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Monday

Julie Bindel

A beginner’s guide to Hungarian food and drink

The first time I tried the well-known Hungarian wine Tokaj, which I bought from an eastern European delicatessen in London, I was so taken with it that it quickly became a verb – and the expression ‘I was a bit Tokaj’d last night’ stuck. But I soon realised that there are so many wonderful versions of this wine that you will find one to suit every occasion, and a match for pretty much anything you eat. Options include bone dry, light as a feather, sweet, robust, and tannin-rich red. And I’m lucky enough to be drinking the dry variety here in Budapest. It has just a hint of honey, making

Friday

Penworthy

Two bets at Wincanton

The unusually dry autumn means it makes sense to favour horses with a preference for good ground when it comes to the racing at Wincanton and Aintree tomorrow. Field sizes continue to be smaller than usual because many trainers do not want to risk injuring their charges on quick ground at the start of the season. ALL THE GLORY is a likeable sort who will get her favoured conditions when she makes her seasonal debut in the BetMGM Richard Barber Memorial Mares’ Handicap Hurdle at Wincanton (1.45 p.m.). She was impressive when she destroyed a decent 17-runner field at Newbury in March and, although her three subsequent runs were moderate,

Zak Asgard

Welcome to the buffet of broken dreams

We can thank Herbert ‘Herb’ Cobb McDonald for the modern-day all-you-can-eat buffet. Herb first introduced Las Vegas – and later the world – to this gastronomical abomination in 1946. The Buckaroo Buffet cost one dollar and promised ‘every possible variety of hot and cold entrees to appease the howling coyote in your innards’. The coyote of my innards has never been appeased by an all-you-can-eat buffet. On my last visit it was starved. Back at the table, the food smelt grey. I thought about all of the nice places I could have visited with £23 If John Hick can find God on a double-decker bus in Hull, I can find

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

I am addicted to Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce calls the Cullinan Series II, the new version of its 2018 ‘high-sided vehicle’ (read SUV), its ‘most capable’ motorcar. That is an understatement. Rolls-Royces can be understated because they are bespoke and, as such, they are what you want them to be. You are dropping the price of a house on a motorcar, after all – the parallels with sexual longing are obvious, if under-disclosed. For every hot pink, or blush pink, Phantom with an interior ceiling lit up as your late dog’s face or horoscope – they can do this – there is an inky Ghost impersonating Bette Davis’s black silk dress in All About Eve. That’s my

Mark Nayler

All Souls is the SAS of academia

‘What sort of book might Satan write?’ ‘Why do people watch horror films?’ ‘Should we give up hope?’ These were three of the questions faced earlier this year by candidates seeking admission to All Souls College, Oxford, Britain’s most elite academic institution. Founded by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, and King Henry VI in 1438, the college takes its name from All Souls’ Day on 2 November, the occasion on which Christians around the world pray for the faithful departed (in Mexico it’s called Día de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead). All Souls’s most eccentric tradition is the ‘Mallard Song’, sung twice a year in remembrance of

Wednesday

Tuesday

John Sturgis

The royal love triangle that led to Montecito

Were The Duke and Duchess of Sussex to leave their mansion in Montecito, California, and head a couple of miles across town, to Toro Canyon, they would soon find themselves at the one-time home of a woman whose story they would find rather relatable. Because the former occupant once drove a wedge between the Prince of Wales and his younger brother, Prince Harry. Sound familiar? That former Montecito resident was Beryl Markham, a woman whose destructive involvement with the two English princes decades before Meghan was born bears one or two rather strange similarities with the Sussexes’s own story. The fact that Harry and Meghan chose to make their new

Paula Gahan

The new divide between first class and economy

As cabin crew for an international airline, I love working in first class. In the briefing room, when all the crew are scrambling to bag their favourite positions before the start of the flight, I make sure to insist I’m the first-class dolly for the day. Usually no one minds, as some people are averse to tending to the whims of the upper-class jet set. What they might not realise is, since the dawn of the Ozempic age, working in first class is now much, much easier. There’s barely anything to do. Why? Because nobody eats anymore. Remember that famous line from Kim Kardashian, ‘no one wants to work anymore’?

Robin Ashenden

The curse of cool

One of the freedoms of later life, if you’re not Keith Richards, is that you no longer have to worry about being cool. Cool, far more than money, is the currency of youth, and as a teenager I knew who had it and who didn’t. But what was cool, all those decades ago? Who possessed it, and why did it matter? Coolness, in my youth, seemed in the DNA, something you either had or didn’t There were various things that defined ‘cool’ when I was a teenager, and most of us in some way fell short. It was the ability not to get too excited about things. To feel enthusiasms

Monday

Kate Ferguson

Why girls love fags

I can’t remember exactly when I had my first cigarette, but I remember roughly how I started. I was probably 13. I picked up one of my mum’s packets of ten Silk Cut, which was about half full. I slipped one out, put it in my pocket, saving it for later. My friends and I walked through the streets of Crouch End until we found a corner that was quiet and away from the prying eyes of our parents. At funerals, everyone wants to smoke. People who gave up 20 years before and go jogging five times a week suddenly have a craving We got our matches out, lit it,