A new 88-bedroom boutique hotel is to be created by 2021 in Coventry city centre, in the former offices of the Coventry Evening Telegraph. (The Business Desk)

There will be a 1950’s theme to the unit, which will be operated by Bespoke Hotels, and there will be conference rooms, a restaurant, a roof-top bar and a range of loft-style two-storey bedrooms in the former print room.

Behind the hotel, and part of the deal agreed, there will be student accommodation with 833 rooms opening as phase one in September 2020.

Charles Laughton, 1999-1962, was the brilliant, bisexual and tortured actor who appeared in more than 50 films, most from 1933, after giving up a career as a manager at his parent’s Scarborough hotel, the Pavilion, now demolished.

Laughton graced a number of memorable roles as a monster or misfit which included Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Doctor Moreau in The Island of Lost Souls and Henry VIII in The Private Life of Henry VIII. Another memorable role was as crusty and eccentric lawyer, Sir Wilfrid Robarts in Witness For The Prosecution, based on an Agatha Christie play and directed by Billy Wilder in 1957.

A four-session course The Pre-Raphaelite Revolution is being offered by the Leighton House Museum in Kensington.

The four two-hour sessions take place on Tuesday Feb 26, Tuesday March 5, Tuesday March 12 and Tuesday March 26, 10.30am to 12.30 pm and the price of £125 includes light refreshments. The course covers the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) and includes the contributions of such as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and some of their models, muses, mistresses, mates and fellow -artists.

It is led by curator and lecturer Jo Banham, whose specialist areas of knowledge are Victorian art and design, and the history of wallpapers.

Those interested in this important sphere of art might also enjoy the 5hour, 29 minute DVD of the BBC TV programme about the PRB, Desperate Romantics, and the 418-page book by Franny Moyle of the same name on which it is based.

One useful and enjoyable annual event put on for organisers is the Speaker Drinks evening staged at the Institute of Directors venue on Pall Mall by speaker agency Performing Artistes.

This showcases stand-up comedians and their acts and allows plenty of time for delegates to network with, and perhaps book their chosen performer(s) The latest event presented five, four who made us laugh and one who made us laugh and think. Andy Parsons, well-known from his appearances on topical news show Mock the Week, told jokes about topical issues, including the current bad joke Brexit, (he is an activist for a second public vote on the issue) and introduced the other four stand-up specialists, including Markus Birdman, Naomi Cooper and George Lewis, all of whom went down well with the mostly female audience.

Tourism chiefs at VisitScotland used a picture of a Glencoe cottage once owned as a holiday home by disgraced BBC celebrity and sex offender Jimmy Savile, to promote tourism in the Highlands.

Savile is thought to have sexually abused more than 450 people over a 60-year period, over 300 of them under 18 and some as young as eight. He owned the cottage for 13 years, from 1998 to 2011 when he died without ever being caught or charged aged 84. It was featured in a highly regarded Louis Theroux documentary in 2000, When Lous met….Jimmy. In a van on the way back from Glencoe Theroux asks why Savile had claimed to the media that he hated children and Savile told him “It’s to put a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt”. As the couple said goodbye Theroux claimed that he had “a new-found respect for Jimmy” though he felt he, like most other people, had never got close in the week he had lived with him for the documentary.

At Savile’s death the leader of Leeds City Council, Councillor Keith Wakefield described Savile as “Leeds born and bred, and he remained a Leeds lad all his life”.

VisitScotland have now removed the shot of Savile’s cottage from their website, “in case it caused any offence”.

Plans are being considered for The Entertainment Resort, a world-class theme park with supporting hotels containing conference space, as well as cinemas, nightclubs and restaurants.

This would be on the Swanscombe Peninsula in Kent and just across the Thames from Tilbury.

A recent tasting of nearly 100 wines from Italy, organised on behalf of Italian wine expert Daniele Cermilli (who styles himself Doctor Wine), provided us with tastings of wines from the Velenosi winery in the Marche area.

This produces an excellent medium dry white for drinking with food that the good doctor rates with a 92% score in his highly regarded “Essential Guide to Italian wine” (2019) and this is the Verdiccho dei Castellidi Jesi DOC 2017, which is also flagged as exceptionally good value and should be selling retail for around £16 a bottle.

Rather more expensive is the red Roggio Del Filare Rosso Piceno Superiore DOC 2015, not rated by Cemilli. This is likely to be £50+ to buy here but is the Winery’s “Grand Cru” and, for our personal taste delivered a lovely creamy sweetness of red berry fruit that trickled seductively down the throat and dared us to spit it out, or ruin it with food.

The importer for Velenosi is Dolcevita Wines, Web: dolcevitawines.co.uk

The 187 bedroom Hotel Indigo has opened close to Victoria Station in Manchester and claims to bring its brand of “contemporary Bohemian chic” (The Business Desk).

Double rooms start at £100.

This is the ironic title of the latest, and arguably the best of the bios of the famous and infamous author, playwright and bon viveur Oscar Wilde, who made up a story to tell his children, which he called The Happy Prince.

The story of Oscar’s fall from grace for his homosexuality has been well documented on film, starting with the two released in 1959 and 1960, These were the black and white Oscar Wilde, starring Robert Morley in the title role, Alexander Knox as his defence lawyer Sir Edward Clarke, Ralph Richerdson as the prosecuting counsel, Sir Edward Carson, John Neville as Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas and Edward Chapman as his father, the irascible Marquis of Queensbury, who wasn’t happy with his son sleeping with Wilde and outed him by calling him a “somdomite” (sic) and sparking the libel case bought by Wilde that resulted in a win for Queensbury when he was able to call witnesses and defend his allegation as true.