An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Most Brits will be aware of the Emmys, if at all, as the event that this year generated lots of social media outrage because apparently all the celebrities should have worn masks but didn’t. But few will have any idea who won or who was even nominated: unlike the Golden Globes or the Oscars, they
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
This week’s biggest social media panic that isn’t about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s balls comes to us from the Wall Street Journal, in a bombshell report titled ‘The Facebook Files.’ According to WSJ reporters, a trove of internal documents from the secretive social media company reveals that, despite much protest (and congressional testimony) to the contrary, Facebook’s
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
One of the great things about touring in the age of audio books, is that you can use your time driving between gigs, with nothing more to concentrate on than other half-tons of steel and rubber hurtling down ‘Smart’ motorways at suddenly varying speeds, to really binge on reading. I’d long been meaning to expand
More than any other season, autumn brings to mind change. Perhaps it’s the sense of letting something go. The movement of the seasons is present in New Zealand artist Angela Heisch’s first solo UK show at the Pippy Houldsworth gallery, entitled Burgeon and Remain. Her semi floral abstracts represent the peak of summer and her use of
Veteran comic Steve Martin has returned to our screens, this time taking aim at that most prolific of podcast genres: the true crime documentary. In his new Hulu show, Only Murders in the Building, the former star of The Jerk plays a washed-up TV actor and true crime obsessive who, along with two other misfits, sets
What is it about Westerns? They are the Chinese takeaway of film – they’re no one’s first choice, they haven’t been fashionable in living memory, and yet you never have to look too hard to find one. One might also compare Westerns to cockroaches or sharks; pre-Jurassic survivors who have seen off much mightier beasts time
For those disappointed by the humorless and deeply earnest treatment of the contemporary campus experience in the 2020 TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the new Netflix series The Chair will be a welcome tonic. Over its punchy six half-hour episodes, the show, co-created by the actress Amanda Peet and produced by her husband
It will soon be 20 years since the horrific events of September 11th, 2001. Most who are old enough will recall the attacks, witnessing them in real time as they unfolded live on TV. The notion that American Airlines Flight 11’s collision into the World Trade Center’s North Tower was some sort of tragic accident was rapidly
British teenager Emma Raducanu’s straight set victory (6-1, 6-2) at the US Open last night was exciting. Exciting for all the reasons we love to watch tennis; the thrill of the underdog triumph, the inevitable comparisons with other, prodigal, teenage stars like Becker, and of course, the very fact of her Britishness. In this, our
After the usual slow summer, the West End will return to action this autumn – as several more theatres reopen their doors. Here’s our pick of shows to book ahead for: The Shark is Broken Ambassadors Theatre, 9 October – 15 January A smash hit at the Edinburgh Festival back in 2019, The Shark is
Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as Bond may not have as many pulses racing due to No Time to Die’s frequently cancelled release dates (the first trailer was back in December 2019), but fans are still keen to see the return of the iconic British spy. Indeed, recent events have conspired to make 007
Hedgerows are one of those things that most of us simply take for granted. Drive, walk, cycle or ride through the English countryside and you’re likely to see fields bounded by hedges, which change with the seasons. Blossoming in the spring, full of colour and berries in the autumn, and sprouting wildly thorugh the summer
There is no denying that we’ve been starved of our usual festival fix this summer. Although many have managed to go ahead, we’ve missed out on some usual favourites, such as Glastonbury, Boomtown, WOMAD, Cropredy and more. It seems fitting, therefore, to look ahead to this autumn, when many festivals that have previously looked unlikely have
I can’t say I have a terribly favourable view of the modern music industry. But when I heard that pop artist Halsey’s latest album If I Can’t Have Love, I want Power had an album cover inspired by Jean Fouquet’s Virgin And Child Surrounded By Angels, taken from the right wing of the Melun Diptych,
BBC Director General Tim Davie, in his proclaimed push to create ‘landmark’ TV shows appears to be steering the Corporation in an increasingly conservative (small ‘c’) direction, intent on trading off past glories. Former soft drink marketer Davie’s lack of programming and editorial experience is often painfully apparent; he is increasingly given to sweeping crowd-pleasing statements, such
News that the gourmet dog food company Butternut Box has raised forty million pounds to expand its services in the wake of the pandemic puppy boom will surprise no one. More dogs means more chum, after all. But this isn’t just any old chum. This is gourmet dog food, the like of which you may
As the nights start to draw in, it will be up to the likes of Netflix to provide that lazy autumn entertainment. Here’s our pick of what’s coming up on the streaming service over the next few months: Bruised, 24 November Two decades on from her star turn as a Bond Girl in Die Another Day,
Of all the things sacrificed to public health in the last eighteen months, I think the one I regret the least is the default poolside Summer holiday. I first began to understand something about it, and the counter intuitive aspects of human happiness, on holiday in Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico, in 1999. I
The horror of August’s mass shooting by 22-year-old Jake Davison caused many commentators to point towards a dangerous underbelly of male disaffection. But what many overlooked was the fact that the shadowy underground group of disenfranchised males that inspired Davison to take up arms is part of a much larger network of male activism dating back
With the release of Benedict Cumberbatch’s true life spy thriller The Courier, ten films about the era of (relatively) passive aggression between the Superpowers. Director Dominic Cooke’s new picture The Courier is based on the exploits of businessman-turned-MI6 agent spy Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), who in the early 1960s smuggled Soviet secrets to the West
Until very recently, the opaque world of American sororities was a mystery to me. I’m a British student at a British University, and these highly selective, members-only groups for American female students were about as foreign to me as guns sold at the supermarket. All of that changed when a hoard of long-haired, glossy-lipped girls at the University of Alabama started appearing
I am on a mission to befriend my new next-door neighbour. This is the sort of neighbour who has not one, but two, ‘DO NOT PARK HERE’ signs outside his house – both significantly bigger and shinier than his house number. He is the kind of neighbour that refuses to take parcels for me when
In a recent preview of this year’s diet Edinburgh Fringe a local reporter wondered aloud why so many stand-ups were doing shows as a work in progress. I, along with numerous comics, let him have it, self-righteously pointing out that most of our gigs since March 2020 have been staring at a Macbook. Or outdoors
What’s happened to seagulls? They used to be rather charming. The plaintive cawing of gulls used to be the nostalgic soundtrack to any seaside holiday. In the banal, best-selling book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the eponymous bird flies for the spiritual joy of it and learns great truth and wisdom. The one thing it doesn’t do is
August is traditionally known as Silly Season on Fleet Street. It’s the annual journalistic jamboree, slap bang in the middle of recess, when half the country is trying to enjoy its summer holidays, and, in the absence of anything newsworthy to report on, journalists start to scrape the proverbial barrel in order to fill their column
With the recent rumours of increasing tension between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, a look at feuding, fall outs and rivalries in the movies. Infighting between Prime Ministers and Chancellors has a storied history, harking back to the earliest days of the Parliamentary system in the UK. We’ve had spats
What are the unexpected benefits to have come out of Covid? Letterbox cocktails? An irrefutable excuse for you to bail on a social occasion? An end to gouty Great-Uncle Matthew lunging for a slobbery kiss at Christmas? Like a booster shot, most of these will wear off over time, so we should make the most
