An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
There are some fruits which, while lovely cooked, are probably at their best fresh: nectarines and peaches, raspberries, mango. But blackberries, as delightful as they are eaten fresh from the bush mid-forage, come alive when cooked. As you heat blackberries, and they break down and give up their juices, begin to smell like violets and wine.
Once upon a time, the Royal Horticultural Society staged a Great Autumn Show every September in their two Horticultural Halls off Vincent Square in London. It was a fine mixture of colourful nursery trade exhibitions and fiercely-fought amateur competitions, involving fruits, flowers and glowing foliage (Who could forget the amusing annual battle between the Dukes of
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
A funny thing happened in lockdown. Bars shut but they seeded a growing crop of bottle shops that, since freedom has been declared have either turned back into, or become, bars in their own right. And now that we can, there is pure pleasure in twisting bottles around in the light, mulling labels and wine
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,
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
For the founders of the West London Free School, of which I was one, last Thursday should have been a moment of great pride. We gathered in the assembly hall, surrounded by the politicians and officials who’d helped us, to celebrate the school’s tenth anniversary and reflect on what we’d achieved. Not only has the
Every now and then the London property cycle creates an anomaly missed by the majority of property buyers until it’s too late. It started about 25 years ago when overseas buyers lobbed a rock into the prime central London property pond – created ironically by a Labour government. In the run up to the Euro,
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
‘Pub with rooms’ used to mean ‘backpackers’ hostel’, the sort of place with three bunk beds to a dorm and a pound deposit on your towel. But recently the capital’s pubs have realised that by raising their game, they could steal a decent chunk of the London hotel market. In a city where £400 a
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
Two of the misconceptions surrounding curry that it consistently struggles to shrug off are one, that it is unhealthy, and two, that it is difficult to make at home. I’ve always found both perplexing. Turks and Persians must be similarly bemused given the reputation of their archetypal food, the kebab. Yes the late night version,
It’s a kind of alchemy, transforming worthless clutter into pleasing and valuable collectors’ items, a slow but gratifying process all but forgotten in the modern age. I first learned it from the woman who ran a second-hand record store in my hometown, Tunbridge Wells, from the late seventies to the early nineties, where I misspent
Italy’s relaxation of its travel restrictions for double-vaccinated Brits has many of us eyeing up the options for an autumn getaway. And why not? Come September, cities like Venice are no longer tourist traps (Dolce & Gabbana fashion shows aside) and yet the balmy weather remains. Many visitors head to Italy for Venice alone but they
More than new pencil cases, name tapes, and the smell of school halls, back to school season always makes me think of proper puddings. There’s a category of pudding that seems reserved for properly old cookbooks, a handful of old-fashioned pubs, and dinner ladies. Spotted dick, cornflake tart, and jam roly poly. Perhaps its ubiquity
Any avid gin drinker will know that botanicals are all the rage at the moment. From juniper to orange peel to lavender, the ingredients list on the backs of bottles are getting more elaborate by the day, and seemingly more exotic. But what may come as a surprise is the growing number of distillers who are sourcing all
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
Ten years ago, the United Kingdom was largely unaware of the Spritz and its bittersweet charms. The Negroni was gaining popularity in our bars, a European import that dovetailed nicely with a general levelling-up of our national cocktail programme. But most of the Aperol in these parts was gathering dust in last generation’s Italian restaurants.
My daydreams at the moment follow a predictable theme. I am on holiday somewhere balmy, with a carafe of cold white wine in front of me. Someone handsome has just brought me a large bowl of salted crisps, unbidden but very welcome, and the greatest responsibility I have is finishing the book that I’m reading.
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
During my first job at an advertising firm, there was a palpable disdain for suits amongst my colleagues. For a newly appointed copywriter, fresh out of university and hooked on Mad Men, wearing a suit seemed like the sensible thing to do in the office. But to the Generation-X creative director I was now working for –