Six easy Italian puddings to make this summer
From elegant ice cream and herb-scented sorbet to light-as-air mousse – try these easy desserts for a taste of la dolce vita
26 June 2021 • 5:00am
These desserts are a celebration of Italian-inspired sweet things we can make and eat in our own kitchens, or give to others
Credit: Charlotte Bland
A steaming bowl of pasta is a very fine thing, but it’s the gelato eaten in the dappled sunshine a few hours later that really delights, and in a different way, too, because it is a treat.
The knowledge that it is something special, a little luxury, an indulgence, not just sustenance (and not necessarily nutrition) makes the pleasure even more poignant. It’s not wholesome or satisfying in the same way as savoury food. Instead, it thrills; it teases. It’s sensual in a way that pasta, pies and potatoes aren’t.
Can efforts to make Masonic groups more transparent and inclusive rid them of their shadowy, cult-like reputation?
26 June 2021 • 5:00am
This once reclusive group is opening up to young people
Credit: Caitlin Chescoe
David Staples was a first-year biochemistry student at the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College when he entered the world of Freemasonry. Born in south-east London to a working-class family, the young Staples was already trying to make sense of the archaic rituals of the university when he noticed a housemate slipping out twice a term for a clandestine appointment, and returning late in the evening.
Eventually Staples asked where he was going, and was invited to see for himself. A while later he was presented with a date and a time to arrive at the nearest Masonic lodge, with no further instructions.
John Bradburne sought a life of solitude in Zimbabwe
Credit: Paul Grover for the Telegraph / Kate Macpherson
Today marks the centenary of the birth of John Bradburne: poet, mystic and wanderer, a martyr who was murdered for refusing to abandon the sick and, in the hearts of his supporters, a saint.
The cause of his canonisation has been opened; one watertight miracle is credited to him, the curing of a terminal brain tumour in a Scotsman who prayed for his help. Assuming everything goes to plan – and a second miracle is identified – Bradburne might become the second Englishman post-reformation, along with John Henry Newman, to be recognised as a saint by the Catholic church.