It wasn’t all bad

A London schoolgirl studying for her A levels has set up a charity that has helped to teach 70,000 children in India how to code. Mahek Vara, 17, originally from India and now a pupil at Westminster School, set up Code Camp in April last year, designing courses for various abilities, although she was only a coding novice herself. The programme’s volunteers have now taught pupils and trained school staff in 1,800 schools in Gujarat, in conjunction with the state’s education ministry.

A British former teacher who survived two brain tumours (one of them just last year) has become the fastest woman to row solo across the Atlantic. Kiko Matthews, 36, had never picked up an oar until a year ago, yet travelled the 3,000 nautical miles from Gran Canaria to Barbados in just 50 days, rowing for 16 hours a day interspersed with two-hour breaks to sleep. One of only seven women to have made the crossing solo, she beat the previous record by six days. “The thought that, eight months ago, I was lying in hospital having my brain operated on, and now I am here having rowed the Atlantic, I guess I am a bit proud,” she said on arrival last week.

The French have tended to look down on British cooking – but if the success of a new restaurant in Paris is anything to go by, attitudes are changing. L’entente is a British brasserie that serves such delicacies as Welsh rarebit and shepherd’s pie. Since being opened last year by long-time Paris resident Oliver Woodhead, it has hosted the likes of François Hollande and Karl Lagerfeld, and has been praised by critics including François-régis Gaudry, who was particularly taken with the gingerbread: “It’s super soft, and so, so good,” he said.