An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
On a trip to the local library, many years ago now, my dad was asked by a kindly but rather severe librarian if I was really allowed to borrow one of the Ramage books, as they were from the section for grown-ups and I was only about 11. The old man nodded assent and so
I remember it quite clearly, that moment I first clocked that fat models were now advertising clothing – fitness clothing no less. I was in America and, left with time to kill in a shopping centre, I went into an outlet of the trendy athleisure store Athleta (owned by Gap), which I had pillaged on
Next month is the 30th anniversary of the death of the American ethologist John B. Calhoun. In the early 1960s, he created an series of experiments to discover the causes of social dysfunction. His most famous work involved a so-called ‘rat utopia’ in which rodents were provided comfortable living quarters with unlimited food, water and
I’m not awfully keen on family members of famous people putting themselves in the picture; nepo babies are the worst, the equivalent of Japanese knotweed when it comes to the landscape of modern popular culture. But pushy parents are annoying too: Stanley Johnson and the wittering senior Whitehall jumping on the bandwagon when they should
‘Sit up straight, heels down, lean forward, lean back, tighten the reins, loosen the reins.’ Joe’s instructions replay in my head as I scan the canyon floor for rattlesnakes. I gently push my heels into the sides of my horse, Rio, and he sets off across the rocky terrain. Joe is my guide and a
In Isaac Asimov’s 1956 short story ‘The Last Question’, characters ask a series of questions to the supercomputer Multivac about whether entropy – the universe’s tendency towards disorder, and the second law of thermodynamics – can be reversed. Multivac repeatedly responds ‘INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER’, until the ending, which I won’t spoil here. If
It has been a disastrous summer for France’s restaurants. On average, visits have dropped by 20 per cent on previous years, but at many coastal resorts they’re down by 35 per cent. ‘Consumption is well below previous years,’ says Laurent Barthélémy, president of a hospitality union. ‘Restaurant owners see customers passing by, but they don’t come
Like the fearful townsfolk of Dodge City awaiting the arrival of outlaws, the residents of Notting Hill have been chalking off the hours. Many have resorted to drilling wooden boards over their windows and doors. Some have hired private security and left the city for the weekend. It’s Carnival once again, that annual ritual of
The big sprint races of the season have repeatedly thrown up surprise results, most notably when 66-1 shot No Half Measures landed the Group 1 Al Basti Equiworld, Dubai July Cup Stakes at Newmarket last month over six furlongs. So, with no horse able to dominate the sprint division this summer, it makes no sense to
If ever there was a symbol of the decline of the European car industry it is my wife’s Citroen. For the past two months it has sat out on the driveway, inert. We can’t drive it, we can’t sell it and we cannot get it fixed. It is a waste of space, but one that
Just a glance at the cast list tells you everything you need to know. Netflix’s adaptation of Richard Osman’s cosy crime sensation The Thursday Murder Club stars Dame Helen Mirren, former James Bond Pierce Brosnan (as well as a former Bond villain Sir Jonathan Pryce), the Oscar-winning Sir Ben Kingsley and the gold-plated national treasure
I know it can be difficult to have sympathy for anybody who owns a holiday let, but for me and my wife August is often a war between us and the holiday guests from hell. It’s an open season of refund-seeking, blackmailing guests and wild children whose parents think we operate a kids’ club in
Jack Gervaise-Brazier is a restless romantic. He was brought up on Guernsey, which filled him with a love of islands, but also a desire for wider horizons. As Jack was a head boy and a good historian and classicist, his schoolmasters assumed that he would move on to university and he was offered a place
The double-edged sword of eating with the seasons is the glut. A blunt, un-pretty word, which is a joy in theory and delicious in result, but which can feel daunting when you’re facing down a bench full of berries to be picked over, or countless apples to be processed. My husband and I were once
Recently, I was on my way to buy the Saturday papers when my ears pricked up. In the distance, I could hear the unmistakable sound of a protest: whistles, slogans, klaxons. I strained to make out what people were shouting, but, given the grim images recently beamed from Gaza, odds were, it was about the
The best pint you’ll ever have is whatever you can find at 5 p.m. on a Friday. But close behind, and available wherever there’s a willing bartender, is whatever your local brewery has a fresh keg of. That, at least, is what I’ll tell anyone who can’t make a speedy exit. I am a craft
Back in July 2009, at my baby shower, someone kindly gave me a little book on the benefits of having twins. Apart from the swollen ankles and the enormous bump I was carrying, I already felt pretty blessed that, at 35, I was only going to have to do the whole pregnancy thing once. I
Bonnie Blue is an It Girl. But she’s not an It Girl in the way we used to recognise them. Bonnie Blue is an It Girl because she’s written about as a thing, not a person. She’s an object, everything that’s bad about women, sex, modern life. She’s not really considered to be a human
Picture the scene: you’re on a sun-drenched tropical island surrounded by azure waters and dazzling white sand. A lone palm tree casts shadows across your lover’s bronzed skin as you sip an ice-cold Campari Spritz. It’s a scene pictured a million times a day on Instagram feeds and the biggest holiday cliché of them all.
Re-reading Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced this week (it’s the summer holidays! I can relax like anyone else!), I was struck by one of Miss Marple’s wise pronouncements: And that’s really the particular way the world has changed since the war. Take this place, Chipping Cleghorn, for instance. It’s very much like St Mary
There are opinion polls that are so striking they change history. Many Britons will remember the YouGov poll in September 2014. It was the first poll in the Scottish independence referendum campaign to show the Yes side ahead by 51 per cent to 49. That poll shocked SW1, panicked the Cameron government, and led to
Match of the Day is back and, for the first time in a quarter of a century, without Gary Lineker. That’s the good news. Saturday night’s anchorman, Mark Chapman, is so much better than his smug, virtue-signalling predecessor. Perhaps it’s because he’s a professional broadcaster rather than an ex-player. This means he asks questions that
As a good left-wing lad raised by Guardian-reading parents who didn’t drive, I knew Jeremy Clarkson was tasteless and unpleasant. In my first year as a junior doctor, my surgical ward had one of his articles pinned to the office wall. It was off-putting to see his shabby name and a piece from a tabloid,
To anyone brought up in the seventies and eighties, the fact that so many Palestine Action protestors are themselves in their seventies and eighties is the least surprising fact of the year. These people were the original ‘Boring Old Hippies,’ those dreary teachers and lecturers whom so many of us had to suffer the first
First, there was the bizarre tale of the poor unfortunate man who, after dropping his trousers on the District line near Upton Park, was set upon by an outraged gang, beaten and then forcibly expelled from the Tube. And then, just a day or so before, the perpetually beleaguered Gregg Wallace caused a similar degree
Ripon’s sprint course is unique with its many undulations and so it usually pays to side with a horse that has strong course form. Furthermore, tomorrow’s William Hill/MND Association Great St Wilfrid Handicap (3.20 p.m.) over six furlongs is regularly targeted by local Yorkshire trainers who have won 13 of the last 15 runnings of the
Fran Lebowitz, the apparently acid-tongued commentator on Manhattan manners, will slip through British customs next month to dazzle the easily dazzled. Though to judge by the interview she granted an earnest lady in the Observer, other verbs leap to mind. From this distance it looks suspiciously like a fog of self-regard. According to the profiler,
New York People are too into politics. I used to be called gay for liking politics in school. They should go back to that. No one used to care about politics. Now everyone’s into it and it’s made people insane. I think it’s partly to do with social media in general. I don’t really care
This column sometimes shrieks the death of central London, and this is unfair. (I think this because others are now doing it.) It is not the city we mourn but our younger selves. Even so, the current aesthetic in restaurants is awful and needs to be suppressed: beiges and leathers, fish tanks and stupid lighting,
