Jay Rayner talks about the state of Britain’s restaurants, the art of reviewing, and why he doesn’t set out to give anyone a kicking

From Charlemagne’s estates to East Anglian factories via Enlightenment thinkers and epic poetry, the surprising history of cider

A paean to a French cheese that tastes like an illicit tryst on a pile of hay in a hot, stuffy farm building

Every autumn, the central Italian town of Foligno hosts a spectacular festival of pasta. Mark Riddaway heads along to watch an international battle unfold

An examination of the authenticity of the age-old tales of fish and frogs falling from the skies

The colourful, violent tale of James Figg, a fighter without equal in early Georgian London, who from his Marylebone amphitheatre punched, cudgelled and hacked his way to national celebrity

Simon Wessely, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, on unexplained syndromes, the Mental Health Act, and why the Cartesian divide is located in Camberwell