An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Two photos from the youth of Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance have recently surfaced and are filling his opponents with glee. In one of them, he’s dressed as a woman, with shoulder-length golden hair, a look of yet-to-be-plucked wistfulness, and three days of teenage stubble. The other shows him loitering in a men’s bathroom, a
What’s a guy got to do these days to take a pee in peace? Standing at the urinal in London King’s Cross train station, I was trying to embrace the present, not dwell on the failures of the past or the great trials to come; and for a brief moment, I felt that Zen-like tranquillity
When my mum picks up my WhatsApp video call, she’s on the beach. As we chat, I watch her take small sips from a wet can of lager, dodging the hairy men in budgie smugglers who try to pass behind her. Inevitably, I’ll spend most of our conversation staring at her earlobe, since she’ll press
The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and returnees, no doubt a breakout star or two, some eyebrow-raising new hairstyles (Mo Salah) and some ingeniously tweaked – and therefore ‘must-have’ – revenue-gouging strips. As ever, there will be
In a 1962 interview, Alain Delon pushes aside a carafe of red wine and explains that when offered his first cinema role, he didn’t really want it: je n’avais pas envie de faire spécialement ça. Delon, who died over the weekend at the age of 88, may not have been immediately seduced by cinema, but
As an arts journalist, you know you’re getting old when you scan the Edinburgh Festival programme, and instead of thinking ‘Wow, look at all this,’ your reaction is ‘Oh Christ, look at all that’. You tell friends that you’re off to cover Edinburgh in August, and instead of lighting up with envy, they suck their
Balanced rakishly on my late grandmother’s china parrot is a MAGA hat bought in 2016 when it seemed highly improbable that Trump would beat the walking pantsuit, Hillary. Much like my Vote Leave badge, I bought it as a piece of provocative fast-fashion and my ever-expanding archive of political merchandise from the last decade. I
This is a complex tale involving an American murder, the popular British TV series Flipper, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – but bear with me. Next month sees the centenary of the conviction of two spoiled Chicago boys – Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18 – who admitted carrying out what the press at the time
The William Hill Great St Wilfrid Handicap at Ripon tomorrow (3.20 p.m.) is always a difficult puzzle for punters to unravel. Run over six furlongs for a first prize of more than £50,000, a field of 19 runners has been declared. With its unusual undulations on the sprint course, Ripon is a specialist track which
The Guild Chapel in Stratford-upon-Avon presents its congregation with a vision of terror: a medieval Doom painting depicting the Day of Judgment. On the left are those who have behaved themselves – the Saved – who joyously bound towards the gates of Paradise. On the right, sinners pay the price for falling short of the
Labour have become alarmed by the strict, ‘cruel’ approach to discipline in schools and the rise in the number of pupils being excluded. Teachers will need to be more relaxed about ‘bad behaviour’. But though moving the goalposts of acceptable behaviour may reduce the exclusion figures, it is bound to increase the burden of disruptive
Every time I write about electric cars, there is an explosion of hostile comments online in which readers angrily denounce electric vehicles and the people who drive them. Much of this animus rests on a plausible yet mistaken assumption – that EV owners are all passionate environmentalists, sanctimoniously swanning around in their zero–emission vehicles while
At the former Chiswick Works in west London, I recently celebrated the Routemaster’s 70th birthday. I owe my existence to this majestic mode of transport. My mum was a conductress on a Routemaster – the No. 16 – which cut a merry swathe from Cricklewood to Victoria, right through the centre of London. My dad, like
What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make you laugh. I was strolling along to Richmond station after spending the night with old friends. (Very Jorrocksian: ‘Where I dines, I sleeps.’) I was carrying a scruffy overnight bag containing one shirt, one pair
The next time you drive or walk down a country road, you may well notice that something is not quite right. Look around and you might see that tall ash trees in the verge-side hedgerows are no longer as handsome, their leaves sparse and scattered, even brown and wilting, while naked branches point accusingly to
It’s become a regular occurrence: a friend or a friend-of-a-friend is visiting London, wants to go to a football game and messages asking for help getting tickets. My standard response is: no chance. The most recent of these was from New Zealand-based Spectator contributor David Cohen, whose son will be in London in the autumn.
‘How do you cope with this?’ The poor woman is looking up at me with the big Bambi eyes I’ve seen grown men adopt when extreme turbulence hits. I have to say something comforting; it’s part of my job description as cabin crew. They even tell us what to say on the cabin crew training
I love salad but there need to be rules. Salad should never be squashed in with hot food (e.g., in burgers); must never be dressed with anything from a bottle; and salad must never be served buffet style. Oh, and if it’s warm it’s quite simply not salad. For this reason, today I am speaking
I’ve never been seduced by the circus. As a motif in children’s literature, particularly taken up by Enid Blyton and Disney. In fact, as an animal-loving child, I think I found it cruel; I wanted Nellie the Elephant to pack her bags and say goodbye to the circus, I longed for her to slip her
Over the years, I have spent a pretty penny on therapy. I have also spent a lot of money in Waitrose, of which there is a big branch that I like to call a ‘flagship’, very close to my flat. Of the two, therapy and Waitrose, it is probably Waitrose that has provided the most
Whether it is the anti-immigration riots in the UK, with hundreds of arrests and prosecutions, Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI for breach of contract, or the UN’s International Court of Justice cases about the Israel-Palestine and Ukraine-Russia conflicts, the law is all around us. Teaching children about this invisible but powerful force can improve their
At this time of year, the heat of Naples wakes me up around 7. A five kilometre jog takes me over Monte Echia, from where I can see Vesuvius, Capri and the city below me framed in bright blue. After a cool shower, I go to a café for breakfast: a pastry and puddle of
The other week I popped into my big Morrisons after the school drop-off. It was a biggish shop, including things like socks, olive oil and washing powder, hence going to a proper supermarket rather than just whizzing into my local Tesco Express. Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on
I used to think a lot about Switzerland and how to accrue enough morphine to top myself when the time comes. But yay, at last, an assisted dying law seems likely and I can stop plotting. No one talks about death. But oldies think about it all the time, not deliberately – it just inserts
As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive
York’s famous Ebor meeting will be here before we know it and trainer William Haggas will be attempting to plunder many of its top races with his talented string. Although his stables are in Newmarket, Haggas is a Yorkshireman and so he particularly enjoys seeing his runners win at the course which lies some 40
Visiting San Sebastián last month, I was reminded of the joys and hazards of grazing. The speciality in this chic city, and throughout Spain’s northern Basque region, are pintxos – miniature open sandwiches topped with everything from chorizo and padrón peppers to anchovies and baby eels. Pintxoing, as I’ll call it, becomes almost like a
It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent to which the characters still live inside your mind, bobbing about just below the level of consciousness. I still find myself puzzling over the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, decades after I first read
There are many old dishes in the UK that are hyper-regional, whose reach has never extended beyond geographical boundaries but remain much loved where they originated. Yorkshire curd tart is a good example: it is barely known beyond God’s own county (or God’s own four counties, which now technically make up what we think of