Five Great Reads: floating homes, gen Z’s ‘first lady’, and the man who played Nelson Mandela

Dear readers, we’re only days out from the Ashes and we have the list to whet your appetite. Cricket sceptics, stay with me – five of the week’s best are below. 1. The growing Dutch demand for floating homes Nearly a third of the Netherlands lies below sea level. Almost 20% is reclaimed. The climate crisis has raised the prospect of rising sea levels and inevitable flooding. Meaning the focus for the Dutch now is not on fighting the water, but living with it. So a nation that has long made homes in houseboats is now embracing not just sustainable floating houses, but entire new waterborne neighbourhoods. This photo essay gives you a small peek inside. Housing shortage: The Netherlands lacks 400,000 homes, with an estimated 1m needed by the middle of the next decade. How long will it take to read: Three minutes. 2. America’s ‘aloof’ new first lady of style The Democrats had many winners the night Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, but it was the effortless cool of his wife – the 28-year-old artist Rama Duwaji – that had our newsdesk atwitter. Jessica Cartner-Morley goes deep on the “quirky”, “retro-tinged” and “ladylike” elegance that has fashion mags showering Duwaji with headlines. The new Rachel? Says Vogue of Duwaji’s bob: “Fall’s Next Cool-Girl Haircut Is Officially the Rama.” Also trending: Duwaji’s general vibe, dubbed “Aloof wife autumn”. (I’m currently workshopping “Surly husband spring”.) How long will it take to read: Three minutes. 3. The teenage runaway who couldn’t escape his past Pamela Gordon met Craig, aged 13, when she was shooting a documentary series about runaways in Nottingham. His mother told Gordon she had put him in care because no one could deal with him. Craig hated the home and preferred life on the streets, existing outside the system. The show was broadcast in 2000, when Craig was 16. The film-maker held out hopes that things might turn around for him. She received regular calls from him in prison over the ensuing two decades. Then in 2019, Gordon finally learned what Craig was running from. *** “‘You should make a follow-up documentary on me, Pam,’ he’d often say. ‘That’d show people what it’s like, what happened to me next.’ But TV had moved on. I was told by one executive that Craig just didn’t have a ‘TV face’.” – Pamela Gordon How long will it take to read: Ten minutes. 4. Morgan Freeman on his six decades on screen Morgan Freeman, 88, has played Nelson Mandela, Batman’s tech guy and even God across more than 100 films – and reckons “the appetite is still there” to keep going. He talks David Smith through his storied career, why he doesn’t believe in Black History Month – and what he thinks about the word “gravitas”. Why The Shawshank Redemption resonates: Freeman sees the world’s favourite movie (per IMDb) not as a prison film but as “a movie about a love affair between two men, in that they had their ups and downs and ins and outs”. How long will it take to read: Five minutes. 5. The intersex campaigners fighting to limit surgery on children Holly Greenberry-Pullen was raised as a boy until she went through puberty, when it became “clearly obvious” her body was intersex – with genitals that were neither typically male nor typically female. She underwent “absolutely horrific mutilating” surgeries that she believes she was not able to give fully informed consent for. The British councillor is now campaigning against such decisions being made about children’s bodies before they are old enough to have a say in them. It comes as a new documentary, The Secret of Me, investigates the harm caused by the 1960s theories of a psychologist whose work was eventually debunked. How long will it take to read: Six minutes. Further viewing: The trailer for The Secret Of Me, which has screened at film festivals and special events in Australia but has no wider release confirmed. Sign up If you would like to receive these Five Great Reads to your email inbox every weekend, sign up here. And check out out the full list of our local and international newsletters.