European Media

United Nations Headquarters - New York  © Daren Frankish. All rights reserved. There are certain buildings that become so familiar that you almost stop looking at them. The United Nations Headquarters in New York is one of those buildings. Its long slab of blue glass beside the East River has appeared behind presidents, prime ministers, diplomats and television reporters for generations. The flags outside are instantly recognisable. Yet when you actually stand in front of the complex, there is something rather different about it. It is surprisingly restrained. For a building intended to represent almost the entire world, there is very little architectural showing off. Perhaps that is part of what makes it so interesting. A New World After War The story really begins in 1945. Europe had been devastated by six years of war. Cities had been destroyed, millions were dead, and the world had witnessed destruction on a scale that was almost impossible to comprehend. There was a determinat...

  The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2026   A Call to Gather © Daren Frankish. All rights reserved. There are certain events in Edinburgh that tell you summer has properly arrived. For me, one of them will always be the sound of massed pipes and drums coming from Edinburgh Castle. The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo returned to the Castle Esplanade for 2026 with A Call to Gather , and once again it delivered one of those evenings that reminds you just how special this event is. I have been covering the tattoo since 2014, and, apart from the two years lost because of Covid, I have covered it every year since. That means I have watched the show change considerably. I have seen different themes, different performers and different approaches to presenting what is one of Scotland's best-known events. Some years have naturally stood out more than others, but there is still something about walking up towards Edinburgh Castle on a Tattoo night that hasn't really changed for me. ...

  Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Loreto  Brutalism by the Mediterranean © Daren Frankish. All rights reserved. When you think about Brutalist architecture, Spain's Costa Blanca probably isn't the first place that immediately comes to mind. Sunshine, beaches, fishing boats and whitewashed Mediterranean buildings perhaps. But tucked away in the old fishing district of Duanes de la Mar in Jávea – or Xàbia in Valencian – is one of the most unusual Brutalist buildings I have come across. The Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Loreto, better known locally as the Parroquia del Mar , is extraordinary. From the street it doesn't immediately look like a church. There is no traditional stone façade, no Gothic tower and certainly no attempt to imitate the religious architecture of the past. Instead, you are confronted by enormous curved pieces of reinforced concrete rising towards the sky. It looks more like a sculpture than a building. And that is what makes it so interesting. © Daren Frankis...