Kensuke's Kingdom is pitch-perfect film-making

Initially premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2023, before being seen at last October’s BFI London Film Festival, this film based on Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book – originally published in 1999 – has now made its way to a more general release.

It tells the story of Michael, an 11-year-old boy, who sets off with his parents and older sister on a sailing trip around the world, after Mum and Dad both lose their jobs.

But Michael is less than happy – not least as his beloved sheepdog, Stella, has had to stay at home, or so we are initially led to believe.

One night, as a storm rages, Michael and Stella are washed overboard, only to wake on an apparently uninhabited desert island.

However, they find help – albeit reluctantly – from Kensuke, an elderly Japanese man who was washed up on the island decades before. Gradually their relationship evolves, as Michael learns to respect and value the environment he finds himself in, together with its wildlife, which Kensuke helps to protect. And as we discover, there are varied reasons it needs protection.

It's an excellent screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who has changed aspects of the original novel, but which certainly make sense here. For instance, in the book, the two central protagonists learn to speak each other’s language. Here, they learn only each other’s name, with communication being based more on emotion and expression.

There is also a love of art that they share and helped them learn about each other.

And their art allows the animators to be incredibly creative, from Michael’s log-book drawings coming to life on an origami boat that moves around a map of the world, to an extraordinary sequence of Japanese-inspired ink works that give the audience an insight into Kensuke’s own past.

The animation is superb – hand-drawn and combining 2D and 3D styles, which hark back to early Disney: think the 1937 Snow White and Bambi, both with lush painted backgrounds and 2D characters. As touched on above, here, there is a melding of different approaches throughout and including some simply beautiful vistas.

Directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry and with a super score by Stuart Hancock, it comes in at a very pleasingly trim 85 minutes.

In terms of the voice cast, Sally Hawkins is Mum, Cillian Murphy is Dad, and Raffey Cassidy is Becky, Michael’s sister.

But the film rests firmly with Michael and Kensuke, and Aaron MacGregor and Ken Watanabe get it absolutely nailed on.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a beautiful film – both to look at and in terms of its humanity, compassion, exploration of what family/community means, and its advocacy for the natural world.

Very, very much worth seeing.

Food, glorious food. Or not

Knights and ketchup

It was the best of England; it was the worst of England. It was a reminder of why we should take more breaks in the UK – and a reminder of why we don’t.

With The Other Half in recuperative mode, and both of us having ditched the tobacco, we decided, at short notice, to grab a long weekend away from London – to somewhere where we might stand a chance of breathing clean air.

It perhaps says something about pollution in the Metropolis that we chose a spot not far from a nuclear power station.

We had picked Rye on the basis of a Saturday morning conversation over coffee, which had started with me musing: “Where was it that the BBC filmed the Map and Lucia that they showed last Christmas?”

Google has its purposes. The location for filming turned out to be Rye, where Map and Lucia author EF Benson had lived for some time and even been the mayor.

Not only that, but the Tilling of those stories is Rye, with Mallards being Lamb House, where Benson himself had lived, and which had housed the American author Henry James before him.

So, literary credentials, plenty of opportunities for walks, the sea close at hand – what was not to like?

Well, one of those downsides of UK holidays is rather obviously the weather. In this case, our four full days in Rye saw two of soaring temperatures and azure skies, with the following two being almost entirely the opposite.

But on a break like this, that wasn’t too bad and more of what we did in later posts.

On our first full day, the Friday, we took a walk down one side of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, ambling through sheep-dotted salt-marsh pastures all the way to Rye Harbour itself.

There, we took tea and magnificent homemade blackcurrant cake, still warm from the oven, in the delightful Avocet Gallery and Tea Room – but more of art in the area another time too.

Refreshed, we set off for Winchelsea Beach, aiming to be there for lunch. There are two routes: one, along what passes for the front, while the other appeared to pass through the reserve, alongside one of the bodies of water within it.

I say “appeared”, because we were relying on Google maps and were having to do a certain amount of guess work given the lack of information on footpaths.

We should have taken the lessons of Google maps in Bavaria in March, but hadn’t. So instead of proper maps, we were stuck with the computerised version again.

The Other Half plumped for the latter route, thinking that it would offer us more to see.

In the event, we discovered that the reserve is, in effect, split across the middle by an area of private land, which prevents you getting near any of those bodies of water.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to turn back. We were walking due west, with the sun pouring down on us straight from the south, with nothing to provide any shade.

Unaccustomed to British seaside stays in the summer as we are (Brighton or Bournemouth in June or February for work does not count), I had forgotten any sun screen.

We were dressed sensibly enough for walking, but by the end of the trip, one side of me was pretty much beetroot red.

However, although we were prevented from seeing the sea by a sizable ridge – a secondary part of the local sea defences – there was plenty more to catch the eye.

Is beans on toast really so difficult?

This included masses of common blue damselflies or azure damselflies, darting just above the gravel path, their vivid, electric colour

There were also brown hawker dragonflies – flitting far higher up, often very near you, and vast, at 7cm or just over.

Flowers abounded in the shingle and the scrub, bringing flashes of unexpected colour to catch the eye.

A battered boat, sitting next to a large tree, provided one wonderful photographic opportunity.

We saw hardly anyone and the few who did pass us exchanged greetings.

When we eventually reached the beach area, with it’s caravan parks, we were in need of lunch.

Those caravan parks – indeed, the beach – might suggest facilities. A simple eatery or two, perhaps. But that’s where the ‘worst-of’ stuff kicks in.

We ate a Mr Whippy simply to keep us going as we continued the hunt. And it was some time before we came across a single café at the far western end of one camp site.

By that stage, we would have been prepared to eat almost anything.

Now in such an environment, I do not remotely expect anything fancy. I don’t want haute cuisine. Pies and chips and the like are eminently acceptable.

But this is not an excuse for such dishes to be poor. They are not inherently poor food, but they need cooking properly, while decent ingredients are as important as elsewhere.

Frozen chips and cheapest-possible frozen scampi will not produce a feast. And nothing will ever be helped by a pile of grey-green tinned peas that are barely even warm.

After that, we trudged back eastwards to get a bus. When we eventually caught one, less than two miles from Rye itself, it cost £2.50 for a single fare. That’s £2.50 each, remember. For a single fare on a short journey. Perhaps London’s constantly-rising bus prices are not quite so bad after all.

In that, then, you have another reason that we head across the Channel for breaks: public transport. The Other Half can drive, but I never have. We don’t have a car. Neither of us has a licence.

Hake with popadom

In the UK, this means that you will: a) get shafted by the cost of public transport; b) discover that public transport is very limited in being able to deliver you to more remote rural spots.

The latter has been experienced on previous UK holidays, on Skye and in the Lake District, where we had to rely, respectively, on local taxies and the generosity of the co-owner of a B&B in order that we could do any decent walks.

That evening, after a rest at our B&B, we headed to The Ambrette, an up-market restaurant in the old town that came highly recommended.

It serves a fusion of local produce with Indian spicing. The menu was mouth-watering.

Unfortunately, what we were served was rather less so.

The spicing was far from subtle and dishes seemed essentially to be slightly deconstructed and poshly-plated curries.

For my starter, part of my pigeon breast was raw and the whole was pretty much covered in a rather sludgy, brown sauce, which was miles for being the hoped-for fragrant.

An afternoon scone  with Earl Grey in Rye – not bad

For a main, I had opted for the fish of the day. It turned out to be hake – and came covered in something that bore little obvious difference to whatever had smothered the pigeon, and a piece of popadom that had lost its crispness by being in contact with the sauce.

We decided to forego a dessert, although while we waited for the bill, we were each given a small glass of guava granita with vanilla sugar, which was light and refreshing and a delight, and left one regretting that that had not been a case with the rest of the food.

At this juncture, I want to mention the mystery of the toast.

Why, at breakfast in our B&B, did the menu say ‘beans on toast’ or ‘egg on toast’ when there was absolutely no ‘on’ to be had for love nor money?

To be fair, the tactic of giving you unbuttered toast alongside your beans or eggs for breckie had hit me in London, where my round-the-corner-from-work caff suddenly started doing this a couple of months ago, and where I now have to stress when ordering that, by ‘on’, I mean ‘on’.

And I’ve since heard that I am not the only one to have experienced this, which suggests it’s some sort of utterly stupid emerging trend. Well stop it. Just stop it. It’s stupid and annoying.

On Saturday, the same lunch issues persisted. We found Tambika, a small café that also sells fossils, for lunch. The Other Half had a vast bowl of piping hot leek and potato soup, while I had two large fishcakes and a salad.

To be fair, it was as good as lunches got, although the fishcakes were a bit sloppy, while the accompanying salad was bland to the point of lacking any discernible flavour.

Marino's fish and chips. Overrated

That evening, with hope in our hearts, we headed to Marino’s, which people universally acclaim as the best chippy in town.

If it is, then it doesn’t say much at all for the others.

There had been vast queues outside the take-away part on the Friday evening and we timed it well to get seats inside just 24 hours later.

Both of us ordered medium cod and chips, with mushy peas. And waited expectantly.

The mass of chips were clearly not hand cut. They were not the worst I’ve tasted, but they were a very long way from being the best. The batter on the fish was okay, but the fish inside it was dry. It didn’t flake properly and had the taste that you get from fish that has been frozen.

Nothing had been fried in proper fat. And by that, I mean dripping.

Fish and chips is not rocket science. But it requires decent ingredients and proper cooking. In dripping. Then it’s a joy – which is why I so fondly remember fish and chips eaten in Hull years ago and even in Scarborough in 2011.

On Sunday, after a very pleasant morning’s walk, we found ourselves in the same old predicament.

This time, we ended up at the Café on the Quay. Plus ça change. It’s chips with everything, as Arnold Wesker might have put it. Or everything with chips.

A cheese omelette this time – plastic, flavourless cheese, that is, and the usual British heavily-set egg concoction. With piles more mediocre frozen chips. And another insipid salad that a rabbit would turn its nose up at.

I was longing to go back to Rye Harbour, just for the Avocet. They don’t do cooked meals, but the mere suggestion of the simple crab salad mentioned on the menu was a serious lure for taste buds that were dying.


For goodness sake – Cromer is a mere four miles from Rye, and Cromer crab is famous, yet I saw it on offer nowhere other than the Avocet.

On Sunday evening, we struggled to find anywhere that had space, as the town seemed inexplicably full to its Elizabethan rafters.

Cod at the Mermaid. But those are not proper 'mushy' peas

At this point, we need to briefly nip back to Thursday evening, a few hours after we had arrived. Then, we had dined in the bar of the centuries-old Mermaid Hotel.

We’d had fish and chips: the beer-battered fish was to prove to be the best we had. The chips were far from sensational, but were also probably the best we were to have.

On Sunday then, we eventually wound up in the same place and, having scanned the bar menu, both opted for the local lamb.

When it arrived, it turned out to be a salad, with slices of rare meat atop a mound of pickled celeriac and carrot, and the freshest, crispest salad leaves you could imagine, with a dressing that was light but, at the same time, packed a flavour punch.

Finally, something wonderful

It was a thing of utter joy in every single way.

Afterwards, we booked at the hotel’s restaurant for our final evening – a meal that proved to offer local scallops for the first time, cooked superbly and served with equally-perfectly cooked broccoli and potato dice, followed by shoulder of lamb and veg.

Were that not enough to revive desperate taste buds, we finished with an utterly divine dessert of elderflower and champagne jelly, a stunning raspberry coulis, chocolate soil (here it worked) a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a wafer-light sablé biscuit.

It had been a difficult menu to choose from, and I was thrilled to see dishes that included sorrel and nettles.

A divine dessert

So the trip ended with really good food. But it would be remiss of me not to mention our last lunch.

Monday was a rainy day on the south coast. As such, we caught a train and headed two stops west to Hastings.

After an initially disappointing start – including but not limited to walking through the hideous Priory Meadow shopping centre, with its blander-than-bland architecture that wouldn’t offend Prince Charles (whose mother opened it in 1997) and which was built over the Central Cricket Ground that had opened in 1864 and remained there until the 1989; and also took in the classic British tactic of putting a bloody big dual carriageway between along the promenade – we found our way to something with character and real interest in the old town.

Just embarrassing

But come lunch time, we were struggling once more. And, yet again, we ended up having to give in to something and chips.

On ordering scampi and chips, this is what was placed in front of me. Few words are needed. No peas; no salad; not even a solitary leaf of garnish.

Germany is not rated as having a great cuisine, but in March, in Bavaria, there was not a single day when we struggled to find cheap, simple and tasty food to sustain our walks.

There were many visitors in Rye last week who hailed from Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

I shudder to think what impressions they take away with them of our food.

And that picture should provide ample illustration of one of the major reasons why we do not take more holidays on this side of the Channel.

The birds and the bees

There is a lovely moment, early in John Logan’s new play Peter and Alice* when the octogenarian muse for Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland stories comments on the technological changes that have occurred in her lifetime.

Cinema, telephones, cars, the “wireless” – and oh how she longs to be able, as she could before all those things, to hear the bees.

For the “wireless”, one could, today, almost say the internet. No matter how wonderful it is, it does add a layer of ‘noise’ to modern life – with social media a particular culprit.

For all that the weather remains chilly – and the immediate prospect is a continuation of that – at least it has been dry for the last few days, a brief flutter of half-hearted snow apart, late on Saturday afternoon.

Indeed, the sun has actually burst through the cloud a few times, and blue been visible above. Last night, an odd star could be seen. This morning, the morning moon was visible through the skeletal plane tree in the park, hanging in a field of pale blue.

But frankly, the most wonderful part of the last few days has been the peace and quiet.

Our little bit of Hackney is never as quiet as on bank holiday weekends. The traffic immediately outside and from beyond the park behind is vastly reduced; people have gone away and even the improved weather hasn't brought the noise of activity to the public areas.

You can hear the birds. You can hear yourself think. Both these, in the city, are a blessing.

I’m trying, with the aid of the RSPB website, to learn to recognise birds by their song. I’m not doing particularly well, although I can spot the little ‘bark’ of robins.

Of Alice Liddlell’s bees, we don’t get many in the tiny patio garden – with the cats around, that’s a good thing for all concerned. But I have some seeds that, once it gets a bit warmer, will be sown in the beds in the carpark and are apparently good for them.

And bees need our help.

The biggest help that we can give them is by not using chemicals in our gardens.

There is a growing body of evidence around that suggests that declines in bee populations since 2005 have, in part at least, been caused by the introduction of a new type of pesticide, neonicotinoids, which hang around for a far longer time than previous products.

It seems that some suppliers have now decided to act: both B&Q and Wickes have announced that they are withdrawing certain products that are harmful to bees.

Yet only this last weekend, Bayer has been spotted offering free packets of flower ‘seeds for bees’ with bottles of pesticides. Presumably, the company hopes that customers will know that helping bees is good, but not realise the connection between pesticides and the bees' plight.

It’s difficult to believe that Bayer – and other companies – don’t realise the link.

The EU is considering a ban. The US is dragging its heels.

Yet according to the New York Times just last week, the US Agriculture Department says that a quarter of the country’s diet depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests, means higher food prices.

Bees are not some sort of creature that needs help for the sake of sentiment alone.

And if pesticides are affecting bees, what are they doing to other insects, many of which are beneficial to farmers and gardeners?

There is no need to use vast amounts of chemicals. There are options, from companion planting to organic solutions – try a little dilute (eco-friendly!) washing-up liquid sprayed on aphids etc.

And then there’s weedkiller.

Only last autumn, The Grocer reported that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller – the world’s best seller – together with a genetically modified maize that’s resistant to it, can cause tumours, multiple organ damage and lead to premature death.

And this is far from the only story about the kind of damage done by GM products.

Yet gardening magazines carry plenty of adverts for weedkillers – and they appear regularly on television too.

Such products are a bit like convenience food – people have been convinced that they don’t have the time, the knowledge or the skills to do something, a situation that can be exploited very nicely by the company that sells them a packet that promises to do it all for them, regardless of what’s in it and whether it’s good for them or the bees or anything else other than corporate shareholder dividends.

Advertising ready meals and weedkiller depend upon convincing people of those inadequacies.

The most glaring food example is the current spate of adverts from fast food organisations ‘comically’ stressing how you can’t/don’t want to cook.

In gardening terms, how often do you see tools for, say, weeding advertised? (There is one at present, but it’s the exception) Yet weedkiller appears up on a regular basis.

Of course, it’s also the case that such products usually cost more than if you declined the invitation to use them.

The more I get into gardening, the more I realise that weeding is not the horror that it is generally considered. Do it regularly and it’s easy. It’s part of the ‘pottering’ that is itself so theraputic.

I can’t speak about lawns – ’though honestly, can it be that hard? – but a Dutch hoe makes easy work of beds, and pots simply require regular checks.

Anyway, the weekend did provide the opportunity for some essential – and chemical free – gardening.

Broad beans (left) and peas.

The pea and broad bean plants desperately needed repotting out of the individual seed cells in which they’ve been growing for the past six weeks.

It was my first attempt at repotting and went blissfully well – helped by remembering Monty Don demonstrating it and explaining how to lift young seedlings by the leaf and not the stem.

The peas and broad beans were hardly seedlings, but they came out well, with plenty of root development – and now they have much more space in coir pots for those roots to spread and grow.

It’s still getting very cold at night – to the point of frost – so they’re staying inside two layers of plastic for the time being. They’ll need hardening off before eventually being planted out – something I now imagine won’t take place for another month, given the weather forecast. But at present, the main concern is to protect them from the cold.

The radishes are doing well too: the first batch – sown on 16 February with the peas and beans – are now developing their mature leaves. The plan is to repot these in a big pot and cover with a plastic cloche.

Elsewhere in the grow house, the chard and the gem lettuces are coming on. The first batch of spring onions are even showing. But most remarkable of all, or so it seems, three of the Toscana strawberry seeds have germinated and popped pin-head-sized leaves above the compost.

All this, in site of the efforts of the weather, and without any chemical aids.

And if I can do it ...

* Review of Peter and Alice.