Cultured. On Sunday 22.03.26
Our weekend edition for longer reads and cultural recommendations
This week’s Cultured. On Sunday begins with an interview with Bishop Auckland writer Abby J Walker, recently announced as the winner of the third annual ClassicsFest, with her play set to take centre stage as a highlight of the 2026 programme later this year.
We also enjoy the results of the first photography competition celebrating 70 years of Northumberland National Park, and catch up with an island-hopping conservationist whose latest posting has drawn her back to her native North East.
In My Life Through a Lens, Owen Humphreys opens up his archive, offering a glimpse into more than three decades behind the camera as a Press Association photographer.
Elsewhere, Collected Books in Durham have a gothic recommendation for your bookshelf; we head into the kitchen with Coarse in Durham, whose latest recipe promises what might just be the best pork crackling you’ll ever have, while this week’s TV box set recommendation revisits the world of Nordic political intrigue.
Ooh, and there’s a review of Opera North’s Peter Grimes at Newcastle Theatre Royal.
Plenty to settle in with this Sunday. Hope you enjoy it.
We’ve been asking asking North East-based photographers to open up their archives and select two handfuls of images which encapsulate life as they’ve captured it
Owen Humphreys’ journey into press photography started while he was still at school and got a job as Saturday tea-boy at the Derby Evening Telegraph.
“I soon moved into the dark room, back in the days of film,” he recalls. “I would help the staff photographers print their pictures as they arrived back from assignments. This experience sparked a passion in me and I knew that being a photographer was what I wanted to do.”
After leaving school, Owen got himself on a YTS (Youth Training Scheme) with a local press agency, enabling him to shadow and learn from experienced photographers.
Once his training was done and dusted, an urge to see a bit more of the world saw him jet off to Miami and take a job as a cruise ship photographer.
“This was an amazing experience and really helped me learn how to deal with people, a really important skill needed in my profession,” says the 51-year-old who lives in Whitley Bay.
Back on UK soil, it wasn’t long before he landed a job at the Evening Chronicle and The Journal in Newcastle.
Founded by Emma Hamlett, Collected Books is an independent bookshop in Durham, with two floors of books to browse as well as coffee, wine, and cake to enjoy. They specialise in writing by women but stock all genres of fiction and non-fiction as well as books for kids, YA titles, poetry, and classics.
It might feel counterintuitive to talk about the Gothic just as spring starts to bloom, but for some of us at Collected it is spooky season all year round. We’ve loved a number of gothic retellings, such as Kat Dawson’s Hungerstone and Anne Eekhout’s Mary: Or, The Birth of Frankenstein, but are especially swept up right now with Charlotte Cross’s new vampiric reimagining The Brides.
We’re absolutely delighted to be hosting Charlotte Cross at the end of the month to talk about how Dracula’s forgotten brides inspired such a beguiling and seductive story.
Bookseller Frankie says…
A neo-Victorian epistolary accompaniment to Stoker’s Dracula, The Brides fleshes out the forgotten backstory of the Brides of Dracula in the fascinating form of letters, diaries and reports.
A sumptuous, mysterious, queer imagining of the iconic story, following lovers Mafalda and Lucy, their best friend Eliza and their handmaid Alice across the Austro-Hungarian Empire right to Dracula’s door. But only one will survive to tell the tale. A creepy, brilliantly assured debut that will delight classic literature and horror fans alike.
Charlotte Cross’s novel reads like a lost book of the late-Victorian period, utterly rich and vivid with a style that belies Cross’s encompassing love of the Victorian novel. Cross manages to directly marry the depth and complexity of Dracula with a sensitive and mesmerising hidden history which is truly worthy of a space on your shelf next to Stoker’s Gothic masterpiece. Down at the shop, we’ve got plenty of other gory and Gothic delights to keep you chilled to the bone through this warmer weather.
Charlotte Cross will be in conversation about The Brides at Collected on March 31 at 7.30pm Tickets are £5 and can be booked in store or at www.collectedbooks.co.uk where you can also pick up a copy of the book.
Charlotte’s visit to Collected Books is part of its busy programme programme of author events, book and social clubs. Other upcoming events include The Writing Habit: Conversations with Writers from the Royal Literary Fund (Mar 25); April Book Club - Angst by Helene Cixous with translator Sophie Lewis (Apr 22); Sarah Lonsdale on Wildly Different: Five Women Who Reclaimed Nature in a Man’s World (Apr 30); Laura Tisdall on We Have Come to be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain (May 7).
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s he’s going all political, but with a scandi twist.
With local elections on the horizon and global politics rarely out of the headlines, many will be turning to box sets for a break from the noise - the speeches, the sparring and the ever-present sense of uncertainty.
Others, of course, will be glued to every twist and turn. For those in the second camp, I can heartily recommend the Danish political drama Borgen.
Borgen tells the story of how Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) goes from being a minor, left of centre politician and leader of the Moderate party to becoming the first female prime minister of Denmark, following a closely fought general election which results in a hung parliament.
Birgitte quickly finds that holding together her government of many colours while also being a wife and mother to two children is a tall order. Doing so without sacrificing her values, beliefs and scruples is nigh on impossible.
Situated in a courtyard in the heart of Durham, Coarse has built a reputation for stripping fine dining back to its essentials and making it feel both accessible and exciting.
Quickly recognised in the Michelin Guide for it regularly changing six-course tasting menu built around local, seasonal ingredients, we asked its head chef and co-owner, Ruari MacKay if he’d be so kind as serve up this week’s Sunday Plate recipe.
He came back with his take on Korean Pork Belly, which comes with a boastful brackets…’(the best crackling you’ve ever made!)’
Ingredients
Pork belly (as much as you want)
Salt
Method
Score your meat! But only the skin, don’t go into the pink stuff.
Don’t cut yourself!
HEAVY salting of the skin - rub it all over so it’s completely covered.
Leave for a few hours in the fridge.
Rinse off all the salt. Rinse it well.
Dry with paper towel.
Air dry overnight in the fridge uncovered.
Crank your oven up as high as it will go and get it in there.
Wait until crackling is looking good.
Turn oven down to 180°C
If you’re fancy and have a temperature probe, you’re looking for 60. If you’re not fancy, you want to see white meat and clear juices.
Ingredients for the Korean sauce (this makes loads!)
100g gochujang
200ml ketchup
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame oil
2.5 tbsp ssamjang
2.5 tbsp soy sauce
2.5 tbsp honey
Beer to taste (optional)
Method
Mix all ingredients.
The beer is optional but if you like a slightly thinner sauce, it’s ideal.
If you want to, you can boil it all in a pan for 10 minutes to thicken.
For a main course - spoon sauce onto a plate, slice pork belly and serve on top of sauce with your choice of greens. For a snack/appetiser - cut the pork belly into bitesize chunks, toss in the sauce, serve on small bamboo skewers.
Find out more and book at table via the Coarse website.