Put aside what you're doing for a little over half an hour and use the time to watch this short film about a boy and the balloon he finds on the grey Paris streets. Directed by Albert Lamorisse in 1956, with his five-year-old in the lead role, The Red Balloon has charmed viewers for decades. Director Terence Davies declares it “the greatest short ever made”, others say that it’s a “unique mixture of documentary realism and theatrical illusion”. We’ll just say that it’s utterly charming, and leave it at that.
It is a view held by some that children only enjoy activities specifically geared to their amusement, but it is not one that Yolanda Edwards ascribes to. She and her husband travel far and wide with their daughter Clara (pictured above enjoying escargots); from Bora Bora to Tahiti they roam, finding things to do and treats to eat, with nary a soft play centre in sight.
We have squeezed one more volume onto our shelves, a book whose idea is so obvious and so appealing it’s hard to believe it doesn’t already exist.
Classic Dining is a roll call of America’s last great old-fashioned restaurants, places where the waiters still dress up even when customers don’t. The diner pictured on page 78 in a black T-shirt and cargo shorts, hunched over his plate at Antoine’s in New Orleans is an unwelcome real world intrusion into a book filled with restaurants straight out of mid-century fantasy.
We braved the Bowie-loving crowds at the V&A the other day to visit the museum's shop and inspect the wonderful displays for a season of cycling-themed shopping and events which use Deanna Halsall's artwork from our map, An Uncle's Guide To London. To see the work on this scale in surroundings so beautiful and illustrious was thrilling. The photographs don't do it justice, but we hope perhaps give some flavour.

It was a happy day when we stumbled into Luis Mendo through the byways of social networking. We were beguiled by his wonderful illustrations on instagram and his City Reporter series revealed a shared fascination with urban life. A plan was hatched for Luis to write, illustrate and design our first Tokyo guide and the result was Tokyo: A very brief introduction, which we recently published. Luis kindly agreed to take the time to tell us more about himself