An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
I thought that maybe being in a wheelchair would stop my louche lunching ways, but somewhat to my own surprise (though not that of my mates, I’d wager), this isn’t the case. ‘You push – I’ll pay!’ has become my battle cry. But as I am wheeled about at this time of year, a pucker
Queen’s ascendency began at around the same time as the first residents were moving their Axminster carpets and Party Sevens into Tower Hamlets’ Robin Hood Gardens, the Smithson-designed Brutalist estate that would go on to become a typical example of how post-war ‘streets in the sky’ concepts were almost always doomed to fail. Five decades
To a certain extent, all doctoral theses are a bit ridiculous – and therein lies their genius. I am allowed to say this because I spent four years of my life researching French Catholicism’s engagement with the first world war for my doctoral thesis, which I nattily entitled Calvary or Catastrophe? Back then, I was
Football has a problem: there isn’t enough football. The world’s most popular thing is too popular. Fans seem to find it ludicrous that our entertainment is constrained by flesh and blood, that we can’t – like with everything else – just watch live football when we feel like it. It started to get like this
The time seems right to move from the flat to the jumps for tipping purposes. Qipco-sponsored Champions Day at Ascot is not the end of the flat season and the first day of racing at Cheltenham today does not mark the start of the National Hunt season but there is no more appropriate moment to
No one is quite sure who invented the phrase ‘the shock of the new’. It may have been the American writer Harold Rosenberg back in the 1960s. Alternatively, it may have been the late, great Australian intellectual Robert Hughes, who used it as a title for a TV series. Whatever the answer, the phrase aptly captures
Our economy is stagnating, our borders and our welfare state flung open to those who despise us. We once threw railway lines around the world and now struggle to build one to Birmingham. Free speech is under threat, and it’s almost impossible to get hold of a decent lettuce. I do not mean to be
One of the many problems with the internet is that it’s increasingly difficult to know if something has become ubiquitous overnight, or if your algorithm is just serving you the sort of slop it thinks you’re stupid enough to buy. Case in point: nightdresses. Previously the preserve of pioneer women, convalescents and Victorian ghost children,
Ready meals: the after-work time-saver, the dinner-party cheat – or a poor imitation of proper, cooked food? The proto-ready meal – an entire meal that can be cooked in its packaging, with little or no preparation – was invented in 1945 and called the Strato-Plate, but used only in aviation and military settings. The first
When you are old enough, you can measure your life in restaurants. I remember, for instance, when the Electric Diner on Portobello Road (named for a long ago and far away war) was a place to eat brunch, a meal that shouldn’t exist and doesn’t really, though if it belongs anywhere it belongs here. It
Moments when a 24-carat superstar bursts on the scene are few and far between, but always something to cherish. And we rugby fans have had two in the past few weeks. First came the dazzling performance by Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, the Springbok No 10 who tore apart a powerful Argentina side in Durban in September, scoring
I’m in an urban park surrounded by fast-food outlets: Taco Bell, the Golden Arches, KFC, Starbucks. The sound system is blasting out raucous rap music; all the men are in blingy sportswear, baseball caps, Nike shoes. I can see big shiny billboards advertising iPhones, Pepsi Max or the latest Marvel movies. In short, I could
Now that the autumn term is well underway at universities and freshers’ week has removed its leering, spotty face from the calendar for another year, may I talk about how ghastly it is? Impressionable young people who believe they are completely mature adults but still have another decade or so of brain remodelling to go
The USA’s Eric Lu has beaten more than 600 other pianists to win the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition. Held every five years in Warsaw around the anniversary of the Polish composer’s death on 17 October, this is one of several piano tournaments that often launch major careers, along with Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition, the Van
By now, you have probably given up on Sober October. I’ve never done it, mainly because I’ve been sober for 15 years. There’s two things, however, that I’m truly thankful for. The first is that I gave up drinking before Instagram stories became a widespread means of social documentary. The second is that I had
I’m not usually in favour of money-grasping councils, but I will make one exception: I’m afraid I am not on the side of the SUV drivers of Cardiff who are bleating about having to pay higher parking charges. Under new rules introduced by the Labour-run council – and likely to be copied elsewhere – drivers
‘Live fast, die old’ ran the strapline to the David Brent: Life On The Road film a decade ago. The movie itself was a textbook example of how unwise it is to attempt to cash in on the earlier (read: much funnier) successes of your career. Not that Ricky Gervais gives a damn while residing
Earlier this year, I wrote here about the arsonist who’d left our neighbourhood looking post-apocalyptic. In the months that followed, the pyromaniac grew ever more reckless. Initially, he’d stuck to torching vehicles on the road, which was bad enough. But then he took it a step further. He set fire to a car on a
Turning 24 came with more than just cake and candles. Alongside the celebrations came a barrage of life-determining questions: when are you getting married? Where do you see yourself living? When will your job become a career? With a single step into my mid-twenties, I felt suddenly catapulted into a new world of adult expectations.
The SS Californian deserves more than mere footnote status when it comes to its role in the story of the RMS Titanic. For that was the name of the ship that sent repeated messages to the crew of the doomed cruise liner, all of them warning of ice ahead. But the Titanic’s wireless operators weren’t
There’s a certain sort of chap who, when he hears you mention football, gets all earnest and starts talking about flat back fours. You try to stop him, attempting to steer the conversation away from tedious tactics and back on to the important stuff, such as the fact that there’s only one team in the
I don’t know how many teenagers are given a frying pan for their 18th birthday. Perhaps my friends managed to intuit my food-writing future, despite my party piece back then being an extremely tomato-heavy bolognaise. Twenty-five years on, having somehow survived university halls of residence and flatmates using – the horror – metal utensils in
As a general betting principle, the idea of ‘horses for courses’ is a good one. It is indisputable that some horses run better at one course than another. This may be because of the nature of the track – undulating or flat, sharp bends or straight – or simply the make-up of the ground itself,
Reading about the break-up of the 19-year marriage of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, I was interested in some comments from our old mate ‘A. Source’ about the possible cause. According to the Sun: ‘Keith put a brave face on Nicole’s raunchy screen roles and all the comments she’d make about her sexuality. But he didn’t
I first wore a beret for a fancy dress competition at my infant school summer fete in June 1975. My mother had entered me in the ‘topical’ category and tapped into the media furore around the nationwide referendum a week earlier over whether or not the UK should join what would become the EU – an
My theory is that sachertorte is a victim of its own success. Over the past 150 years, it has become an Austrian icon and, as such, can be found throughout Vienna. And that’s the problem: its ubiquity means that inferior versions abound. It has developed an unfortunate reputation for being dry, dull, tasteless – a
We were drinking Israeli wine as the talk ranged from frivolity to seriousness: from Donald Trump to the tragic paradoxes of the human condition. Some would claim we were discussing the same topic, yet this may not be the time to disrespect the US President. I once described Ariel Sharon as a bulldozer with a
An upper-middle-class former banker friend recently attended a Reform UK selection meeting for council candidates in a decaying southern coastal town. Although he is a man of the world who once worked on oil rigs and in a shoe shop, my banker friend professed himself ‘shocked’ by the standards of dress and deportment of the
My quince tree thrives – proof that nature can overcome adversity. I planted it, and I am a bad gardener. Childhood hours spent waiting for my mother to finish watching Gardeners’ World left me with fond memories of Percy Thrower, but in place of horticultural skill I inherited indolent incompetence. Our garden did not seem