An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
For a working musician like me – I compose and conduct – the run-up to Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year. I generally find myself writing some last-minute carols, then come the garage-sandwich weeks: endless travel to far-flung rehearsals in freezing churches and halls in preparation for the annual round of
Is there anything more dispiriting at this time of year than the dreaded ‘celebrity’ memoir – the publishing industry’s annual two-fingered salute to all us starving mid-list authors? Last week I managed to weave my way through a heaving Waterstones, eventually arriving at one of those vast tables groaning with needy ‘personalities’; there they all were, present
‘Timing is everything’, as the saying goes. The death of West Side Story composer Stephen Sondheim must have seemed especially poignant to Steven Spielberg coming as it did a week before the premiere of the new film version of his acclaimed musical. The composer surely would have delighted in the critical acclaim being accorded to Steven Spielberg’s remake. ‘He
The book Small Pleasures will warm even the stoniest heart. It defines joy as simple, brief instances in everyday life which people can access with little or no cost. My favourite chapters include: the joy of an evening sky, letting a child win at a game, a hot bath. We tend to let these things pass by
Not even a pillowy panettone or the most lethal of brandy butters can beat the thud of a round robin letter on the doormat. It’s that perfect concoction of mundane detail (how the electric car is faring) and low-level bragging (news of a child’s Oxbridge acceptance letter) that make them so tantalising, the ultimate yuletide
The 90s are back. From House of Gucci, Impeachment and the BBC’s unmissable New Labour documentary, it’s clear that this particular period is enjoying its turn in the cinematic limelight. For fans of the scandalous and surreal, this can only be good news. Hollywood has fixated on the 70s and 80s for years now which – while a boon to
Want to treat an avid crime fiction reader to a book or two this Christmas? Or simply want to do a bit of literary self-gifting? From a beguiling South Korean mystery to a grizzly serial killer procedural, here are six new novels to consider. Lemon by Kwon Yeo-sun People Like Them by Samira Sedira This
This week, the southern counties of England were treated to the rare sight of November snow. The beauty of tla (Inuit for snow) is that it can render the most prosaic locale picturesque. Snow is an impossible element to control of course – especially in the movies, but the fake stuff is usually on hand for when
From Gordon Ramsay to James Corden, predicting which Brits will make a splash in Hollywood has long been a fool’s errand – even in the Netflix era. After all, what’s the latest British export to conquer the greatest entertainment market on earth? The Great British Bake Off. Well, almost. Like Cary Grant (born in Bristol
The bad news for video game fans – and the parents or grandparents of same – as Christmas approaches is that our old friend ‘supply chain issues’ means that the latest consoles – the PS5 and the XBox Series X – are going to be tricky to get your hands on. Best hope that Santa drops
What’s up with Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch? It’s rumoured that the pair refused to speak to each other on the set of their new movie, The Power of the Dog, because Cumberbatch had embraced ‘method acting’ and his character hated her character. To protect the truth of his interpretation, he deliberately snubbed his co-star
How cowardly of the BBC to axe Michael Vaughan from Test Match Special for the winter Ashes series on the basis of two words – ‘you lot’ – he might or might not have said more than twelve years ago. Is this really how the BBC wants to play this? Anyone can make accusations of
As if our beleaguered prime minister didn’t have enough to worry about, now comes another unhelpful headline. For on a mid-week trip to Islington’s most fashionable theatre, the Almeida, Boris Johnson had the misfortune to be spotted – well, snapped – by another audience member after he had temporarily removed his face-mask. For the tutting
With all of our institutions now firmly under the iron fist of progressivism it was only a matter of time before social justice mission creep slipped under the doormat and into the home. You can only promulgate the idea that we live under a tyrannical patriarchy for so long before young people take notice and
Every year there are more of them; more extravagant, more utterly pointless. I refer to Advent calendars, which used once to be rather a quaint German thing: a way of counting down the days of Advent by opening little windows on a cardboard, paper or wooden Nativity or winter scene to reveal some pointer to
The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me, 40-years-old this month, is not merely great. It may be the greatest pop song ever. Pop is an open invitation. It creates, as Don’t You Want Me did in the bleak midwinter of 1981/82, a warm glow of collective experience. This is the wellspring of any profundity we
Ageing screen siren Norma Desmond’s lament that ‘it’s the pictures that got small’ in Billy Wilder’s classic black comedy doesn’t appear to apply to the Hollywood stars of today, who only a decade or so ago saw acting on TV as the sign of a career in box office free fall. The warning signs were there
Was the lefty comic Hannah Gadbsy right to call Netflix an ‘amoral algorithm cult’? Granted, the creator of Nanette (worth watching!) may have been referring specifically to the company’s decision to greenlight the latest Dave Chappelle special (also worth watching!) but her wider point – about the omnipotence of the Netflix algorithms – isn’t far
England’s rugby match against Australia at Twickenham last Saturday was my first visit to the home of English rugby in 42 years. During my school days, football was not only third best after rugby and cricket but frowned upon. I quickly rebelled, rejecting what I saw as the establishment sport and falling for the illicit populism of the round ball. Since that day
Actor and singer Jared Leto’s eye-catching performance as the late Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott’s biopic The House of Gucci is already generating talk of a second supporting actor Academy Award, after his win for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014. In The House of Gucci Leto gets a full prosthetic makeover to transform him into the
I’m 58 years old and have spent 40 of those years as a journalist and yet there is something that shames me, that makes me inferior to so many of my colleagues and, indeed, many of my friends and family outside the world of journalism. I’m rubbish at drinking. Instead of being wasted on booze,
Halloween might be over, but Witching Hour has accelerated on TikTok. #WitchTok (or Witch TikTok) is the viral take on spirituality – think Paganism, psychics, and seances in 60 second videos. The hashtag #WitchTok currently has over 20.7 billion views on the video app. In comparison, #Kardashian only has 6.4 billion, and #LoveIsland clocks up
‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ Father of the Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer once claimed that these words from Hindu scripture’s Bhagavad Gita raced through his mind when he witnessed the first nuclear weapon detonate on July 16, 1945. Much of Oppenheimer’s life and work are seen through the lens of the moral dilemma he
Last weekend, the first formal inter-gender mixed martial arts cagefighting contest – post Enlightenment, at least – took place in front of a paying audience in the city of Czestochowa, in Poland. Remarkably, the fight went to a second round. Many well aimed blows were landed by Piotrek Lisowski on his female opponent Ula Siekacz.
My aunt, Charlotte, had a profound influence on my life. A second mother, a friend and someone who was always there. The thief that took her was the rare disease PSP. It slipped into our lives with no warning and ripped her away from us. The house she lived in was a home to our
This year is a bumper year for the UK in terms of international summitry; in June Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted the G7 ‘Build Back Better’ conference in Cornwall; and on Sunday he welcomes participating countries to 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. Before the 13-day summit, which perhaps ominously begins on Halloween, the
I couldn’t get to sleep the other night for worrying about the future of liberalism. So I got up and put the telly on. Maybe there would be something soothing on, to help me forget my worries. There was a show on Channel 4 called My First Threesome. The voiceover explained that lockdown had led
Quickly becoming Netflix’s most successful series ever (with an estimated 111 million viewers worldwide), Squid Game has turned the spotlight on Korea as a cultural hotspot. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s had half an eye on film reviews over the past years – with Korean films impressing both viewers and critics
England cricket fans rejoiced on Monday at the news that few saw coming. It was not their side’s comprehensive victory over reigning T20 World Champions West Indies at the weekend that had champagne corks popping and hope for a renaissance after a less than impressive summer coursing through the veins of the Barmy Army. Rather,
