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Most-read 2021: The Netflix generation has lost its grip on history

We’re closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here’s number four: Zoe Strimpel writing in February about how popular portrayals of the past are being changed to fit the present.  The first thing you notice about Bridgerton, Netflix’s big winter blockbuster set in Regency England, is how bad it is: an expensive assemblage of clichés that smacks of the American’s-eye view of Britain’s aristocratic past. The dialogue is execrable, the ladies’ pouts infuriating. But bad things can be good, especially when it comes to sexy period romps. Bridgerton is no different. The story follows the elder children of the Bridgerton family as they look for love

Europe’s secret beaches: from Constanta to De Haan

As winter drags on and on, and warm sunny days become distant memories, discussions in our family always turn to summer holidays. We only go away together once a year so our trip has to tick all the boxes. My daughter won’t fly long haul, my son craves excitement, I like exploring places that are off the beaten track and my wife just wants to drop and flop. It’s a tricky combination but, as we’ve found out down the years, there are plenty of European seaside towns in unexpected places – places where you can do all the usual seaside stuff and still have a few adventures while you’re there.

A cocktail lover’s guide to New Year’s Eve

As many of us are favouring small gatherings this year you’ll have lots of opportunity to break out the shaker and show what a cocktail hero you became during lockdown. The selection below contains festive recipes – read: drinks with lots of Champagne in them – a tactical low-ABV option for hosts needing to stay sharp for the long haul, and the perfect pick-me-up for New Year’s Day. So make sure you have all your ingredients ready ahead of time, stock up on far more ice than you think you need, and get those cocktail glasses in the freezer. Southside Royale The classic Southside is basically a gin sour with

James Delingpole

The Spectator’s best TV shows of 2021

The White Lotus Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which reminds you why you watch TV. The latest such joy is The White Lotus (Sky Atlantic), a darkly comic satirical drama created, written and directed by Mike White. It starts with an enticing hook: Shane (Jake Lacy), a handsome, moneyed, basic, mummy’s boy jock in a Cornell baseball cap is in a departure lounge being quizzed by a nosy couple about what we gather was the honeymoon from hell. Meanwhile, a cardboard box marked ‘human remains’ is being loaded into the hold of the aircraft. And where exactly

How to drive to Greece

Readers of a certain age might recall the days when people ‘went for a drive’ as a form of pleasure. Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds now that combustion-engined cars are demonised, fuel prices are at an all-time high and unwittingly straying into a ‘low emission zone’ can cost you the price of a plane ticket to New York, there really was a time when people got behind the wheel and went somewhere simply for the joy of it. And do you know what? I still do. Yes. I am shameless. I still love that feeling of slipping into the driving seat, shutting the door and heading off on a vehicular adventure.I

The unstoppable rise of ‘bowl food’

Poke House last week opened four new restaurant sites in London. It is just the start of a fishy influx with the Californian-inspired poke bowl chain planning to open 15 London sites and 65 UK sites over the next year. It is little surprise; where West Coast America goes London soon follows. But the huge popularity of poke bowls has been entrenched for several years. In 2015 the LAist publication was already writing that ‘The Poke Bowl Craze Is Getting Out Of Hand’. Six years on, poke’s staying power seems beyond doubt. Poke, for the uninitiated, means ‘to slice or cut’ in Hawaiian and consists of pieces of raw, marinated fish

Olivia Potts

How to use up your Christmas leftovers

I’m going to keep this short, because if you have flung yourself into the festivities, or simply survived them, and are now sizing up piles of leftovers wearily and warily, the last thing you want to do is read a blog post. If that’s not the case, please feel free to trawl my archives and fill your boots. But it’s important not to waste valuable Quality-Street-eating or telly-gazing time on recipe-based mirth. So know this: this Leftovers Pie will save your Boxing Day. Here are the headlines: this dish is (a) easy, (b) delicious and (c) entirely adaptable according to what you have in the house. Got stuffing? Throw it

Olivia Potts

The ultimate turkey curry

Turkey curry, as a means of using up festive leftovers has become something of a joke: the turkey curry buffet in Bridget Jones is the true low point of Bridge’s festive calendar. The prospect can strike fear into the most Christmas-spirited of souls. But actually, on boxing day, or the day after, the last thing you really want is the same meal you’ve been eating for the past two days, looking a little tired and fridge-worn, all the best bits gone. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll be first to the table for cold roast meats and my fifth serving of stilton in 48 hours, and if you hesitate for a

Is now the time to snap up a European bolthole?

It takes a lot to put the British off buying a bolthole on the Continent. Not even the twin headwinds of the pandemic and Brexit have deterred some determined sun-seeking buyers over the past year, for whom endless chilly staycations don’t cut the mustard. There is no doubt some people who had planned to buy in southern Europe have purchased in Cornwall instead in in recent months but that has had the effect of driving up prices in UK coastal hot spots even more, highlighting the affordability of places such as Brittany. For the Anglo-French estate agency Leggett Immobilier, the biggest areas for British buyers this year have been Normandy,

Family fall outs on film

The Harper Lee quote ‘You can choose your friends, but not your family’ never appears more apt than during the Christmas season. Movies about family dysfunction often follow a familiar pattern, with grievances aired, secrets revealed, lessons learned and (eventually) fences mended: The Family Stone (2005) Disney+, Amazon Rent/Buy The Family Stone has snuck up on us as a contemporary semi-Christmas classic, aided by a fine cast and acerbic one-liners. It’s culture clash time again, as conservative New York career woman Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) spends Christmas in rural Connecticut with the bohemian family of boyfriend Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney). Nothing we haven’t seen before, but Thomas Bezucha (Let Him

An interview with Jesus

It’s Christmas in Paris and Les Champs-Elysees is appropriately adorned. We are, after all, in the so-called Elysian Fields, paradise, heaven on earth. Red illuminated trees line both side of France’s most famous avenue, stars fill the sky and the red carpet is laid out in front of the prestigious Gaumont cinema. The welcome is fit for royalty. And, on cue, Jesus turns up. Paris may be a far cry from Bethlehem two thousand years ago, but tonight sees a different long-awaited arrival: the French language national television release of the hit series The Chosen and a premiere with the man who plays Jesus –Jonathan Roumie. This is probably the most successful

A global guide to festive drinking

It’s Jesus’s birthday soon – so let’s have a drink. It’s what he would have wanted. As a nation, we do a lot of drinking during December. According to white-coated boffins with spectacles and clipboards, alcohol consumption increases 40 per cent in the run-up to Christmas. Not only does collective elbow-bending increase in December, it gets more eclectic – as we pour ourselves leftfield libations that simply wouldn’t be countenanced at any other time in the calendar. Case in point, The Snowball. Boasting the consistency of alcoholic custard, this classic kitsch cocktail synonymous with the Seventies is made with Advocaat, an iconic Dutch blend of brandy, egg yolk, sugar and

The Spectator’s best films of 2021

The Power of the Dog: Cumberbatch is spectacular Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog could also be called The Power of Benedict Cumberbatch, as he’s so spectacular. He plays a ruggedly masculine cowboy with an inner life that isn’t written, but that we somehow still see. It is also clearly Campion’s best film since The Piano. Read the full review here. The Lost Daughter: entirely gripping The Lost Daughter is an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel about motherhood that says, quite ferociously: it’s complicated. And: mothers aren’t necessarily motherly, and can feel ambivalence. You’d think it was unfilmable, particularly as the central character describes herself as someone even she doesn’t

Olivia Potts

The secret to making a Yule log

I watch a lot of Great British Bake Off. I’d like to say it comes with the baking territory, but the truth is, I’m simply hooked. I love all of it: the triumphs, the disasters, the crap jokes, the obscure technicals, all of it. My dedication to GBBO has taught me a couple of things: the Hollywood handshake has been so devalued in recent years as to be completely worthless; it’s probably worth breaking down and having a cry over your macarons just to get a hug from Noel Fielding, and swiss rolls are a bloody nightmare. They’re fiddly: they require whisking the yolks and whites separately, and then gingerly

The death of ‘Father Christmas’

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the F-word is vanishing.  It’s been insidious, but where once perhaps 20 or 30 years ago it was ubiquitous at this time of year, now – well – you can hardly find it. In fact, look carefully, and you’ll see that Father Christmas is disappearing quicker than an ice cap. That’s because Father Christmas is being supplanted by a stronger, altogether better-resourced foreign invader: Santa Claus. Browse the shelves of Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and yes, my friends, even Waitrose, and you’ll find dozens of ‘Santa’ themed products – but hardly anything associated with Father Christmas. He is being airbrushed out of Christmas, one paper napkin or

The strange solidarity of hill walking

On a gauzy wintery day I am half way up Scafell Pike in the Lake District in an effort to climb the tallest peaks of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and discover what so many seek up there. I am not alone. Over a million people climbed one of the peaks this year, with 700,000 making for Snowdon, where summer saw 45-minute queues at the top. Scafell drew 250,000, Ben Nevis more than 160,000 and Slieve Donard in County Down is only relatively quiet, with an annual 100,000 people walking its granite trails. Each mountain now requires constant tending by path builders, litter pickers, repair teams and rescuers who fret

Christmas cocktails to make at home

What better time to show of your cocktail making skills than this year’s rollover Christmas? The bold flavours offered by festive ingredients like Champagne, brandy, and rum offer lots of opportunities to get creative. These crowd-pleasing serves are packed with nostalgic Christmas flavours to help you celebrate straight through till Boxing Day. French 125 Because it wouldn’t be Christmas without a little fizz. The original French 75 arrived in Parisian cocktail bars shortly after the First World War. It’s essentially a Tom Collins – that’s gin, lemon juice, and soda – that drops the bubbly water and replaces it with Champagne. The name is said to derive from the 75mm

Olivia Potts

Cherry and ginger fudge: the perfect last-minute Christmas gift

I wish I were someone who was organised and neat, someone who excelled at making organised and neat lists, and then methodically ticking off each item on completion. But that will never be me. And that is why, despite my best efforts, I found myself in Newcastle on a rainy Northumberland Street one year trying to decide whether I should spend £15 on a jar of pork scratchings for my father, or just scratch my own eyes out and be done with it. I then queued for 35 minutes, gritting my teeth, bookended by, on one side, the (incomprehensibly but seemingly happy) father and daughter in front of me, battling

Russell Howard on keeping the laughter going

After more than a decade on comedy’s A-list, Russell Howard has a decent claim to being our best known ‘arena’ comic. Yet last July, in the midst of an already strange year, the rockstar comedian – used to selling out venues across Britain – found himself having to reconsider his definition of a stadium gig: as he performed to a sparsely-arranged audience of 2,000 spread across a 27,000 capacity football stadium. Tiny numbers by Russell Howard standards. But the gig itself still sits in a class of its own: as one of the largest live shows to take place in the gap between Britain’s spring and winter lockdowns. Even for

Christmas films for all the family

According to Collins English Dictionary, a ‘Feel-Good’ movie is one ‘which presents people and life in a way which makes those who watch it feel happy and optimistic’ Of course, one person’s feel-good picture could be another’s syrupy turn off. I have yet to see The Sound of Music (dubbed by star Christopher Plummer as ‘The Sound of Mucus’), Frozen or ET, and have no plans to do so. With this in mind, here’s my selection of movies that should keep the whole family watching together, with enough knowing humour or inadvertent yuks to engage the adults. Stardust (2007) Amazon Rent/Buy Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel is a light-hearted