Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Is now the time to buy a coastal bolthole?

It’s hard to believe we’re heading towards the pandemic’s first anniversary. The economy has had a torrid time. But if there’s one area that has surprised us all with its buoyancy it is the property market. Ever since the first lockdown, there has been a flurry of activity at a time when a market crash was predicted. So,

British comedy needs a new Brass Eye

Britain has always prided itself on the rich diversity of its comedy output, from trouser splitting farce to cerebral satire but our genius for tickling the world’s funny bone has reached a crisis point – something has gone terribly awry. A new report on the BBC’s TV output from regulator Ofcom has classed comedy as

Books that take you abroad

With foreign holidays off the cards for some time to come, armchair travel has never been more tempting. Here are some of the best books to take you beyond your living room. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Four women answer an advertisement in The Times, ‘To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small

Geoff Norcott

Do we really want lockdown to end?

Despite it being highly unfashionable to change your opinion, my lockdown stance has shown agility. For most of last year I was a ‘lockdown sceptic’. Not quite retweeting Piers Corbyn’s views on 5G, but equally not thrilled about spending every morning doing star jumps with Joe Wicks. I suspected lockdowns may ruin our children’s future

Can Sir Tim Berners-Lee save our privacy?

‘Every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.’ – a ‘nasty little song’, as Sting himself called it, about a romance turned creepy, but also a grim if fitting description of what most of us know by now: that our lives, including our moods and movements, spending

The unfair attack on Savile Row hero Pierre Lagrange

The Daily Mail has a new target – Pierre Lagrange. The enormously successful hedge funder has found himself in the cross hairs because he claimed money from Rishi Sunak’s furlough scheme for some of the staff at Huntsman – the All-Blacks of Savile Row tailors – which Pierre bought in 2013. As hit-jobs go, it is as

Olivia Potts

Cheering dishes to get you through lockdown

Now that there’s a chill in the air and it’s getting dark at 4pm, it’s time to turn to those comforting winter staples that get us through the bleaker months of the year. And with lockdown 2.0 in full swing, we have never needed these satisfying dishes more: Braised lamb shanks Lamb shanks are one

Princess Eugenie and the perilous business of baby names

Naming a child turns out to be one of the hardest things you can do. The secret to nailing it is to avoid choosing something outlandish or freakish at one extreme – but then sidestep the trap of settling on something profoundly mundane at the other. Unless you are a rock star or a tech

10 literary teachers who are worse than you

When my early efforts at homeschooling faltered amidst bitter recriminations and shouts of ‘You are literally the worst teacher in the world!’ (from a six year-old), my husband stepped up. Rubbing his hands, he declared, ‘This is going to be just like Dead Poets Society‘. Yet cries of ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ were not forthcoming.

On this day: what do Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have in common?

Every weekend Spectator Life brings you doses of topical trivia – facts, figures and anecdotes inspired by the current week’s dates in history. 20 February Gordon Brown (born 1951). Brown is blind in his left eye. Jack Straw is deaf in his right ear. When Brown was Prime Minister, Straw (the Lord Chancellor) sat to his left in Cabinet,

Olivia Potts

Wild mushroom risotto: immeasurably comforting

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it a little hard to get out of my own head, these days. I’m trying not to think about how long life has felt stalled, how many days we have spent inside the same four walls, save for a daily constitutional, how many more we have to

What to watch on Netflix this spring

With lockdown looking set to continue for weeks on end, more of us have become resigned to more time indoors – reluctantly or otherwise. Thankfully Netflix, as ever, is ready for the occasion, with a slew of new releases scheduled over the next two months. Here’s our guide to what’s coming up: Sky Rojo, 19 March ”  As

How to make the perfect Margarita

This eponymous cocktail comprising tequila, triple sec, fresh lime juice, and a little salt is descended from a family of 19th century drinks called Daisies. They are essentially sours with some liqueur thrown in for luxury. One popular origin story has a Texan socialite coming up with the Margarita during a jolly south of the border in the

Kitchen techniques to perfect during lockdown

No-one is born knowing how to poach an egg. Indeed, the technique is hardly intuitive: the addition of a little vinegar, whisking the water to create a swirling vortex. Just as golfing enthusiasts barred from hitting the links have resorted to putting practice in their living rooms, a lazy lockdown weekend feels like an ideal

The perils of the royal interview

Imagine, if you will, that there existed a television interview with Henry VIII. Sprawled in one of his Royal palaces with the interviewer nervously perched amongst the discarded chicken bones and giant dogs, what would he say? Would he be repentant about the beheadings, the adultery, the abject violence? Would he make us believe that

Bumble’s ‘feminism’ is half-baked

In 1965, a trio of Harvard undergraduates launched Operation Match, a computer dating service for horny undergraduates at New England’s single-sex colleges. A journalist for Look Magazine came to cover the sensation. ‘Call it dating, call it mating, it flashed out of the minds of …Harvard undergraduates who plotted Operation Match, the dig-it dating system

Simon Evans

Why alpha males don’t wear ties

Claire Robinson, in (where else?) The Guardian, this week, announced that ‘the phallic necktie is an outdated symbol of white male rule in New Zealand’s parliament’: ‘The necktie echoes the shape of the codpiece… designed … to emphasise a European nobleman’s importance through his large phallic size. It is arrow shaped and directs the eye of

Lloyd Evans

Bryan Fogel on turning Jamal Khashoggi’s murder into a film

Bryan Fogel seems to have done it all. It’s hard to think of a showbiz figure with a more varied career. He began as a stand-up and moved to play-writing and then to directing movies. In 2013, he reinvented himself as the producer of hard-hitting documentaries that focus on international scandals and cover-ups. He talks

Staycations are second best – why won’t we admit it?

The vagaries of the great British summer are uncertain enough without a deadly pandemic and lockdown thrown into the mix. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has revealed that, while there is still ‘a lot of uncertainty’ about booking holidays at home or abroad, he has already booked his own summer break in Cornwall. Frankly, if I

Joanna Rossiter

Bezos vs Musk: who will win the new space race?

While the West gets itself into a lather on a weekly basis about the evils of past colonialism is anyone paying attention to the new empire builders in our midst? Although their ideas for space travel often read like the pages of an Arthur C Clark novel, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have done little to disguise

Pile them high: inventive toppings for pancake day

Next Tuesday the banal humdrum of lockdown life will be interrupted, however briefly. No longer the sad, soggy Weetabix while listening to the daily hospitalisation numbers or Special K eaten at your makeshift desk. No, even if just for a couple of hours, next Tuesday is an opportunity to block out the Outlook calendar and

The return of bad dubbing

Just a few minutes into watching the latest Netflix sensation Lupin — its biggest-ever French show — and I was giving some serious Gallic shrugs. It’s hugely popular: it has been no. 1 in the US and was the first French series to break into their top 10. Elsewhere, Lupin is vying for Bridgerton for

On this day: what was the Statue of Liberty’s original purpose?

Every weekend Spectator Life brings you doses of topical trivia – facts, figures and anecdotes inspired by the current week’s dates in history … 13 February Peter Gabriel (born 1950). The ex-Genesis singer called each of his first four solo albums ‘Peter Gabriel’. 14 February James Bond (died 1989). The ornithologist wrote the book Birds of the

The death of binge-watching

On the face of it, Wikipedia’s list of the key events of 1 February, 2013 seems impressively comprehensive, ranging from Hillary Clinton’s resignation as Secretary of State to a hurling player denying he’d won €10.6 million in the Irish lottery. What’s missing, though, is something that’s surely had a bigger impact on our daily — and

Olivia Potts

Semlor buns: a Scandi treat for Shrove Tuesday

In Britain, we mark the beginning of Lent with pancakes. Although nowadays relatively few of us strictly observe the Lenten dietary traditions which prohibit the eating of dairy and meat in the lead up to Easter, we happily leap on the annual opportunity to eat breakfast for dinner: sales of lemons and caster sugar soar,

Valentine’s films: from the romantic to the surreal

The first Valentine’s Day under lockdown looks set to prove the truth of Shakespeare’s oft quoted proverb: ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’. New love is nigh on impossible when couples are forbidden to meet, making technology the next best thing – in terms of communication, that is. An unusual Valentine’s Day surely

Isabel Hardman

Why the Chelsea Flower Show shake-up is good news

Is it really such a bad thing that the Chelsea Flower Show has been postponed to the autumn because of Covid?  Yes, we’ll be missing out on the blousy, frothiness of early summer gardens that we see every year – not so many umbellifers, alliums or delphiniums – and yes, the Floral Pavilion will be

Simon Evans

Homer is a hard read – made easy with earbuds

Mention Homer now and most people will picture yellow, rather than bronze. But Homer Simpson’s comic status as a modern anti hero only makes sense with a knowledge, however vague, of the heroes in The Iliad and The Odyssey.  They underpin the last three thousand years of western culture. Achilles, Hector, Odysseus and Helen… these