When Dolphin Square opened in 1936, it was the height of modernity, say Simon Danczuk and Daniel Smith in The Daily Telegraph. The seven-and-a-half-acre site, slap bang in the middle of Pimlico, was the largest self-contained apartment complex in Europe. Its 1,200 flats were kitted out with soundproofed walls, and in the communal areas there was a swimming pool and a beauty parlour. Today, the building remains much the same – grand and a little odd. In the basement laundry, the washing machines still have a setting for capes.

Joe Biden’s “aggressive timeline” for America’s transition to renewable energy has hit an unexpected snag, says The Economist: vast deposits of crucial minerals lie under sacred tribal lands. Thanks to net zero, the global demand for lithium, used in batteries, is expected to grow more than 40-fold by 2040. Demand for cobalt and nickel should grow by about 20 times in the same period. But by one estimate, “97% of America’s nickel reserves, 89% of copper, 79% of lithium and 68% of cobalt are found within 35 miles of Native American reservations”. Churning up land sacred to native tribes to get at valuable deposits underneath, say critics, would be “yet another example of America’s exploitation of indigenous peoples”.

Last Christmas a giant billboard went up over Finsbury Park tube station in north London, depicting the English countryside as “one big meadow”, says Vron Ware in The Guardian. It showed an idyllic grassy landscape devoid of people, buildings or roads, with the tagline “Explore the life that could be”. It was an ad for the property website Rightmove, inviting “Covid-weary commuters” to opt out of stressful city life. And it certainly caught the public mood. Estate agents have been reporting a mass exodus to the country since mid-2020, and by the end of that year “detached”, “rural” and “secluded” were the fourth, fifth and sixth most-searched terms on Zoopla, another property website.

When Roman Abramovich first visited Courchevel, he allegedly tried to buy the whole resort. The Russian billionaire apparently viewed every chalet in town, bidding way above the asking price, thereby fixing property costs at “oligarch levels”. I rather wish he hadn’t, says Helen Kirwan-Taylor in The Daily Telegraph. For years, my family loved the small French ski resort as a “half-term destination”. Now, it’s just a playground for Russia’s super rich – Courchevelsky.