An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Education secretary really is the best job in government, though sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Lives can be transformed – hopefully for the better – as a direct consequence of the decisions you make. But you are also firmly in the firing line. There’s no other area of public policy in which everyone is
For some parents, VAT on school fees is the straw that’s broken the camel’s back. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that between 20,000 and 40,000 pupils will be withdrawn from the independent sector. An answer to a parliamentary question revealed that 46 private schools closed between January and October last year. It is safe
Cornflake tart. Spam fritters. Green custard. Turkey twizzlers. Chocolate concrete. These are some of the dishes that instantly transport you to the school lunch hall – and inspire either pure nostalgia or horror. Over the past five years co-hosting Table Talk, The Spectator’s food and drink podcast, I have spoken to people from all walks
Matthew Parris From the late Alan Lomberg, my English teacher at my school in Swaziland, in my school report: ‘I’m sure I have only slightly less high an opinion of Matthew’s literary abilities than he has himself.’ Sebastian Shakespeare The late Alan Clark once described me in his diaries as a ‘tricky little prick’, but
I recently offered my services as a part-time RE teacher to my local comp, an inner-city affair with a Muslim majority. Yes please, said the nice headmistress: the Covid-blunted Year 11s needed all the help they could get with GCSE revision. The syllabus consisted of Christianity and Islam. What could go wrong? The first thing
Ludgrove, Berkshire Ludgrove, which was founded in 1892 by the footballer Arthur Dunn, is a boarding prep school in Berkshire and has 130 acres for its pupils to learn, run around and play in. The school is one of the last preps to provide full boarding (which is fortnightly). At weekends, boys can use 11
It is never people, always buildings. Faces change, time blurs them, but – unless they undergo a complete makeover – buildings remain pretty much the same, bar a few coats of paint. Along the second-floor corridor lined with arched windows that overlook the street. Buses grind by below. Up the last short steep staircase and
The immaculate bourgeois socialists of north London – that is not code for Jews – like to eat and drink in the former servants’ quarters of Kenwood House, because this is a mad country. Kenwood is beautiful. It is Hampstead’s best house, standing at the top of the heath, near the head waters of the
With the world on fire – not to mention large swathes of the North Sea – it is understandable that some of the scurvier implications of Angela Rayner’s stonking planning bill, aimed at streamlining all development, from roads and power stations to housing, might have gone unnoticed. Which is a pity, because it’s not very
Jonbon is the odds-on favourite for the big race on day two of the Festival, the BetMGM Queen Mother Champion Chase (4 p.m.). He is the most likely winner but there is little doubt that this Cotswolds venue is not his favourite racetrack and so I am happy to take him on. Eight runners are
Saturday 17 May will see the final ever game at Everton’s Goodison Park, and with it the end of 133 years of history. Unless the rumour of a last-minute reprieve involving the women’s team turns out to be true (highly unlikely), the bulldozers will soon get to work and the ground will be reduced to
Love or loathe Danny Dyer, hard-man hooligan of Football Factory, EastEnders bod and breakout Rivals star, but he does talk sense. The kind of straight-up, geezer sense you can only get down the pub, a locale to which he is no stranger. In the promotional press for his latest film, Marching Powder, Dyer, when pressed
Experts warn that doctors like me risk a condition known as ‘compassion fatigue’ – an emotional numbness that comes from too much caring for too long. But aren’t we all on the edge? Distant hardships are now visible as they happen, and the sense that victims are everywhere becomes vividly real. Newsreaders, documentary makers, editorialists,
The Grade 1 Unibet Champion Hurdle (4 p.m.) is the highlight of the first day of the Cheltenham Festival this afternoon. There appears to be growing confidence behind the Irish challenger Brighterdaysahead after her demolition of a decent field at Leopardstown late in December. Trainer Gordon Elliott’s exciting six-year-old mare has a career record of
From Henry James and T.S. Eliot to Wallis Simpson and (albeit briefly) Taylor Swift, US expats have had a long love affair with London. But over the past year the number of Americans – overpaid, what with their favourable exchange rate, oversexed, possibly, and certainly over here – has been escalating fast. In 2024, 6,100
I bought some pork scratchings the other day, and the packet said it was ‘high in protein’. Gruntled, the brand, is distributed by the Keto Shop and is now being marketed as some type of health food. I had to laugh. Wolfing down a packet of pork scratchings in the pub is now part of
The decline of Radio 3 makes a sad story. Established in 1967 to reflect the world of classical music, and high culture in general, it has become a swamp of mediocrity, peopled by presenters who might feel more comfortable on a pick ’n’ mix stall. Every day, in almost every way, it seems determined to
Any old fossil like me keen on harrumphing that popular music isn’t what it used to be will have taken a certain snarky pleasure on reading that, last year, no British act figured in the world’s top ten singles or albums for the first time since 2003. To be fair, 2003 wasn’t the best year
Walking into this crowded and clattering restaurant for the first time in more than 30 years, two things strike me almost immediately: 1) it seems to be largely unchanged and 2) the prices have scarcely risen. I can’t claim to have tried every wine list in Soho, but I can tell you with certainty that
At last month’s Bafta ceremony, David Tennant attempted to make a joke about the state of Donald Trump’s hair, but it barely raised a chuckle. Not surprising, perhaps, when you consider the dramatic vibe-shift sweeping the western world. In a desperate attempt to stay relevant many on the progressive left are suddenly choosing to distance themselves from the luxury beliefs
A Sunday morning in Bethnal Green and Adam, who has been leading Kray-themed walking tours of the neighbourhood for almost two decades, corrals a congregation of eight polite, reserved, attentive customers who, with sensible rucksacks, floor-length M&S skirts, reusable water bottles and neutral-coloured, thin-laced trainers, look as far removed from pool hall brawls and basement
Why are women still allowed to do housework? The question used to bother me during the years of my marriage when housework became a running sore between us. Perhaps the friction was inevitable. I was born in revolutionary times, the 1960s, and my mother taught me and my siblings to cook, clean and wash up
The annual running of the Betfair Imperial Cup Handicap Hurdle at Sandown means that the start of the Cheltenham Festival is only three days away. As usual though, tomorrow’s race (2.25 p.m.) is a noteworthy event in its own right: a competitive affair with 17 runners due to line up for a contest worth more
There was a time when the word ‘toxic’ was applied in only a handful of circumstances. There was the stuff that occasionally oozed out of a power station into the North Sea and made the fish go funny. Or there was the substance that Christopher Lloyd would stick in the gull-wing doored DeLorean to make
Like most non-renting flat-dwellers, I call myself a home-owner or owner-occupier, but that isn’t quite true. I don’t own my flat; I am a leaseholder. What I bought was the right to occupy it for however many years are left on the lease – and as the lease runs down, the flat is worth less
In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe was unfeasibly organised, shelf after shelf of cashmere arrayed in all the hues of the rainbow. We regarded him as a thing of wonder. In those days most of us British undergraduates were deeply unsophisticated,
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by way of a few hours in Mexico City and Panama. Just five days ago, he was in London. ‘New York was just going to be a weekend trip for a conference, but then I thought
I will admit to having been dismissive of red velvet cake in the past, considering it to be bland in flavour and garish in colour. It tended to come in cupcake form with towering hats of super-sweet buttercream, which made it unpleasant and difficult to eat. The cult love for red velvet, inspiring scented candles
I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of
