Uncategorized

One of the most memorable dinners I ever had was about 20 years ago, at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Fitzrovia called Pied à Terre. It’s still going, and indeed remains a stalwart of the city’s fine dining scene, but what I especially remember, rather than the food or wine, was how deliciously louche an experience it was. I couldn’t get a booking before 9 p.m., and by the hour that I turned up, it was packed to the rafters with well-heeled diners. My guest and I were kept happy with complimentary champagne until we finally sat down for dinner sometime after 10 p.m. In my (admittedly hazy) recollection, we didn’t

When I was in hospital for almost half a year, learning how to face life as a ‘Halfling’ – a person in a wheelchair, patronised and petted – the thing I looked forward to most was a normal, some would say banal, event. I longed to be in my local Pizza Express, in Hove, reading Heat magazine to my husband as he ‘savoured’ his American Hot. To put it mildly, I am a far faster eater than Mr Raven, and rather than chatter to him and expect an answer, thus hindering his progress still further, I read to him. To add to the fun, I framed the problems of the

In the winner-takes-all world of modern art, there’s every chance you might not have heard of Cedric Morris. Why should you? No matter how much you sweeten the tea, the Welshman, born in 1889, was no Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko or Salvador Dali. Nor from our 21st-century outlook can it be said that the name itself inspires much confidence: ‘Cedric’ sounds about as on-trend as a character from a short story by Saki, and when paired with Morris, the combination offers up all the avant-garde promise of a baked camembert starter at an Aberdeen Angus steakhouse. But don’t be put off, because there’s more to Morris than meets the eye

Back in 2007, I went to war-ravaged Guinea-Bissau in west Africa to report on its rise as the continent’s first narco-state. Latino cartels were using it as a staging post for shipping cocaine to Europe, bribing its rulers to turn a blind eye. So much product was being landed that local fishermen would catch stray bales of coke in their nets – a modern twist on Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore. Guinea-Bissau’s new drug lords would go on to inspire a novel of their own. Back home on the Telegraph foreign desk in London a few months later, I got a call from no less a figure than Frederick Forsyth.

Royal Ascot gets me more excited than the weekend racing fare so I am going to put up four horses who could well go off shorter when they line up for their respective targets next week. First up in RASHABAR in the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes on Tuesday (4.20 p.m.). Brian Meehan’s three-year-old colt caused an upset at this meeting a year ago when landing the Coventry Stakes at odds of no less than 80-1. Admittedly, next week he has to take on arguably the best horse in training in the form of Field of Gold but this race might just cut up to less than eight runners