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Happy Slow January, from my sloth bolt hole on the South Coast of England, to you, wherever you are. A week ago, I was cooking lunch with a foodie friend on a south facing terrace with the sun hanging like a giant golden bauble in the winter sky. It was so deliciously hot that I was tempted to put on a bikini. Even better, I could feel my body being charged by the light and the sun. Fast forward by a week and today, it is minus 2 out of the sun, and we have snow and ice on the ground for the first time in a decade. I am also wearing two wool sweaters and a dressing gown. It is colder inside than out. It's still hot in the sun. I ate my lunch outside with powdery snow glittering on flowers and trees like lace icing. I can spy Queen Victoria's stately palms quietly fluttering in the breeze from my eyrie in a cafe where I am writing beside a wood burner.
As I think and day dream and compose my latest Luminary Editor's Letter to you, Chuck Berry is transporting me to Memphis Tenessee and I yearn to go rock 'n' roll dancing. This year, as I continue my recovery, it feels critical to focus on creating a strong community around The Luminaries Magazine and to celebrate the cherished songs, customs and rituals that mark and define our heritage and culture, whether we live in a town, city or village in the UK, a farm in Minnesota or the Renaissance city of Urbino.
I'm not just talking about Christmas or first footing at new year. I am talking about our indigenous cultures, period.
Culture is everything, along with the freedom to enjoy it. What is the point of civilisation, history, the arts, travel, food and customs that define a country or one place, if they are deliberately obliterated or homogenised while AI and Chat GPT ruthlessly dumbs down talent, individuality, ideas, the imagination and authenticity.
If I see the word elevate misused one more time for marketing everything from handbags to holidays, for fake aspiration, I will scream and scream!
Everything that I write and create in this slow magazine is the result of dreaming and the imagination. My imagination and a life time as journalist, writer and author. Nothing is orchestrated using AI. Not a thing. AI is running rough shod over journalists, authors and the creative industries. We need regulation to proctect jobs, ideas and creativity that gave us Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Led Zeppelin and Elvis.
Many of the rituals that delight us and give us joy go back centuries. Now is a good time to cherish those rituals and never take them for granted in Britain, the US and Europe. Let's celebrate the individual and the things that delight us in our local habitat.
Today, I am still floating on cloud nine, after starting the day with the first Scaravelli yoga class this year. Lou, our talented teacher encouraged us to sparkle our spines, hands, feet and limbs as we transported our bodies into a new realm of effervescent lightness, agility, tranquillity and renewed strength. Again, words and one person's ability to teach yoga through one of a kind storytelling creates such powerful change in the mind and body which sticks.
Scaravelli is a holistic and spiritual form of yoga, created by concert pianist Vanda Scaravelli, in Italy. Scaravelli yoga is focused on gentle strength, mind body equilbrium and the joy of coming to know your body fully from the spine to the tips of the toes.
Slow Holiday Rereats at The Luminaries HQ
Now, you are invited to come and stay at The Luminaries HQ and combine slow foodie, nature, culture and literary walks with gourmet slow and regenerative organic food and drop in yoga Scaravelli classes and workshops. Please email me to register your interest for these two/three night stays on the island - luminarymageditorajatprotondotme and mark your emails - Luminary Restoration Retreat. (Please note I have written the email literally to avoid bots and spam!). Prices on application. Yoga classes will be paid separately.
Along with my Christmas viewing film and drama favourites, which included Citizen Kane, Brief Encounter, The Holiday, The Third Man, When Harry Met Sally and Now Voyager, I am currently watching and reviewing the epic - The Morning Show, starring an ensemble cast which includes Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Billy Crudup, Jon Hamm, Karen Pittman, Steve Carell, Nicole Beharie and Marion Cotillard.
The Morning Show
The Morning Show thoroughly inhabits my world, the world of national journalism, with a messy, relentless, unmissable and unforgiving script which dissects the stars, the stories, the egos and the internecine bloody coups and backroom tantrums of morning tv. It's a dazzling, authentic account of the restless world of news tv, magazines and newspapers that make up the fourth estate.
A Stellar Ensemble Cast
Bill Crudup is spellbinding as a boyish, quicksilver tv mogul with a deceptively amiable Peter Pan personality. Corrie makes the carnage of morning tv look like Narnia. At heart he is a filmaker yearning to remake the Wizared of Oz. Steve Carell demonstrates that he can play a straight role with uncompromising gravitas, complexity, tragedy and uncomfortable duality. Reese Witherspoon gives one of the defining performances of her career as a news anchor who is talented, brave, impulsive, messy and flawed and Jennifer Anniston delivers a riveting portrait of a star whon is a selfish, driven career woman and charming narcisist who still outshines everyone when the chips are down.
Journalism on Life Support
Given the life support state of the global media right now, this gives me a glimmer of hope, that real journalism will rise again and prevail despite the propaganda, the betrayal, corruption and the attempt by a few despicable tech Bond Villains to control everything on our planet earth. Let's not let that happen. Journalism must be free range and free of vested interests.
The truth is incendiary. Remember that.
The Morning Show is Streaming Amazon Prime via Apple TV.
A Luminary Slow Food Feast Night
I live to cook and eat delicious slow and beyond organic food, lovingly nurtured from scratch from our farmers, fisherman and farm 2 fork artisans from Morecombe Bay to Tebourba in Tunisia. Real, slow food grown as nature intended.
Eat Real Food - The Good Food Pyramid
Farmers and healthy food grown without pesticides is under threat. It is our birth right to eat real food. The biggest news is that RFK Junior continues to tear down the overwhelming levels of corruption affecting our access to food from farmers not corporations and to bring the pharmaceutical companies to heal. Bobby has just turned the ridiculous food pyramid on its head with humour and a fearless pursuit of the science and truth. Now meat, dairy, vegetables and fruit are at the top and ultra processed food is off the table.
For the latest from Secretary Kennedy and HHS which affects global food and health, go the website.
Supermarkets in the UK, increasingly resemble gulags, in a grim communist country. It is time to stop shopping in these places that no longer offer real food. They are pedding misery, disease and chronic poor mental health. It is time to return to buying food directly from farmers, food co-ops and and artisan companies. Here is an organic food story to give you some farm 2 fork producers in the UK.
Beyond Organic Farm 2 Fork Guide
Slow Organic Food Feast
To celebrate our amazing local regenerative farmers, I will be cooking and hosting a slow, pasture, organic and wild food feast night in March 2026, on the Isle of Wight, venue TBC. The supper and talk will be crowdfunded on crowdfunder.co.uk I will be highlighting the importance of healthy regenerative, grass-fed meat, wild veg and the amazing array of local fruits, berries and wild foods. The menu will include a classical dish such as beef bouquignon, delicate local seafood as a starter and there will be an organic and very dark chocolate pudding extraordinaire!
Please email if you would like to join the guest list and be notified when the tickets go live on crowdfunder - luminarymageditorajatprotondotme
And finally, one more thing.
The Luminaries Magazine Club and Community - I would like to set up a club for our paying supporters. This will be a place where we meet online roughly every six weeks for friendship and camaraderie and to have fun, exchange ideas, offer support and discuss food and culture. I would like to start with a movie and supper night. Meetings will be online via Zoom and then I will also arrange our first day out. I would like to begin with you all watching Bette Davies in Now Voyager - a wonderful film about transformation and second chances. Davies is extraordinary, the fashion is sublime and it makes me long to go on a cruise, but only if I could skip back to the Golden Age and wear gowns for pink champagne on deck with Paul Henried or Charles Boyer in Love Affair 1939, another old Hollywood masterpiece with a fizzing script. What do you think? Who wants to join?
Until next time.
To join our magazine and tribe and come to our next private online meet up -
Join The Luminaries Magazine Supporter's Tribe here. You can either pay monthly or yearly. Membership now includes a bi-monthly prize or giveaway which could be anything from a sample hamper of artisan organic tea to a vintage fashion garment to treasure and wear to our Breakfast at Tiffany's Tea Party, later this year.
I hope you found this letter inspiring. Email and tell me what you are excited about and what you would love to join.
AJ -Editor-in-Chief and Founder
Copyright Alison Jane Reid/The Luminaries Magazine January 2026. All Rights in all formats reserved. No copying or Ai usage.
