For most of Europe, this weekend is a bank holiday weekend. The traditional celebration that marks the birth of spring, May Day is rooted in the pagan festivals of Floralia (thanks to the Romans) and the Celtic Beltane. Fewer communities skip around the village maypole, or crown a May Queen, but the more subtle rituals beckoning summer are still indelibly part of our psyche. This weekend will see people putting on their gardening gloves, brunching on their balconies and more generally shifting into outdoor mode: I plan to enjoy a much overdue weekend hike in some verdant field somewhere in the countryside. 

At the risk of sounding deeply pretentious, I cannot think of an English summer without recalling Evelyn Waugh. In the opening chapters of Brideshead Revisited the writer recalls “a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool’s-parsley… and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year”.

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Perhaps those months are so evocative because they coincide with the end of the academic year. We still hold on to that sense of absolute freedom, when the summer seems an endless spill of possibility and the days are all one’s own. Over the course of 40 years, Dafydd Jones has captured this season of abandon. The photographer got his first break shooting Oxford’s dining clubs in the early 1980s, and then went to Cambridge to record the May Balls there. His black-and-white portraits of undergraduates celebrating the end of Finals are a snapshot of the future establishment at their most unguarded and uninhibited. Jones traces the changing customs, mores and fashions in an exclusive preview of his latest book: a “secret world” of romance, riches and parties hidden behind the college walls.

Another secret world is discovered on Île de Bendor, a small enchanted island that sits due east of Marseille. Once the private playground of the drinks entrepreneur Paul Ricard, the island fed his feverish ambition to house hotels, restaurants, shops, a diving club and, at one point, a zoo. His heirs are now reimagining the location as the basis for an alternative take on tourism, with its two hotels refurbished and refitted to fulfil different expressions of luxury: one is all five-star trimmings and Riviera glamour, while the other has a more humble charm. Both look utterly delicious. In the words of the local Bandolais: “We’re traditional here. On n’est pas bling-bling.” Louis Wise got the first tour shortly before its grand opening. 

Garden designer Sean A Pritchard, meanwhile, is all about the summer and how to bring it indoors. His latest book Atmosfloric is a guide to creating displays of flowers. Marion Willingham went to see him at his cottage home in Somerset where his tiny front garden supplies a year-round supply of blooms. As to how to arrange your own flowers, he likes to use a pin frog (or “kenzan”) to fix the stems securely; cut the base of the stems at a 45-degree angle, and add them one by one. 

Lastly, as far as I’m concerned, summer is not summer until I’ve worn a denim shirt. After months of thermal vests and sweaters, the opportunity to wear this favourite wardrobe staple is (for me at least) the official marker of the seasonal sartorial switch. Kate Finnigan has looked at the garment to examine why it always works. She’s also found some delectable new options for those of you who want a quick refresh as well. 

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