Mark Wilkinson, a leading furniture designer and self-confessed dreamer, picked up some sandpaper at the age of 10 and has never looked back. He rebuilt his own home in Wiltshire almost from scratch.
The garden is superb. I have a stainless steel tree there, complete with crystal fruit and two lakes with a conjoining waterfall, which is crossable via a 'broken' bridge. It's only a gap of about 18 inches but it makes you stop and think. You have to take a leap of faith and cross that gap. There's also an island with a cave, which my Feng-Shui expert tells me, has a dragon living in it.
My home is a total reflection of my inventiveness as a creative product designer. I believe in designing classical styles that have a life, which can be translated into all kinds of products. I've been told that the house should never be changed, and donated to the National Trust as a museum. It's even been nicknamed Wonderland. Although that's other people's name for it - not mine. I just consider it my home.
We've been working on it for over 10 years. From what was once a two-bedroom farmworker's house, we've built a seven-bedroom home, along with a cottage. At its heart is a huge, vaulted dining hall with a staircase leading to a mezzanine landing. When we first bought the house our plan was to pull it down. But when we looked closer, we discovered a 14th-century cottage beneath a mass of 20th-century work. The house revealed itself as the foundation of a really beautiful home."
I have fixed oak floors in all the rooms - sometimes leaving them bare, sometimes using loose carpets and rugs. Skirting, architraves, windows and sills are oak in every room, and all the doors are of my own design, for which I have a patent. They have wooden hinges - something previously considered impossible. I love a challenge, so I worked on it and came up with the solution.
My bedroom. It has one of my sleigh-beds, a beautiful dresser made up of seven circles and a private writing area. It also overlooks the valley and still has the home of one of its past residents up in the rafters - a swallow's nest.
I think it stems from the fact that I'm profoundly dyslexic. I have an almost neurotic compulsion to make things beautiful. Despite the fact that I'm in Mensa, I was in the D stream at school and people would say, 'Wilkinson, you idiot!' Then I made something beautiful and suddenly, someone said, 'Oh, well done Wilkinson - that's really lovely'. As a child, you want to be praised, so from there on, I just continued to nurture the urge.
From everyday life. Take the Cinderella coach bed. A friend and I were talking about how, when you have daughters, they become your special princess. It's a dad thing. Well, that got me thinking - what do princesses have? Coaches, of course. My friend asked me to make one for his daughter. It was only meant to be a one-off, but it's proved very popular. It even comes complete with six white horses.
The furniture we make has a very small carbon footprint because it's built to last. As long as drawer runners and hinges are changed every 30 years or so, there's no reason why our pieces shouldn't last centuries. It's important to me that none of my pieces ever 'jar'. That way, while you might get bored with them, they'll still be as relevant in 50 years time, as they are today.
I actually despise the idea of minimalist interiors, which insist that their owners remain tidy. I want rooms that welcome me home, that allow me to leave a drink or a newspaper or a jacket lying around if I want to. I am a compulsive tidier, but that's my choice - not the choice of an interior designer.
Oh, hundreds of things. I never run out of ideas. But I'd need several lifetimes in order to do it. There's just never enough time. I'd love to design a car or a motorbike or a railway. Steam trains, now they are wonderful. Woo, woo!
Tips for taking the metro
- set out well ahead of time
- make sure you have at least Dh15 on you Nol card, as there could be big queues for top-up machines
- enter the right cabin. The train may be too busy to move between carriages once you're on
- don't carry too much luggage and tuck it under a seat to make room for fellow passengers
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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BORDERLANDS
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis
Director: Eli Roth
Rating: 0/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
