An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
I once heard an American complain that, being married to an Englishwoman, he was regularly baffled by the contents of his kitchen cupboards – salad cream, Ambrosia custard and Robinsons barley water. It was ‘like industrial processed food but from the Shire’. It is probably this quality of baffling foreigners that allegedly enabled drug runners
‘Same old boring Sunday morning, old men out, washing their cars.’ So begins the punk anthem ‘The Sound of the Suburbs’ by the Members. There are plenty of cars being washed (and waxed) on my road on any Sunday morning and the strimmers are buzzing, despite this being peak breeding season for insects. But here’s
An inquest into the Derby in the Oakley household was to be expected. Mrs Oakley, who bets about as often as you will hear Liz Truss say ‘I’m sorry: I got it wrong’, called me at Epsom this year asking for a fiver each way on Lambourn. Since the ten-time Derby winning trainer Aidan O’Brien
The Grade 1 Prince of Wales Stakes at Royal Ascot today (4.20 p.m.) is an intriguing contest in which five of the nine runners are priced up at 6-1 or less. Los Angeles and Anmaat will renew their rivalry from the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh last month when the former beat the latter
In the middle of Cairo there’s a place called the City of the Dead. It is a dusty sprawl of mausoleums, sepulchres and crumbling Mameluke tombs, that has housed the corpses of the city for over a thousand years. On a dank winter’s dusk, it feels especially lifeless – deformed dogs vanish into shadows, random
‘Poundland sells for a pound’ is one of those stories of which sub-editors dream – not to mention the beleaguered company’s PR department. But irony aside, the news does draw attention to a paradox: why do discount stores seem to suffer more in bad economic times than they do in good times? It’s like Ratners,
What does it mean to be a ‘pseud’? I hadn’t thought a great deal about it, until a passage from a piece I’d written about semicolons made it into Private Eye’s venerable Pseuds Corner. It appears just after a conversation between two AIs, and above a breathless quote from Meghan Markle (for it is she).
The two staying handicaps on day one of Royal Ascot – the Ascot Stakes and the Copper Horse Stakes – are always among my favourite betting races of the week. In both of today’s races, I first look out for a horse that is well handicapped on the flat compared with its hurdles form. Willie
Today, I go to Ascot. The last time I darkened the turf of the Royal Enclosure was in 2017, when I was heavily pregnant with my first daughter. In the photograph of my husband and me that day, I resemble a whale with a plate attached to its head, while my husband looks as if
My parents both had false teeth. My mother had all her teeth taken out one winter afternoon. I can remember her huddled by the electric fire with a small bowl of blood beside her, mourning their loss. It was a loss not just of teeth but of youth. She can’t have been much over 40.
One of the most memorable dinners I ever had was about 20 years ago, at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Fitzrovia called Pied à Terre. It’s still going, and indeed remains a stalwart of the city’s fine dining scene, but what I especially remember, rather than the food or wine, was how deliciously louche an experience
When I was in hospital for almost half a year, learning how to face life as a ‘Halfling’ – a person in a wheelchair, patronised and petted – the thing I looked forward to most was a normal, some would say banal, event. I longed to be in my local Pizza Express, in Hove, reading
The Lake District isn’t really meant to be about eating. It’s about walking and climbing and gawping. The guide one carries is not that by Michelin but Alfred Wainwright, whose seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells turns 70 this year. Food is mainly to be consumed from a Thermos rather than a bowl, and
In the winner-takes-all world of modern art, there’s every chance you might not have heard of Cedric Morris. Why should you? No matter how much you sweeten the tea, the Welshman, born in 1889, was no Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko or Salvador Dali. Nor from our 21st-century outlook can it be said that the name
Back in 2007, I went to war-ravaged Guinea-Bissau in west Africa to report on its rise as the continent’s first narco-state. Latino cartels were using it as a staging post for shipping cocaine to Europe, bribing its rulers to turn a blind eye. So much product was being landed that local fishermen would catch stray
Royal Ascot gets me more excited than the weekend racing fare so I am going to put up four horses who could well go off shorter when they line up for their respective targets next week. First up in RASHABAR in the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes on Tuesday (4.20 p.m.). Brian Meehan’s three-year-old
What is it about men and miniskirts? A few months ago, I read with horror – but sadly not surprise – about a school that was considering banning girls from wearing skirts. Apparently, residents in Whitstable, Kent, were so alarmed at the ‘inappropriate skirt lengths’ spotted around town they had complained to the local school.
What’s the most hazardous occupation? Deep sea fisherman? Uranium miner? Tail-end Charlie in a Lancaster bomber (not a career currently available)? I challenge anyone to find a speedier way to meet one’s end than becoming an influencer. The sad death of 28-year-old University of Salford student Maria Eftimova, who tumbled off Tryfan, a 1,000ft mountain
Procrastination may be the thief of time, but in the right circumstances, it can be fun. The other day, I was enjoying myself in St James’s, my favourite London arrondissement. There are delightful contrasts, from the grandeur of the royal palaces and the St James’s Street clubs to the charming, intimate side streets and alleys
‘Sausages,’ my son says to me, leaning forward from the back of the car, with the authority and confidence only a three-year-old can truly muster. ‘Sausages?’ I reply distractedly, while navigating a particularly awkward roundabout. We’ve been talking about my job, but I assume his train of thought has taken a lunchier direction. ‘Yes, sausages.
Recently, I found myself trying to explain to a much younger colleague who Oliver Reed was. We’d got on to the subject of the hell-raising actor because I was bemoaning the fact – perhaps rashly – that today’s world is completely anodyne. Fear of offending others means it’s better to keep your thoughts to yourself;
I love having friends over for dinner, and like to think I’m rather good at hosting. And while I always strive for a relaxed atmosphere and dislike formality, there are a few hard rules that my guests should adhere to if they want a repeat invitation. Let’s start at the beginning. When checking on any
Pop music criticism, said Frank Zappa, was the work of people who can’t write, about people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read. Half a century later and he’s still right. Although pop is essentially a juvenile art form – its clearest strength and most obvious weakness – that doesn’t stop reviewers pumping up
If Frederick Forsyth had not existed, you would have had to invent him. Yet no novelist could have come up with as convivial, swashbuckling and lively a character as the thriller writer, who has died at the age of 86. Many of his millions of admirers thought him almost immortal, and over the course of
One advantage to being born in the 1970s was the sheer abundance of good kids’ TV on offer. This was the golden age between clunky black and white offerings like Muffin the Mule, and the creeping vapidity of later shows like Teletubbies or The Care Bears. It gave us Camberwick Green, The Magic Roundabout, Captain
I am in the most EU-ish bedroom in the EU. That is to say, I am lying in a refurbished room in the handsome 14th-century Chateau de Schengen, in the little village of Schengen, Luxembourg. From my casements, opened wide onto the sunny Saarland afternoon, I can see the exact stretch of the river Moselle
Growing up, like a lot of English girls, I was what was known as a ‘dirty blonde’. (An evocative phrase, the Dirty Blondes are now variously a theatre troupe, a pop group and a restaurant.) In the summer, I would put lemon juice on my hair and watch in wonder as it bleached in the
The pinned post at the top of the r/ChronicPain subreddit is ‘how to get doctors to take you seriously’. The subreddit has 131,000 subscribers, and is a tricky community for outsiders to understand. People talk in acronyms (chronic lower back pain – CLBP, myalgic encephalomyelitis – ME, acceptance and commitment therapy – ACT) and have
If a man runs through a forest but doesn’t post it on Strava, it didn’t happen. I won’t believe it, anyway: the athletic tracker app is my new addiction. The name is borrowed from the Swedish word meaning ‘to strive’. Users document their sporting activities – walking, kayaking, surfing, skiing – and share their adventures