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Hackney’s rise in the 2000s from dangerous and affordable to cool, cooler and coolest eventually made it a kind of Chelsea of east London, with the expensive housing – house prices have grown 281 per cent between 2001 – and glamorous dining establishments to match. It may have become a magnet for Fullham exiles but Hackney never quite lost its aura of cool, and its transformation into one of the priciest areas of London has come not with a dumbing down but with the refinement of a distinctive, creative dazzle. The payoff? A proliferation of yummy, interesting restaurants. Having lost track of Hackney’s culinary scene in recent years as other

Thinking of purchasing a new streaming service this autumn, or rejigging your existing subscriptions? As well as crunching the numbers on costs, we’ve compared the upcoming content, so you can get the best bang for your buck. Netflix (£9.99 per month) Still very much the granddaddy of the streaming services, Netflix continues to reliably do the numbers when it comes to subscriptions – with a recent surge into the ‘silver surfer’ (that is, viewers over 65) market, although its overall market share has reduced significantly over the last year with the arrival of competitors like Disney Plus and the growth of Amazon Prime. The streaming giant has just about worked through its

Many of us have reached the conclusion of late that the world has gone mad, so it will come as no surprise to learn that it’s now possible to sign-up for a run with an entry fee that’s proudly claimed to be ‘the second highest in the world’. To those who have long regarded running as a) something that you would pay not to do or b) an activity that’s appealing because it’s one of the few things left in life that’s free, entering the four-day ‘Highland Kings Ultra’ might seem like an odd way to blow £15,499. But, according to organiser Primal Adventures, ‘a significant number’ of the 40

Queen Victoria famously described William Gladstone as a ‘half-mad firebrand’ who ‘addresses me as if I were a public meeting.’ The monarch reluctantly put up with the Liberal politician as her prime minister four times between 1868 and 1894, while considering him – among many other things – ‘arrogant, tyrannical and obstinate.’ Quite what she made of George Warren, the 2nd Baron de Tabley, who Gladstone appointed as her Treasurer of the Household at the start of his first term as premier, is unclear – but we do know he quit his job monitoring the widowed, querulous and reclusive monarch’s finances on behalf of Parliament two years before Gladstone’s electoral defeat

Why can’t you swim in reservoirs? They look so cool and inviting and are often the only open bodies of water available in certain parts of the country. And yet swimming is prohibited in the majority of them. The answer usually offered is that they are dangerous, cold, deep, that there are underwater structures and machines that could injure you or suck you under the water. The strange thing is that this answer only applies in England and Wales, not Scotland, where reservoir swimming is common. Access to inland waters in Scotland is enshrined by law: my local group in West Lothian is full of dippers chatting about their adventures

After Cabinet members recently took to the microphone for a karaoke evening, is Westminster’s new favourite hobby on course for a winter comeback? With summer days of al fresco cocktails and late-night picnics in the park almost behind us, a let-your-hair-down evening belting out karaoke could be just the answer. Here’s our guide to London’s best booths. Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes Cosy rooms with vinyl records covering every inch of wall, studded leather sofas and low-lit kitschy lamps create a perfectly funky vibe for an evening of crooning along to Otis Reading and Stevie Wonder. This retro bowling alley, which is a short hop from Russell Square station, has eight lanes and the only vintage

The UK has something of a reputation for butchering those classic European dishes on which entire cultures seem to be founded. Think spaghetti carbonara creamy enough to make an Italian weep or the kind of rubbery, watery beef bourguignon that is the culinary equivalent of our grizzly, grey weather to any self-respecting Frenchman or woman. But perhaps no dish is more maligned or widely miscooked than Paella. Certainly, we’re not helped in this respect by our celebrity chefs. And the usual suspects are at it again – Jamie Oliver reportedly received death threats for adding chorizo to his version and Gordon Ramsay followed suit, eliciting a similar reaction. It’s also

How do you help the environment and improve your quality of life? Why, buy milk in bottles. Some of us can remember them – foil topped, left outside the door, washed, then returned…a virtuous cycle which worked because it made practical sense. Life went downhill when the milk industry was deregulated in the 1990s and milk turned up in plastic cartons, homogenised and in supermarkets, and so it has remained, until quite recently. But the rattle of the milk van is returning to the streets in parts of London and elsewhere…things, folks, are looking up. It was one of the great advances in human civilisation when we developed lactose to

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but somehow, eggy bread just doesn’t hold the same appeal as French toast, does it? The latter has become a bougie brunch dish, while the former languishes in second-hand student cookbooks. At heart, they’re the same thing: slightly stale bread soaked in an egg-based custard, then fried. Whatever pretensions French toast may have (and however delicious it might be), its origins are a cheap dish that improves and extends the life of stale bread with just a couple of eggs and a knob of butter. Of course, they aren’t the only two names for this stuff: unsurprisingly for an economical

BBC2’s mid-19th century Arctic whaling drama The North Water is earning critical praise for its gruelling depiction of seafaring life above the 66th Parallel. Murder, deceit, starvation, shipboard homosexuality (willing/unwilling), cannibalism (or at least hints of it in The North Water), an irate polar bear and deliberately scuttled ships feature in the drama. If you’re thinking that the scenario of The North Water sounds familiar, you’d be right, as these elements were all present in season one of The Terror (2018, AMC), which was finally shown earlier this year, also on BBC2. The North Water stars Colin Farrell (evil harpooner Henry Drax) and Jack O’Connell (emotionally damaged ships surgeon Patrick Sumner)