The Queen’s Wood Cafe in Highgate, London, is one of those formerly secret places in London that used to be known only by locals and is now a star on Instagram. Built for a wood-keeper in 1898, it is like a fairy-tale cottage, emerging unexpectedly from the trees around it, covered in fading bunting and twinkling lights. I’ve suggested it as a quiet place to meet, but Alicia Vikander already knows it. “I used to come here with the kids,” she says with a smile, as she goes to the counter to buy us both a coffee. She may have been born in Sweden and since settled in Portugal, but a big part of her heart belongs to north London, where she lived for many years.

She’s here at the moment because she is about to make her first appearance onstage since she was a teenager, opposite Andrew Lincoln

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