Matt Dickinson, 46

A facelift that took two years and cost millions has put this luxury landmark back on the map, says Simone Kane

City Slicker: Catalonia's capital is always changing. But its cool factor is ever present. Simone Kane offers tips for new and returning visitors

A troupe of Charlie Chaplins took to London streets to shoot a short film to launch Virgin Media Shorts 2011, the UK’s biggest short film competition and the only one which champions undiscovered UK film talent across four screens - at cinemas, on TV, on mobile and online.

What to see and where to be seen

Asian and African women are aspiring to Western ideals of physical perfection – and the results are far from pretty

Now William Windsor is spoken for, which other royal boys might a girl set her sights on? Alice-Azania Jarvis surveys the field

Last week David Gandy D&G's favourite budgie-smuggler, kept us guessing as to the details of his first acting role, in a film he's shot with fellow model Helena Christensen. Cornered at the Triumph Inspiration Awards, Christensen, was more forthcoming than her co-star. Turns out the short is a tribute to Antonioni's 1966 classic, Blow-Up. Its director is Edoardo Ponti, son of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, who produced the original movie about a fashion photographer embroiled in a murder. Gender roles reversed, the tribute features Christensen (herself a snapper) as the photographer, with Gandy in the blessedly unchallenging role of one of her models. "I have huge admiration for actors; it is one of the strangest places you can go with yourself," said Christensen airily. "I wanted to push myself into a situation where I'm pulled out of a comfort zone and put in a very challenging place... It was an amazing experience." Essex-born Gandy's description was somewhat earthier: "I haven't had a single acting class," he told me, "[so] I was really bricking it."

Works by Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt have gone on show in the UK at the Magnum Print Room in London.

Many of us buy cookery books not for the recipes, but for the mouthwatering imagery that accompanies them. How many copies of Jamie, Nigel and Nigella's numerous tomes rest not on the shelf next to the cooker, dog-eared and spotted with grease, but immaculately preserved on the coffee table? Why cook a recipe when you can salivate over the photograph instead? A Visual History of Cookery takes this thinking to its logical conclusion in a beautiful new book that is a feast for the eyes.

Diary

Another trip to London, another landmark of my youth gone. Bertorelli La Toscana in Notting Hill Gate has closed and a nondescript Mexican restaurant has risen effortlessly on the ashes. I loved this restaurant more than any other. It was one of the last surviving Italian trattorias. You know the type – big in the Seventies, with bad paintings on the wall, all by a "local artist" and available to buy. There were also wicker-basket Chianti bottles and signed photos of grateful celebrity patrons. They had China Crisis, Simple Minds, Chris de Burgh and an unsigned photo of Sophia Loren that took centre stage.

If you've a spare €2.5bn burning a hole in your pocket, and always fancied your own personal Mediterranean archipelago, now is your chance.

My sister Barbara's wedding day starts at a high-rise in Napoli's lawless suburbs and ends with a pop video screened at Villa Soglia, a Bourbon-era mansion on the southern lava fields of Vesuvius. The film Miseria e nobiltà (Poverty and Nobility) starring Totò and Sophia Loren was a matrimonial farce based on class. Today's comedy of manners, with its five-strong media team, is a paean to celebrity culture, Neapolitan style.