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Wednesday

Sadie Nicholas

How to get a passport in a hurry

Standing at the security check-in at the Passport Office in Peterborough, my hands felt suddenly clammy, despite having been made to wait outside in a chilly wind until my allotted appointment time. This moment had been a long time coming – but from eavesdropping on others in the queue I knew it could all yet go wrong. ‘I was here two weeks ago but I’d filled in something incorrectly on the form,’ said the woman in front of me to the staff member searching her bag. Meanwhile, the man behind flew into a panic when asked to show proof of an appointment booking on a mobile phone. ‘Oh hell, my wife booked

Ruth Bloomfield

Why house-hunters are heading to Derbyshire

You don’t get much further from the seaside than Derbyshire, a county landlocked at the heart of England. During lockdowns house-hunters simply couldn’t get enough of coastal property, and prices in Wales and the West Country boomed. But three years after the start of the pandemic, a new property powerhouse is emerging.  According to the latest UK House Price Index, prices in North East Derbyshire are up by almost 20 per cent year on year, to £259,000. Across the way, prices in the Derbyshire Dales are up 18 per cent year on year, to an average of £362,000. This performance would be impressive in a strong economy, never mind against the backdrop of rising interest rates and

Ed Mead

London’s car drivers are being bullied

Any historic London footage inevitably features cars busily rounding Hyde Park Corner and shooting off up Park Lane, against the background of sky-scraping hotels and thriving offices. Have you seen the same bit of London now? It’s a giant car park, brought to a standstill by an administration with seemingly little idea how to promote a thriving capital. The city’s best-known thoroughfare has been reduced from three lanes to just one open for traffic northbound, one for bicycles (used sparingly in rush hour) and one for buses, usually empty. That’s just one lane for normal traffic, used by Londoners simply trying to get from A to B via one of

Tuesday

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Alison Roman: ‘My desserts are consistently imperfect’

Alison Roman’s cooking is a counsel of imperfection. She serves dinner late (fine, as long as you have snacks), gets her guests to pitch in on the washing up and won’t make her own ice cream – ‘it simply will never be better than what you can buy, sorry’. ’Her ‘pies leak, cheesecakes crack and pound cakes are pulled from the oven before they’re fully baked. Lopsided and wonky, occasionally almost burned, unevenly frosted, my desserts are consistently imperfect’. In her new book, Sweet Enough, Roman wants to free the home cook from the dessert ties that bind them. ‘My hope for you,’ she tells her reader, ‘is that you

Emily Prescott

Why are Americans buying up our castles?

You might think someone who grew up in the 356-room Belvoir Castle wouldn’t be too worried by a traffic fine. But when Lady Eliza Manners was caught speeding, she avoided paying off the full £100 ticket by claiming ‘financial hardship’. And apparently she’s not the only budget-conscious occupant of the Leicestershire property. Her mother Emma, the Duchess of Rutland, recently claimed she shops in Asda. While it might be hard for those on the actual breadline to sympathise with the troubles of the titled and entitled, such states of affairs do stand to some sort of reason. If you think heating your two-bed home has become an expensive business, try

Alexander Larman

The reinvention of Jude Law

The late director Anthony Minghella made three films with actor Jude Law: The Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and Breaking and Entering. They would undoubtedly have made more if Minghella hadn’t died at the cruelly young age of 54 in 2008. He referred to the actor as ‘my muse’, but had a more perceptive comment about him too. ‘Jude is a beautiful boy with the mind of a man. A true character actor struggling to get out of a beautiful body.’ For years, Law seemed to struggle with the weight of his good looks, taking on mediocre roles that talent agencies and producers had shoehorned him into. Now, at the age of 50, he

Monday

Antonia Hoyle

Carrie Johnson and the truth about children’s parties

The email was apologetic in its tone, if apocalyptic in its content. The entertainer I’d booked for my daughter’s fifth birthday party was no longer available – she’d been invited to perform as an extra on Strictly Come Dancing, an opportunity too good to miss. I swallowed my surprise (aren’t these appearances negotiated months in advance?) but couldn’t quell the mounting panic that anyone who has struggled to source a children’s entertainer at short notice without remortgaging their house will recognise.  With no expert in charge, a kids’ party is simply a mass socially-sanctioned sugar-fuelled breakdown – and that’s just for the parents. Even with an expert’s help (I eventually

Barry Jepson

How to travel the world on a Brompton

The first time I set eyes on a Brompton, well over a quarter of a century ago on the Lincolnshire coast, I thought it was a child’s bike. When the owner returned, he took great delight in demonstrating its folding mechanism, untangling the metal tubes and cables. I decided I wanted one but delayed making the purchase until I reached retirement.  Much of the decade since then has been spent travelling solo to well over 100 countries across six continents – with my Brompton in tow. It has accompanied me to 42 European capital cities and several African countries. Unlike conventional road bikes, the great advantage of the Brompton is its portability. When folded,

John Mac Ghlionn

Will AI make Tinder redundant?

The world is home to 7.8 billion people. Roughly one in 14 of these people (530 million) are on Tinder. Badoo, the second most popular dating app, has ‘only’ 318 million users. Tinder is the most popular dating app in the world, by far. Now, though, a new challenger appears to be emerging. Unlike Badoo and other less robust dating apps, all of whom try to offer a variation of what Tinder provides, this competitor offers something completely different. You see, this new dating app, a next generation dating app, plans to inject artificial intelligence into matchmaking. Boasting a punchy tagline, ‘less talk, more action,’ Teaser AI, due to be released this month,

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the UK does so badly at Eurovision

Some 160 million will have watched Britain staging a successful Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool: the world’s most-watched non-sporting TV event. But our own act, Mae Muller, finished second-last. Had it not been for a generous vote from Ukraine’s jury, we’d have been last. It’s a familiar trend. With the spectacular exception of Sam Ryder last year, our entries have tended to flop badly – leading to questions like ‘Why did the BBC pick another dud act?’ and ‘Why does everyone hate Britain?’ But we struggle at Eurovision for a number of systemic reasons, all of which come down to the way we lazily pick an act and give them