Helen Brown

1 week ago | independent.co.uk | Helen Brown

The Tennessee duo are faithful to country’s traditions while also delivering songwriting about queer love, addiction and anxietyHelen Brown“I’m no desert flower, I can take a little more rain,” sing indie darlings Julien Baker and Torres (aka Mackenzie Ruth Scott) on Send a Prayer My Way.

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Brown

The 2-Tone pioneer on her difficult Essex childhood, finding solace in reggae and her new Sky Arts documentary"I was never going to be a nice little white girl, and that's what my parents wanted," says Pauline Black. There's sorrow, defiance and analytical rigour in The Selecter frontwoman's voice throughout the powerful Sky documentary Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story, as she describes the experience of her journey to "minor pop-stardom" as a mixed-race woman in mid- to late-20th-century Britain.

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Brown

Residents of picturesque Fordwich are divided - in more ways than one - about headline-grabbing impact of a controversial renovation"It is quite remarkable how quickly the situation in Fordwich has changed since news of our road closure started making national headlines," says Alexander Armstrong.

2 weeks ago | ca.news.yahoo.com | Helen Brown

Four-year-old Skye is on her tiptoes, peering through the front window of the Meow Cat Cafe in Colchester. On the other side of the glass, two white-and-ginger cats laze, legs akimbo, on the windowsill, the spring sunshine warming upturned tummies. “Those ones are sleepy,” she tells me.

2 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Brown

Cat cafés started in Taiwan in 1998 when a local woman rescued a few street cats and made a feature of them; soon Taiwan became a destination for cat lovers. A decade later, the first British cat café, Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium, opened in Bethnal Green, London, in 2014, and is now a favourite haunt of my neighbour, Michelle Greensted, a committed volunteer for the Rayleigh, Essex branch of Cats Protection.