, followed the ill-fated Fire Phone: Amazon’s pitiful attempt at competing

One thing to start: Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton and tennis star Serena Williams are backing the bid for Chelsea Football Club led by City grandee Martin Broughton and private equity billionaires Josh Harris and David Blitzer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Musk thinks before he tweets When Elon Musk floated a

As the virus spread across the world and authorities started imposing lockdowns, problems became obvious. There was resistance to the closure of religious services, few people were keen to postpone weddings and funerals could not wait. Young singles wanted to party. Many people disliked wearing masks. And parents were tearing their hair out as schools

Reading Gideon Rachman’s column “Patriots vs globalists is the new battlefield”(Opinion, April 19) it occurs to me, as an economist, that nationalism vs globalisation resembles a typical decision in finance. It is a trade-off between risk and return. Nationalists, as in economic autarky, seek to avoid the risks from problems beyond their control but at

Martin Sandbu’s articles on the reconstruction of Ukraine and its EU accession (“Ukraine needs an ambitious new Marshall Plan from Europe”, Opinion, April 11; and “Kyiv and the west must start planning for the peace they want now”, Opinion, March 14) are full of insight. As he says, there must be gains to be made

The World Health Organization has urged pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer to be more transparent about the pricing of its antiviral drug Paxlovid after recommending the medicine to treat Covid-19. The global health body, under new guidelines, recommended Paxlovid for people who developed mild or moderate symptoms but were at the highest risk of developing a severe

Boris Johnson will offer increased defence co-operation to Narendra Modi during talks in New Delhi on Friday, in a bid to break India’s reliance on Russian weaponry. The UK prime minister will hold out the prospect of closer military ties in talks with his Indian counterpart on the final day of his visit. He has

Boris Johnson has vowed that he will not retreat on his green agenda in spite of claims by parts of the Conservative party that the cost of developing renewable energy is driving up electricity bills. The UK prime minister, while on a trip to India, said the government was tackling the cost of living crisis

Boris Johnson is to order another delay to the introduction of post-Brexit border checks on goods entering Britain from the EU, in an admission that piling new costs on imports would exacerbate the cost of living crisis. Full checks on imports from the bloc were supposed to come into effect on July 1, but the