Even at its worst, Copenhagen is worth the effort

The Danish countryside in August is a vacationers paradise. While most of Europe heads south, this rolling land of farms, long beaches, comfortable manor houses, half-timbered villages and Viking heritage is little explored, especially after the Danes go back to school in the middle of the month.

The same can not be said of Copenhagen, which is now so firmly established as a capital of cool and a culinary hot spot that its normal crowd of visitors accelerates to a heaving mass in the summer holidays.

It's almost impossible to walk in a straight line down the famous pedestrian shopping street of Strøget. You'll wait in a long queue for one of those famous Danish hot dogs and every canal cruise leaving Nyhavn is packed to the gunnels. The crowds, unfortunately, seemed to bring out things I'd never noticed in usually pristine Denmark: beggars, rubbish blowing down streets, homeless people and crime.

Sadly, we were the victims of the last as ... returning in a taxi from dinner one night ... a man assaulted my husband on the steps of our hotel, stripped him of his watch and ran off. Two conscientious police officers were on the scene in 15 minutes, took a full report, collected the hotel's cctv of the event and even did a swab of my husband's arm in hopes of finding the bad guy's DNA. (Tourists, don't expect that in London!) Their care, and the horror of the hotel receptionist who saw it all, somewhat assuaged the shock of the whole thing. But we learned a lesson: tourists should be as wary in Copenhagen as anywhere else in Europe during high holiday season.

Fortunately, crowds are a relative thing. Nowhere in the Danish capital is going to be as unpleasantly jammed as Florence or Versailles, and most people stick to a very narrow tourism flight path. It doesn't take much to step outside of it and see other wonders. Though the area near the (underwhelming) Little Mermaid statue is uncomfortably packed, if you linger at the far more impressive Gefion fountain nearby you'll find a comfortable seat from which you can appreciate the cascading waters and watch busloads of tourists on the far side of the fountain trudging to and from the more famous landmark.

Walk a few yards Southwest and you'll be in the pretty Churchill Park, almost free of tourists. St. Albans, the English church on its edge, is well worth a visit. At the time of its construction Britain's Princess of Wales was a Dane (Alexandra), so the building went up with significant royal backing. Royal Doulton contributed a custom-created font, lectern and reredos, now recently cleaned and well worth a detour for decorative arts geeks.

So is a fantastic life-sized sculpture of a wind-whipped Valkyrie on horseback, on the other end of the park.

Even the main attractions aren't so bad if you bide your time to let the tour groups pass by. There are, however, more of them than ever to dodge. Copenhagen's tourism board said it expected a record 1.2 million cruise ship passengers to visit Denmark this year, almost all of them stopping off in the capital. Fortunately they're usually on tightly-timed, escorted tours so never linger long in one place. This was particularly obvious in the National Museum, a treasure trove of pre-historic and Viking artefacts and one of my favourite gift shops in town. I've written a full article about it here.

Even if you've visited the collection before, it's worth a return to check out the new "Meet the Vikings" galleries. They've divided opinions in Copenhagen, and in the Bencard family. Clearly feeling pressure to modernise and no doubt influenced by the reach of Amazon Prime's television show, the museum has turned three galleries over to a blatantly populist approach. Created by a Danish designer and TV presenter named Jim Lyngvild, the exhibition plucks some of the most significant pieces out of the collection and uses them to "dress" imagined Vikings. We see the characters and the artefacts in highly-detailed, oversized photos and in vividly-lifelike models (complete with tattoos, scars and showy moustaches.) Artefacts are in cases below and beside the characters. You're even invited to sit on the king's throne.

It's good fun and does bring this world to life, but there's a lot of imagining and "what if" going on here. I thought it was a fun way to spark the imagination and get kids (or simply the less interested) into the topic. My husband was irritated by the leaps into historical fiction. When it opened last year, a lot of serious art historians were frustrated than the museum poured money into this at the same time it eliminated more than 20 jobs. Visit the exhibit to make up your own mind; it's included in general museum entry.

You'll be both cruise-group and controversy-free at the Medical Museion, an unlikely destination unless you are in the health care field, studying to join it or have a relative who's a curator here. Our detour to say hello to my husband's cousin turned into an unexpectedly fascinating hour of exploration.

There's a large collection of medical samples, not for the squeamish, assembled by doctors a century or more ago to study the human body and its diseases. An architectural highlight is the neo-classical dissection theatre, a grand indoor amphitheatre facing a "stage" backed by tall windows letting in all-important light. In the basement there's an award-winning exhibition (curated by Adam Bencard) called Mind the Gut, which examines the relationship between the brain and the stomach. (Something I, sadly, have far too much experience with. Though it does provide you, dear reader, with a lot of fine restaurant reviews.) There's a lot of fun stuff to balance the academic inquiry here, including an artsy and entertaining film that shows how digestion works (yes, really) and an interactive quiz that generates your healthy mind and gut diagnosis.  I'm supposed to always remember to escape and not let ideas leak away. No change there, then.

Neither tourists nor locals seem to take much notice of another of my favourite sites in Copenhagen: the central train station. People make pilgrimages to see the station in Porto, Monet immortalised Paris' Gare du Nord, yet I find this building just as striking and almost unknown. There's little information in any guide books about it, other than revealing that it was built at the start of the 20th century and designed by Heinreck Wenck in what's known as National Romantic Style. This was a bit like the Gothic Revival in the UK, but when the Brits looked backwards, the Danes mixed their historic architecture with modern elements to come up with something more like Viking Art Deco.

The station is most striking for its wooden roofs, both in the main hall and the train shed, which give the buildings a grand yet deeply historic feel. The exterior is castle-like, and both interior and exterior share design elements recognisable from the collections back at the National Museum: Romanesque arches; ironwork in looping, Viking-style filigree, statues of Danes in historic dress, crests in glazed terracotta, stained glass windows. It's a delight. And is one of the easiest and most direct connections from airport to city centre in all of Europe. If you're flying to Copenhagen, don't waste your money on a taxi. Take the train into town and enjoy this architectural masterpiece on your way through.

There's a vast variety of hotels within a short stroll of the station, but it's worth appreciating some nuances of geography. To the North and East of the station's main entrance are some of the city's most expensive lodgings. The pleasure grounds of Tivoli and its world-class Nimb Hotel are literally right across the street from the Eastern exit from the main hall. Exit to the West, however, and you're in the old red light district. As such places go, this one is fairly innocuous and the city is doing its best to redevelop it into a trendy tourist area. In the blocks closest to the station it's mostly hotels and restaurants. There's none of Amsterdam's blatantly seedy sexuality on display, and the less observant wouldn't even note the change in neighbourhood. In the four square-block area between our hotel, the station and the neighbourhood dividing line of Vesterbrogade, there was one low-key sex shop and one "gentleman's club" with fairly upscale branding. I wouldn't have noticed the handful of working girls on the street corners had my husband not pointed them out.

Though the hotels here are just a few blocks from their posh counterparts, the subtle shift in neighbourhood brings the prices down. And perhaps makes management try harder. The Andersen Hotel here is my favourite of all the places we've stayed in four trips to Copenhagen. The staff works hard to earn their boutique branding, with hand-written notes welcoming you to your room, a free wine happy hour in the afternoons and an honour bar at other times, and a basket of knitting in the lobby ... which feels more like a living room or cocktail lounge than a hotel ... inviting you to make scarves for homeless people. The rooms have individual temperature control, including air conditioning, which is a bit of a luxury in old European buildings. The decor includes fun light fixtures and splashes of bright colour, a relief in a country where traditional Danish modernism can fade into boredom when applied on a corporate scale.

Unfortunately, I also have to factor getting robbed within clear view of the hotel's front desk into my review. (It was 11:30 at night. Late, but by no means unsociable hours.) The hotel staff was mortified, getting the police there quickly, apologising repeatedly and leaving a note and chocolates on our bed the next day. I would happily return here with my husband or a group of friends and keep my guard higher, but I wouldn't recommend it for a single female traveller.

Bottom line: Copenhagen is worth visiting at any time of year, but August can make this delightful city hard work. Spring and autumn are much better for drinking in the city's laid back aura.

Mayfair's Umu celebrates perfection in every element

Obsession is a necessity for Michelin-starred chefs. Nobody survives in a gruelling industry that robs you of your social life, rises above fierce competition and delivers perfection night after night without a bit of mania over what they do. In my reading about Japanese culture in advance of our trip later this year, I've seen something similar. The gardeners who groom every leaf on a tree to a painterly perfection, the generations of swordsmiths who hand down and hone their skills to create the ideal samurai blade, the calligraphers who strive for years to get a character just right ... there's plenty of obsession on display.

I began to suspect that fine dining and Japanese food would be an eminently logical match. An evening at Mayfair's Umu validates that suspicion.

Head Chef Yoshinori Ishii does more than deliver exceptional food. He matches a range of pottery (some of which he's designed) and lacquerware to the food and its position in the parade of dishes to make a visual statement. His biography tells us he's also a keen calligrapher, so no surprise that one of the courses is served on top of a poem, written in bold calligraphy by Yoshinori, illustrated by his own drawings. If that sashimi tastes fresher than any you've ever tasted, thank his love of fishing in the traditional Japanese style. Not only has he found his own Cornish suppliers; he's taught them the art of ikejime ... dispatching a fish quickly with a needle into the nervous system, curtailing the fright and struggle that releases meat-toughening hormones and acids. When that fish comes to you as a hand roll, it's presented by a Yoshinori-designed wire arm, symbolically from his touch direct to yours.

Umu specialises in kaiseki, the highly-ritualised, multi-course gourmet tradition of Kyoto. The biggest splurge during our upcoming trip involves an exclusive ryokan (inn) in the hills above the ancient capital where our courses will be brought to our rush-matted, paper-screen-walled room by our kimono-clad hosts. Before diving in at the deep end in a language we don't understand, I thought it made sense to get familiar with kaiseki on home turf. It was also my husband's birthday; a two-Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant was suitably celebratory. (And the price of a full kaiseki meal definitely needs to be reserved for a special occasion.)

Our eight course (but nine dish; one course had two parts) celebration started with "mukozuke." From what my post-meal research tells me, this is the word for a small, intriguing snack served in or on an interesting piece of pottery, often with a rough but beautiful finish and some kind of artful deformity. Here, a battleship grey bowl with a slightly pitted surface and a slightly shiny glaze would have been a perfect circle had the potter not bent one side in, forming a shape like an apostrophe. It was a quirky and beautiful piece that demanded inspection before you ever paid attention to the food. Inside was a lovely melange of gently-cured sea trout, wafer thin slices of turnip, pickles and caviar. Two generous bites or four dainty ones, it was an elegant foreshadowing of all to come.

"Nimonowan" is a simmered dish or soup cup, here titled "Ocean Breeze" and served in an exquisite lacquer bowl with lid that you remove to create your own little tabletop drama. Inside, a layered disc of Cornish lobster, abalone and nori seaweed sat in a broth so clear it almost disappeared. Later, we both agreed that the menu probably had one course more than it really needed, and this is the dish my husband would cut. He's never been a fan of lobster and thought the example here was slightly overcooked and too chewy. (Which is what he almost always says about any lobster.) I suspect the chewiness was the abalone. Whatever the truth, it was still one of the most exquisite interpretations of soup I've ever had and very tasty.

The next course was the double dish. "Tsukuri" is the set up to executing a Judo throw. One assumes that implies a partnership with the course to come, or maybe the first plate set up the second, but nobody told us. My only real complaint with Umu was that the serving staff (entirely European, heavy on Italians) doesn't really give you much information on your food beyond the basics, even though they knew we were interested. Many Michelin-starred places will go into detail about their supply chain, the inspiration behind the dish or even how you're supposed to eat something. We could have used more of that in this delightful, but very alien, environment. It seems that's simply not their style.

Tsukuri started with slices of raw turbot. People often claim "you can read through it" when describing  how thinly they've sliced something. Yoshinori plays with that idea by serving the slices on top of a poem he's written about the joy of food. Unless you can actually read Japanese characters, you can't test the "read through" claim completely, but it's a fun touch. Delicious as the turbot was, the highlight here was my first taste of real wasabi. The stuff you get in almost all sushi restaurants is an industrially-produced approximation made from horseradish, mustard and food colouring. Real wasabi is a root, notoriously difficult to grow, that releases a piquant kick when grated that fades within minutes. Obviously, most restaurants don't want to dabble with an ingredient with no shelf life after preparation, even if it doesn't cost £22 for a thumb-sized piece. The taste of the real thing, grated into a paste by moving in a circle on a piece of shark skin, is a mind-blowing blend of sweet and hot.

The sauces and the wasabi stayed around for part two: sashimi. This is probably the ultimate expression of the idea that the best ingredients don't need much done to them. Five pieces of top quality fish, incredibly fresh, taken from the best part of the fillet. I've had a lot of great sushi in my life, but the only time I've come close to this freshness was when we tried slivers of the fish we'd just caught off Puerto Rico before we left the boat. When fish is this fresh, it's almost a crime to cook it. And every kind tasted significantly different from the other. (Something, let's face it, you don't really get at Itsu.) The most fascinating morsels here were the back and belly tuna, side by side. Belly is a rare delicacy, and I've had it before ... but never this rich or pungent. We're talking the foie gras of the piscine world here. Honestly, the flavour was too much for me; I could have happily substituted another bite of back, but am glad I tried it.

Next came my dish of the day. "Agemono" means deep fried food in Japanese, and I suspect we were into the comfort food section of the menu. The description was sweetcorn three ways. I am from a corn state. I have an annual moan about the poor quality of the corn in the UK while I indulge in memories of buying sacks full fresh ears from the fields down the road from my childhood home and eating them before they'd been off the stalks for four hours. As glorious as those Missouri memories are, they couldn't touch the expressions of that noble vegetable here. There was a kernel-stuffed spring roll, a quarter of a grilled cob and a croquette I can only describe as deep fried creamed corn. We may have been in a Japanese restaurant, but it's as if the chef had distilled the essence of the best of an American midwestern summer onto a plate. I almost wept with joy. And if that wasn't enough, you unrolled the husk to find a line of perfectly popped and seasoned corn. Four ways! And each perfect.

"Hiyashimono" followed: smoked and cured mackerel with somen noodles and Japanese ginger. I couldn't find a translation for this title, but this was my husband's favourite dish. I suspect he was experiencing a similar cross-cultural childhood flashback, given how essential mackerel is to Danish cuisine. It is, however, the dish I would cut. Not that I didn't like it: the mash-up of sashimi and cold noodle salad would be a huge hit with me for a summer lunch. But at this point I'd reached satisfaction point on the raw fish and didn't need more.

"Yakimono" means grilled or pan fried and brought us out of the ocean for the first and only land-based meat dish: lamb two ways, with accompanying sweetbreads. Regular readers will know I'm not keen on lamb or offal, though I'll soldier through anything on a chef's tasting menu. (Which is how I got familiar with sweetbreads in the Loire Valley.) A benefit of the Japanese love of bite-sized morsels is that anything's tolerable this small. In fact, the rump and fillet were both rare and delicately spiced, avoiding the lamb-y flavours I dislike. This bit of sweetbread was more solid, chewy and unadorned than the heavily sauced French version. Not bad, but still not anything I'd order for myself.

Kaiseki traditionally ends with a bit of white rice, which explains the seemingly odd appearance of sushi hand rolls as the final savoury dish. The menu delivers up two per person which is, frankly, more than even the biggest appetites need at this point. But the options are so tempting it was a relief not to have to choose just between the smoked eel and the tuna. This was the dish that came out held aloft by the wire hand, or "gohan".

While I love Japanese food, I remain sceptical about the cuisine's ability to deliver on the dessert front. Umu didn't change my mind. Their offerings were beautiful ... we actually had two since my husband's tomato allergy precluded the dish included in the kaiseki ... but a bit too experimental for satisfaction. Both had vegetal elements, which I always find difficult in dessert. As a work of art, however, "ajisai", or hydrangea, was a wonder. Tiny cubes of blue and pink jelly, coloured naturally by butterfly pea flower and pink amber tomato, covered a mound of sweet white bean puree. This looked remarkably like a hydrangea flower head, with a smooth, creamy and mildly floral taste. Unfortunately the shiso sorbet beside it didn't work for me. Even though shiso is related to mint, it was too much like having a salad on the plate with my pudding.

I thought my husband's dish was more successful: mango with a panna cotta-like cream and a caramel sauce. The experimental element here came with more wasabi, served as a whole root as a side with the grater. You were supposed to grate your own and add it to the sweet for a flavour contrast. It was a bit like putting pepper with strawberries and worked to an extent, but my husband found it tough to get the wasabi / mango balance right.

As usual with a blow-out tasting menu, we went with the matching wine flight. Except that at Umu, a sake flight is an option. That seemed too experimental for my husband, so he stuck with the grapes while I threw caution to the wind with fermented rice. I was the clear winner.

By course three it was obvious that sake in your bog standard Japanese is restaurant is to the good stuff what a wino's rotgut is to Burgundy or Bordeaux. Every glass was balanced and nuanced, with a range of subtle tastes. Most, in a blind tasting, could easily have passed for wine. And unlike my husband's selections, mine came with a fascinating array of cups, from rough pottery to cut glass to fine porcelain that looked like a sea urchin. I learned from our sommelier (who got more chatty once we determined that he was from a Sicilian village in the same mountain range where my grandfather was born) that though rice has some aspect of "terroir", variations in sake flavour have much more to do with yeasts, fermenting processes and production decisions. The variety was exceptional, from a bone-dry, almost mushroomy offering to a slightly effervescent lemon treat that was like limoncello re-invented for sophisticated grown ups.

Most two-starred restaurants tend to steer everyone to the tasting menu, and if they have a la carte it's often more expensive than the chef's choice. That's actually not the case at Umu. You could pop in here at short notice, grab a seat at the sushi bar and get a couple of dishes and a glass or two of sake for something that approximates the cost of an average meal elsewhere in Mayfair. Not cheap, but a lot less than the full blow out.

Lime Wood lives up to the Angela Hartnett promise

There’s much hand-wringing these days about the effects of positive screening on social media. Because we only share the best of our lives, the idea goes, people are lured into a damaging, un-achieveable and unending cycle of keeping up with the proverbial Joneses. The hand-wringers seem to discount the possibility of any common sense that reasons posts are probably the best minute of an otherwise tough day, or understand those glamorous holiday photos as a reward earned after a year of earnest toil. Evidently we need to show our work to get credit on this exam.

Last week, I could have shared my disgruntlement with two consecutive commutes getting caught in train delays through Waterloo after days coping with London’s sticky heat. (The climate may be changing, but England’s ability to deal with a heat wave remains abysmal.) On the second, thinking I was being clever by re-routing through Paddington, I arrived at Reading to find the last train to Basingstoke cancelled. I could have done much better things with the £45 taxi fare it required to get home. Then there was the excessive tooth pain I was trying to mask all week with unwise levels of ibuprofen. Turns out a hairline fracture my dentist has had her eye on for years may finally be giving way. I’m not sure which will be more painful, the root canal to come or the bill that will equal 20% of my first job’s annual salary. Meanwhile, at work, a legal department’s excessive (IMHO) interpretation of data protection legislation just added a Herculean task to a project I thought concluded.

There was, in short, not a great deal worth celebrating last week. I could have Instagrammed a photo of my molar, but … really? Nobody likes a moaner. I suffered in silence. Thus I felt I was getting a bit of karmic reward when I discovered that the restaurant some friends were treating us to on Friday night was the Lime Wood Hotel. (That was on my Instagram feed before starters hit the table.)

Lime Wood is a country house hotel and restaurant sitting in classic Georgian splendour on the Northern edge of Hampshire’s New Forest. The restaurant here was my culinary hero Angela Hartnett’s first foray outside of London, with business partner and fellow chef Luke Holder. It had been on our “must try” list since she started her association in 2014, but we'd never managed it. To get there by unplanned serendipity was a treat.

This is a very different proposition from either Hartnett’s flagship Murano or her Murano Cafes, but her signature touches are there: tiny, succulent arancini as pre-meal snacks; traditional Italian four-course organisation (anti pasti, pasta, mains and dessert); and an Italian-style focus on simple dishes done well. But the menu (top photo) and décor take their inspiration from the house. There's no doubt you're in England here, with formal gardens and classic perennial borders on view outside, cozy upholstery, classic prints and warm wood inside.  The menu celebrates local ingredients:  Wooley Park Farm guinea fowl, Glenarm estate beef, catch of the day from the nearby coast. Everything was presented in a style that, like the room, balanced elegance and informality.

I started with an exquisite little deep-fried artichoke (above) served on a foundation of partially sun-dried tomatoes; they'd been dried enough to intensify their flavour and get a bit chewy, but still qualified as fresh produce. My veal chop main was succulent, pink and substantively different from beef ... something that, sadly, doesn't happen enough in this country. Italian-influenced cuisine typically isn't known for its sauces, but they made both my dishes. There were raves around the table for other choices: a barely-solid burrata on slices of fruit, the day's fresh-caught red mullet, that guinea fowl. Generous portions ... including refills on bread and arancini before the main meal ... left us too stuffed for desert.

We adjourned instead to the courtyard around which the square house was built. No doubt a service yard in its original creation, it's now a chic yet country-casual cocktail lounge with a glass roof that slides open on glorious days. Coffee came with little bowls of new season cherries, another nod to Hartnett's constant message that the finest ingredients need little embellishment. 

I was particularly impressed by the local nature of the place. Yes, there were obviously exceptionally well-heeled visitors staying in the hotel rooms. But our friends weren't the only regulars recognised and warmly welcomed by the staff. At a table near us, two such locals had popped in for a drink and a quick snack in the courtyard before heading off somewhere else. It's basically the local pub every foodie dreams of: Michelin-quality food in a laid-back atmosphere with a staff that remembers you and treats you as a beloved guest. It's a shame ... though probably a blessing for our wallets ... that Lime Wood is an hour away from our house. 

I wonder if Angela and Luke could be enticed to acquire one of Sherfield-on-Loddon's charming but deeply average pubs? Perhaps the power of positive thinking can influence them. I'd better get Instagramming.

Bold and thought-provoking, this Giovanni is worth experiencing. Once.

I've experienced a lot of powerful emotions in opera houses. But never shock. Not, that is, until about 10 minutes into Longborough Festival Opera's new production of Don Giovanni, when I was recoiling with it.

By that point, the Don had violently raped three women, driven the handle of a broken squash racket into an adversary's stomach and was easing his victim's bloody entrails out in an almost loving caress while singing his first aria. In English. (Which was almost as shocking as everything else.) The men in the locker room health club where this was all set were turning complicit blind eyes, casually loafing in their terrycloth dressing gowns while groping the professionally-dressed female assistants who kept popping in to try to get them to focus on some work.

Longborough, the little company that defied expectations to become a Wagnerian powerhouse, has always made the point that it's not the typical country house opera. But they really threw down the gauntlet with this highly topical interpretation steeped in gender politics and rebellion against the patriarchy. At first I thought we were slamming Harvey Weinstein and celebrating #MeToo, especially when the masqueraders covered their faces with giant emojis. And then Giovanni's servant Leporello (sung by Emyr Wyn Jones in probably the strongest performance of the ensemble) laid the table for the final banquet scene with hamburger and pizza boxes and we were in Donald Trump territory. The U.S. president did, after all, justify abusive things he'd said about women as "just locker room talk."

The whole thing seethed with so much hatred towards establishment men, you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I found out that the director was a bloke named Martin Constantine.

Giovanni is traditionally played as loveable rogue. He is a charming seducer, and it is usually implied that the women are complicit in his seductions. They only turn on him when he leaves them, breaking their hearts. In most versions I've seen, Giovanni's early murder of the Commandatore (a father who discovers and drives off Giovanni from seducing his daughter, Anna) is a mishap he would rather have avoided. Making him a sociopath is a bold move, and no doubt a taxing one for Ivan Ludlow, who not only has to sing this Giovanni (which he does well) but do far more acting than usual (successfully; this Don is hateful).

It's an audacious choice, well executed to make its political points. This is probably the bravest production Longborough has ever put on and the first I've thought the BBC might be interested in broadcasting for the way it updates a very old ... and supposedly elitist ... art form to take on critical modern issues. But it doesn't entirely work.

No matter how blackly they painted him in Act 1, too many plot elements of Act 2 hint at Giovanni's redeeming qualities to make him all bad. (His former lover Elivra's continuing devotion and belief she can bring him to a righteous life, Giovanni's impish refusal to become a monogamist because it wouldn't be fair to all the women he's yet to give pleasure to, and ... bluntly ... Ludlow's chiseled good looks.) The locker room set gets old and is less effective in later scenes. Most problematic is the ending, where the women grab microphones, karaoke style, and exult over their victory while the men resume the gym dressing gowns that had been discarded earlier and step to the front at the last minute, seeming to say they've given the women the impression of triumph but the abusive patriarchy embodied by the Don will continue.

Don Giovanni is usually a "feel good" opera. This interpretation sent me away angry and depressed, which I'm guessing was the director's intent.

The music, sadly, doesn't fare as well as the artistic impact. In Don Giovanni, Mozart gives us some of the most sublime and joyous music in the operatic repertoire. But, in much the same way your sense of taste goes when your sinuses are blocked up, the ears were deadened here by the political hijacking of the story and its translation into English. More than any other language, the musical nature of Italian makes the words themselves part of the score. Amanda Holden's translation is clever, at times funny and tells the story well. But it can't compare to the original. "Là ci darem la mano", probably the most exquisitely seductive duet ever written, becomes prosaic and clumsy when we understand the words as something closer to a teenager's fumbling attempts than beautiful love poetry. Leporello's attempt to dissuade Elvira with a catalogue of Giovanni's conquests "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" is a playful flight of fancy in Italian. Here, it's crude and coarse.

English, like all the director's other choices, makes the story ugly. As part of the overall political statement, it works. But, sadly, it also diminishes a great work of art.

I enjoyed how this production pushed me to think. Giovanni is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world; I've seen it live at least four times and I'd assume most people in the audience have consumed multiple productions. So it makes sense for companies to try something new. I applaud Longborough's innovation. As a "one off" it was stimulating, intriguing and provoked post-performance analysis far into the evening.

But would I ever want to see it again?  No. In giving the story modern political relevance, Longborough stripped the opera of its beauty. It was a worthy experiment, but I hope they don't make a habit of this kind of thing.

Hampton Court "Show" to "Festival": What's in a name?

The world's largest flower show celebrated its 26th birthday with a rebrand. The Royal Horticultural Society's Hampton Court Flower Show became a "Garden Festival". Why? We were a bit skeptical.

Three marketing professionals make up this "we". We used to work together, love gardening and have been using Hampton Court as our annual reunion for a decade. We've done the RHS Chelsea Flower Show as well, either together or as individuals, but we've always loved the more laid-back, sprawling nature of Hampton Court. And, of course, the plant sales. There's no place better to find specialist varieties of everything and anything you might want to grow. It covers more than 34 acres, attracts more than 140,000 visitors per year and sells more plants per square mile than any other place or event in the UK.

One statistic in the RHS' media pack suggests a reason for the change: the average age of RHS flower show attendees is 55. Though 86% of them occupy the desirably affluent "ABC1" niche, that average age suggests a shrinking market. So the RHS has brought the British summer festival treatment to their blockbuster event, with more music, more shopping, more places to eat, drink and relax, adventure trails for children and a welcome to dogs on leads.

The only thing that's suffered is the show gardens. If that was your primary reason for coming to

Hampton Court, you're going to be disappointed. The "Festival" features fewer gardens; the event map implies there are loads, but many shown as gardens turn out to be displays in front of grower's stands. The sponsored and judged gardens were, on the whole, less impressive than years past. The message seems to be that if you want display gardens, go to Chelsea. Hampton Court is now about something else.

And that something is a chilled, garden-themed day of R&R. In many ways, the transformation was subtle. The layout of the show ground is essentially the same, the floral marquee remains unchanged and many vendors are in the same spots from which you've been buying from them for years. But taken together the RHS has created a very different event in just one year's transformation. Other than a few pinch points for crowds that they need to resolve (the rose marquee in particular was a nightmare), it was beautifully produced and appeared wildly successful.

The most obvious change is the music.

Music has been a part of the flower shows but it was always a bit of entertainment thrown on while you paused, exhausted, to re-charge your batteries. At both Chelsea and Hampton Court, the entertainment area was often the only place you could find to sit down. There are now four stages with musical entertainment at Hampton Court, and these acts aren't an afterthought. They're fantastic. We heard folky, acoustic guitar near the Floral Marquee. Energising pop on a floating stage in the
canal that divides the show in two. Classical guitar at another venue in the very heart of the show, next to a cocktail-shaking pop-up van, a face-painting salon and an art installation where you walked down a tunnel beneath videos of oversized blooms going through their life cycle in time-lapsed glory. A covered amphitheatre at the back, near the rose festival, appeared the biggest of all but was taking a break as we wandered by. There is even now a pianist entertaining shoppers in the craft marquee (always a magnificent spot to get started on your Christmas shopping).

All of these venues are surrounded by a much-welcomed increase in food and drink vendors and places to sit down. For the first time ever, we found chairs every time we wanted a break, and never waited in an excessive queue to quench hunger or thirst. Someone has clearly worked to increase the variety, too. In addition to the inevitable hog roasts, burgers and fish and chips, there were exotic wraps, cocktail-flavoured ice pops, smoked salmon bagels and, for those who planned ahead, the ability to pick up a Fortnum & Mason's picnic hamper to consume while listening to the acts on the floating stage. There's even a large, multi-point bottle refill station sponsored by Thames Water that ... for the first time in my event-going experience in the UK ... offered plentiful water without ridiculous queues.

For the first time, we agreed, Hampton Court has become something our gardening-ambivalent partners might enjoy.

I suspect that parents were thinking the same thing about their children. Fantastical figures on stilts now wander the show. There are adventure trails full of instagrammable photo stations. (We had to restrain ourselves from taking a photo with the Very Hungry Caterpillar. There's been some sort of gardening-related contest for schools at Hampton Court for years, but this year's bug hotel challenge was not only just as good as many of the "professional" displays but located at the very centre of the show.

I'm less sure about the appeal for dog owners. Hampton Court is still very crowded, and most humans find it a challenge to avoid getting stepped on or rolled over by the ubiquitous plant trolleys containing shoppers' treasures. My dogs wouldn't do well; Datchet and Bruno, at least, are best left at home.

All these changes have been implemented by a team with a sharp sense of design. The festival has a colour scheme (orange, slate blue, plum and an avocado green) carried through the grounds in bunting, pennants and stripped deck chairs. The RHS has also installed its own pop-up gardens throughout to add to the look of the place.

Wisely, they haven't tinkered with the one thing that's always been Hampton Court's USP: plant sales.  In fact, there seem to be even more nurseries than before, with both a packed Floral Marquee and plant "villages" at both of the main show entrances. This is the place for people on specific horticultural missions, as I was this year. My main hosta bed had two gaps that needed filling. (Thank you, New Forest Hostas, for Morning Star and Christmas Island.) And I had a new, small bed to plant from scratch. Wanting something different from the rest of my garden, I had decided on a mix of grasses swaying around an anchor rose, all in shades of bronzes, oranges and deep reds ... a distinct contrast to my mostly purple and pink garden. Mission accomplished, with the striking Peter Beales rose La Villa Cotta and a bunch of exotic looking grasses. (New plants in their new bed below. Not yet a show garden!)

Our opinion was unanimous: the Garden Festival is a change for the better. We didn't mind the de-emphasis on show gardens. (And there were enough there to maintain interest, particularly the people's choice award-winning Cancer Research plot.) We loved the more relaxed pace and the expanded scope. The big question now: do we let the boys in on some of our fun when our 11th annual outing rolls around? Stay tuned...

Baseball comes to London: fresh, crazy, crowded and very American

As the players took the field, I almost wept. America's game had come to London. Proper Major League Baseball, with two legendary teams (the Yankees and the Red Sox), the national anthem, the seventh inning stretch, hot dogs, Cracker Jack and rallying tunes on an organ. I never thought I'd see the day.

As a St. Louisan, baseball is something more to me than just a sport. It's a foundational part of my childhood, a significant plank of my civic identity and the embodiment of summer. It helped me survive difficult times as a younger woman and the sound of a broadcast still brings a sense of calm ... even if I'm not really paying attention. When I first came to the UK, its loss was like severing a limb. These were the earliest days of the internet: I could get game scores, but not much else. In search of a substitute, I had a brief flirtation with cricket (an excellent game, but not mine) before mlb.com launched, allowing me to watch and listen to my home team. A live game was still a rare treat only to be savoured during visits to my homeland, but at least I had some form of baseball in the UK.

Now, for one glorious weekend a year, I have the real thing.

Major League Baseball (MLB) pulled out the proverbial stops to create magic in and around the event. With a few notable exceptions, they succeeded. And the players almost seemed to collude, though I doubt they intended to.

We went to the first game on the Saturday night, in which the Yankees beat the Red Sox 17-13. Those who'd never seen a game, including my godson and his father, were treated to a crazy match up including a 6-run-per-team, hour-long first inning that neither of the starting pitchers completed. Fourteen more pitchers trekked to the mound to try to control things in the course of the game. It appears they weren't coping well with jet lag, since they combined to give up 37 hits. The Yankees scored 11 between the third and fifth innings; the time it took us to grab and consume a beer and a hot dog from the concession stands. (Rather oddly, these are built with no view of the field and there are no tv screens relaying live action, so when you leave your seat you're blind to what's happening.) The Red Sox made a thrilling attempt at a comeback with a six-run 7th, most of the action coming when there were already two outs on the board.

"This isn't a normal baseball game," I warned my godson, whose 10-year-old eyes were still gleaming with excitement well into this marathon. Not normal, perhaps, but a beguiling introduction.

Even if the game had been a low-action pitching duel, organisers had laid on enough baseball-themed distractions to keep newbies interested. A London DJ combined with pre-recorded, traditional organ flourishes to add a soundtrack to the game. Traditions from ballparks around the USA entertained between innings: racing against "The Flash" from Atlanta, a stadium-wide chorus of "Sweet Caroline" from Boston, the grounds keepers dancing to YMCA as they smoothed the infield (a Yankee tradition), slingshots firing free tee shirts into the crowd and a strange bobble head race with Freddie Mercury, Winston Churchill, Henry VIII and the Loch Ness Monster. MLB actually trained food and drinks vendors to climb up and and down aisles selling their wares direct-to-seats, something unknown to British sport. They lacked the jovial banter and booming sales calls of their American counterparts, but the innovation of being able to get a drink without leaving your seat was a godsend. One can only hope that a member of the Twickenham management team was there and inspired.

The opening ceremonies were worthy of a World Series game, with giant flags, plumes of fire, pop stars and celebrity first pitches. Britain's most famous trans-Atlantic couple, Prince Harry and his American-born wife Meghan, took official first pitch duties along with a crowd of athletes from the Invictus games. (Piers and I are happy to demonstrate the Special Relationship next time if the Sussexes are not available.)

The London Stadium (still known by most Londoners as the Olympic Stadium) hosted the games, and organisers worked an impressive transformation turning a 66,000-seat athletic arena with an oblong field into a round baseball venue. To do this they raised the playing surface and built new stands along the baselines. It was still a bit odd, with huge spaces in the foul zones, almost no room behind home plate and awkwardly-placed scoreboards almost impossible to see clearly from our nosebleed seats in the outfield upper deck, but it worked far better than I had expected.

The stadium grounds opened four hours in advance and it was well worth getting there early to walk around the former Olympic site (now a lushly-landscaped park) and visit "Playball Park", a baseball-themed amusement zone set up on a field and running track next to the stadium. There were batting cages, pitching cages with ball speed trackers, a "home run derby", a mini-diamond to try base running and a diving catch station where you could leap with glove in hand into a bed of foam to get captured on slo-mo camera. This was all free and staffed by coaches from the UK's amateur baseball leagues. (Yes, they exist, and were very active in producing and hosting the London Series.) The biggest problem in this area? The wait. In order to play anything you needed a wristband. To get the wristband you had to sign a disclaimer form. And whoever designed that form, to be completed on iPads in bright sunlight, one per individual, gave no thought to speed or efficiency. It took us 40 minutes to clear this hurdle, and we had arrived soon after the gates opened. One hopes they'll speed things up next year.

This, as with all the other organisational issues, seemed to come from a failure to anticipate demand. Ticket sales back in November were a nightmare, with immediate sell-outs as each tranche of seats was released. Vast numbers of disgruntled fans took to Twitter to air their disappointment. It was understandable to start with a great rivalry like the Yankees and Red Sox, but those two cities are close enough to London to make a long weekend trip possible. Season ticket holders could buy eight seats per person, per game, well in advance, wiping out swathes of seats before British residents ever got a chance. Ticketmaster's booking system gave you no choice of seating area. If you were lucky enough to get in before availability sold out, you got whatever "best seats" the computer generated. And you'd better have deep pockets. The worst seats were £65. Anything along the baselines on the lower deck was approaching £300.

Merchandising was oddly limited to one large, pop-up store in a tent closer to Westfield Shopping Centre than the stadium. I'd guess many fans coming from alternate routes never saw it. Even so, there were enormous queues to get in and enormous ones to check out. By the time we got in (on our way home) stock was wiped out. There was nothing for sale in the stadium. I might have been tempted by the £37 London Series long-sleeved tee shirt had it been easier to purchase, but I just couldn't cope with more waiting to hand over more money.

Ultimately, those were small hiccoughs in an extraordinary event that brought something new and fresh to London.

Cricket fans are used to the "it ain't over til it's over" ethos, but most other sport in the UK is played to a clock, so pre-game mailers had warned that there was no way of predicting the end point of a baseball game. That was a wise move. At four hours and 42 minutes, London's inaugural MLB contest was just three minutes short of the longest nine-inning game in MLB history. We had to bail at the end of the seventh to have any chance of decent trains home. Lesson for next year: book a room in town.

Next year, when my beloved Cardinals play the Cubs. June 13 & 14, 2020. When they take the field I suspect I really will weep for pure, unadulterated joy.

WW2, please? Visitors drag my brain into the 20th century

From the day I moved to the UK, my cousin warned me that whenever he finally got over to visit, all the sightseeing would be about World War II. It's our grandfather's fault.

Our patriarch was scholarly but also loved swashbuckling drama, and we both remember delightful weekend afternoons as small children watching TV movies with him. (Inevitably to my grandmother reprimanding him. "Johnnie, they're too young for that!") Curiously, however, Gaga ... as we called him ... seems to have fed us different diets. Had he figured out our personalities even then? Did we indicate preferences? Or were we shaped by vagaries of late '60s and early '70s TV programming? All I know is that my cousin, Ron, consumed World War films while I drank in pirate flicks and medieval epics. Those weekend afternoons with Gaga are sacred in our memories and shaped our adult passions. I think I got the better end of the deal, naturally, since my movies led to castles, Caribbean beaches, sailboats, rum drinks and walled European cities. They certainly wired me to lose interest in any story set much after the Napoleonic wars.

But Ron was finally visiting. So I had to change my usual itinerary for visitors. We were going to the 20th century.

His No. 1 request? The Churchill War Rooms. These are a fabulously atmospheric look at how the government ran in London during the Blitz, seen today almost exactly as things were during the war. The prime minister and his cabinet retreated down here to run the war in ... as best they could ensure it ... relative safety. Having seen Hitler's bond-villain style network of massive tunnels carved into the mountain in Berchtesgaden before I got to the London site, I was surprised by the small scale and domestic humility of Churchill's space. It's not even that far under ground. At one point the curators strip back the ceiling panels to show you the iron bars and reinforced concrete, but it didn't seem like much compared to half a mountain. Then again, both spaces reinforce the tale we know. One side grandiose, dark and deluded, the other scrappy, practical and of the people.

The fact that these rooms are dressed pretty much as they were during the war, occupied by mannequins representing historic figures and described on an audio guide that features many authentic quotes adds to the charm. The map room in particular makes you feel like you've been dropped into the middle of a WWII film. The authenticity also fuels a sense of claustrophobia. These are small spaces. It's easy to imagine the fear and frustration as bombs pounded overhead and walls shook.

Though the core suite of rooms has been open to the public since the mid-'80s, additional renovations and restorations since the turn of the century have created what you see today. In addition to the main command and control rooms, you can see bedrooms for Churchill, his wife and staff, support offices, a warren of hallways and an atmospheric physical plant room that's available for event hire. (How did I miss this when I was still in charge of a large corporate budget and events in the IT sector?) There is also an impressive Churchill museum that tells the whole story of his life with artefacts, video and interactive displays. One word of warning: it's easy to lose yourself in here and run out of steam, not realising that the heart of the Cabinet rooms are still ahead of you.

A second word of warning: This is one of the few London attractions for which buying tickets in advance is absolutely essential. Those small spaces limit numbers. Advance ticket holders wait. People who just turn up wait longer, and may not get in. Only members of the Imperial War Museum skip the queue. (An adult ticket to the War Rooms is £22, annual IWM membership is £35. So if you're planning to add either Duxford or the HMS Belfast to your sightseeing within the year, buy membership instead.)

Though it has five branches, the main Imperial War Museum is across the river from the War Rooms and was also on my cousin's must see list. Though keeping it in the 20th century, I insisted that we start here with WWI. This museum shut down for a major renovation early in the decade, re-opening just before the centenary of the sadly mis-named "war to end all wars". The WWI exhibition created for that anniversary got rave reviews. So great, in fact, that we couldn't get in the first time we made the attempt back in 2014.  Now that it's been around for four years access is much easier, but it still deserves the praise.

This is modern museum presentation at its best, mixing artefacts with video, sound effects and interactive exhibits. You can play games to help you understand difficult concepts like how to provision an army, measure yourself against the height and weight of typical recruits, try on uniforms or walk through a loud, ominous trench. All of the displays are built around storytelling, whether it's peering into a case containing the personal effects of Edith Cavell, a British nurse who saved lives on both sides but was executed as a spy by the Germans, or sitting around a virtual campfire letting ghostly voices tell you about their experiences.

Given that the Imperial War Museum was a direct result of World War I ... established to teach lessons so that people would not repeat history ... it's no surprise that this is one of the most comprehensive WWI museums in the world. If you tried to take everything in, from causes and early enthusiasm through stalemate, horror, peace and the reparations that set us up for WWII, you'd have to spend a whole day here. Luckily, this is one of London's free museums so you can pop in to graze on what interests you most. Upper floors cover the second World War (with a great side-exhibit on intelligence and spies), the Cold War and modern conflicts, but none do as comprehensive a job at immersive, chronological storytelling as the museum's starting point.

To round out the story of early 20th century warfare we headed out of London, to a far lesser known but equally interesting site. The Army Flying Museum on the edge of Salisbury Plain isn't as good as the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (one of the best aviation museums I've ever been to, written about here), but if you can't get to that part of the country this is an excellent substitute. And the army has one important thing Duxford doesn't: gliders.

They were a stealth tactic to get men behind enemy lines in WWII. Build an airplane-sized glider out of balsa wood and paper, fill it with troops, tow it up into the air, then release it and ...  in theory ... let the pilots glide it smoothly and silently to a safe landing, after which the passengers could slip away into the night to perform their missions. Of course, with no engines these things were difficult to control, and their flimsy construction offered little protection from weather, rough landings or bullets once the enemy spotted you. It took a special, almost un-imaginable, kind of bravery to climb into a glider. Or maybe they were all just crazy.

Given their lightweight, throw-away nature, this is pretty much the only place in the world you can see original gliders from WWII; there are pieces of three of them ... one almost the whole thing ... with displays that tell the story of glider use throughout the war, from spectacular success to horrific sacrifice.

While unique and exciting, this is just the tip of the iceberg here. There are two hangars of aircraft with two floors of museum displays along each. Unlike the Imperial War Museum this is fairly old-school: artefacts and information boards. But it's interesting stuff, starting from the early days of aviation and going up through the modern day. The Royal Air Force split out from the Army at the end of WWI, so you get a comprehensive view of the start of military flight here (including balloons). Though the Air Force got the sexy fighter planes after that, there's plenty of interesting kit here including prototype drones, transport planes and fighting helicopters. Small simulators are dotted around and reasonably priced at £1 a go. Allowing me to confirm my hunch that flying an Apache helicopter is actually quite difficult.

There's a cafe here with a large terrace overlooking a grassy airfield still in use by the base next door, and they do flying exhibitions here on certain days. Tickets are £14 (not related to the IWM network) but good for re-entry over the course of a year, so a great deal for locals. We'll be back.

That trio was all we could fit in during my cousin's relatively short visit. I'm already thinking about what I could show him next. In addition to Duxford (naturally), there's the military command centre and warren of defensive tunnels under Dover castle, the HMS Belfast now docked on the Thames, all the fabulous intelligence stuff at Bletchley Park and more secret squirrel stuff in Disraeli's home at Hughenden, And that's before we consider crossing the channel to check out Normandy. (Read about my visit to the last one here.)

See, I can do the 20th century. It's not nearly as much fun as pirates and knights in shining armour. But I think Gaga would be proud.