An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
I was belatedly baptised last week in the Church of England, and though Christians are enjoined to show compassion to sinners and forgive them their trespasses, my eyes do not fill with tears at the plight of 18-year-old Bella May Culley from Middlesbrough. Bella currently finds herself in Prison No. 5 in the Georgian capital,
In Bradford a few weeks ago, I popped into a pub called Jacobs Well. It’s a squat old building, all but submerged behind the stultifyingly ugly road that grinds around the edges of the town centre. The Well was fairly quiet on a Monday night, but everyone there was congregated around the bar and it
At the end of last year I developed a pathological aversion to going to my local supermarket, owing to a garish sign in the window counting down the number of ‘sleeps’ until Christmas. The twee Americanism was grating enough, but I had another reason to feel queasy: I was heavily pregnant with my first baby
Rend your cheeks and rub ashes into your hair; for that most elegant, elusive of punctuation marks – the semicolon – is, if not yet quite dead, at least fairly close to being on first name terms with St Peter. Research from Babbel, a ‘learning platform’, shows that usage of the semicolon in texts has plunged
Raffles Doha is one of the world’s weirdest, most improbable buildings. That’s it in the picture – a five-star hotel incorporated in one prong of the incomplete circle that is the 40-storey Katara Towers in Lusail City (the Fairmont Doha is in the other prong), on land reclaimed from both desert and sea. It’s an architect’s/despot’s fantasy turned reality.
With reluctance – but enticed by its surprisingly starry cast and the fact that it had landed, ironically enough, on Netflix – I recently tuned in to The Hour, the BBC’s 2011 political drama series. It’s about a BBC TV news programme being launched in 1956, against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis. And, goodness
The form of the Virgin Bet-sponsored Scottish Sprint Cup at Musselburgh last month is rock solid. The winner, American Affair, and the runner-up, Jm Jungle, filled the same two places in a hotter race at York yesterday off their revised marks. Fifth at Musselburgh after being backed into 2-1 favourite was COVER UP trained by
When I lived in Berlin a decade ago, I was struck by the contrast between the dullness of young Germans and the incredible weirdness of everything else. Only in German could the word for ‘gums’ (Zahnfleisch) mean ‘toothflesh’. And only in fleisch-mad Germany (the word for ‘meat’ is the same as ‘flesh’, which is somehow
When I was a child, all I wanted to do was talk. In fact, it got so bad that my primary school teachers were forced to give me a ‘wriggle cushion’ – an inflatable seat designed to pacify hyper children. I’m sure there’s a diagnosis in that somewhere. And as the years went by, I
We had been discussing Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, the possibility of a nuclear exchange across the Punjab and other trifling matters. It was decided to change the subject. A youngster was planning to write a piece on lunching and suggested I might know something about that. I did not disagree. In the old days, lunching was
Iam standing in my kitchen preparing kidneys for devilling. Snipping their white cores away piece by piece until they come free and I’m left with just the wibbly, burgundy kidney, ready for their spiced flour, I pause. There is no denying that even fresh raw kidneys can smell a little… challenging. And for one moment
Look, if you will, at Kate Middleton on the Isle of Mull for her wedding anniversary. There she was in skinny jeans, tucked-in blue shirt and tweed blazer, shod in what looked like sensible walking boots. It’s a look I like to call Royal Prep School Mummy, and she’s been at it for years: on
Two of the top ten stories on the BBC news feed yesterday concerned the travails of leading rap and hip hop stars in different kinds of trouble in the United States. In one case, the 55-year-old rap singer Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs – one of the biggest names in the business – is on trial in
Trent Alexander-Arnold is a gifted footballer. Twice he has helped Liverpool become champions of England. He was also an important member of the team that became champions of Europe, and he has played 33 times at right back for England. Alexander-Arnold is still only 26. His race is nowhere near run. He has, one may
‘What? You don’t like chocolate?’ The British Airways attendant almost shouted at me in incomprehension as she was passing out little packets of chocolate digestives. I had had the temerity to ask (in economy, of course) whether there might be any other biscuits on offer. To which she had responded with a concerned enquiry about
It’s unlikely you’ll find a sorrier-looking pair of hiking boots than mine. As a result of my Camino addiction, the backs of my boots are literally crumbling, while the fronts have split open like a French baguette. They look like prime candidates for the hiking boot version of assisted dying – to put them out
Consulting a website on my phone recently, I was struck by how painful it has become to use the internet. All I wanted was to read some local news and check the spread of a power cut in my area. Instead, as I scrolled, I was assailed by interruptions from integrated adverts which – in
Britain’s public loos are a national embarrassment. If you are in any doubt, head to Liverpool Street Station and spend a penny. It’s unquestionably the most odious and unpleasant public lavatory anywhere in the supposedly civilised world. It has to be experienced to be believed, but suffice it to say that the level of cleanliness on
Is Claude your confidant? Is ChatGPT your yes-man? Your wingman? Artificial intelligence seems more like a friend than the apex predator we feared. Maybe it’s not gearing up to enslave us or turn us into paperclips after all. But I find there is something just as malign about AI posing as our friend. Slowly, subtly, politely,
If you like piña coladas – and I do – Puerto Rico will suit you just fine. The cocktail was born on the island in 1954, though debate lingers over exactly where it was first dreamt up. A bartender at the Caribe Hilton is credited with blending coconut cream, pineapple and rum into its original
The modern world of dating is ripe for disappointment, and recent dating app convert Sophie is certainly not immune. ‘I went on a date with an actor – not doing too bad – we go to Zuma. I ordered everything; Henry VIII in there, got it all. Then the bill came and he says, how
Today’s Ladbrokes Chester Cup (3.05 p.m.), run over a distance of more than two miles and two furlongs, is an intriguing affair with 15 runners competing for a first prize of more than £86,000. The best handicapped horse on the basis of his hurdles form is the likely favourite East India Dock, who was third in the Grade
In a recent diary for The Spectator, the editor noted that many of the world’s leading tech companies have names inspired by The Lord of the Rings: Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Mithril; Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has a curious hold on the minds of Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters,’ he wrote. Well, they’re not the
Talking to a former politician about lying felt very appropriate. It was during one of my ‘Magical Thinking’ sessions, a corporate team-building event I run in which I perform close-up magic tricks and the participants try to work out how they’re being done. Among those at this session was Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who had initially been
Since we moved into our house in the Cyclades a few years ago, I’ve come to accept that if you own a home on the beach in Greece with plenty of spare rooms, people will come to stay. But what is it about house guests abroad? Do they need fresh towels at home every time
Delamina Townhouse is on Tavistock Street in Covent Garden. It is an Israeli restaurant, and a very fine and subtle one, though Israeli restaurants are rebranding as ‘eastern Mediterranean’ these days due to growing Jew hate on London’s streets, which fills me with rage. (I am not talking about criticism of Israel. I welcome all
I’m not sure quite what Sir G. Boycott would have made of it, but the People’s Republic of Yorkshire was on its feet to applaud the People’s Republic of China. Kindred spirits brought together at the Crucible, Sheffield, for Zhao Xintong’s victory in the World Snooker Championship over poor Mark Williams, at 50 the oldest
With racing there is always a little history involved. One of the few top races John Gosden has never won as a trainer is the one-mile 2,000 Guineas, and many of us hoped that after a scintillating performance in the Craven Stakes his Field of Gold was going to fill the most significant hole in
Last month, Katy Perry became the first pop star to go to space. The Blue Origin flight took only 11 minutes and involved her singing to Planet Earth. She had no idea the planet would hate her on her return. Much of the criticisms included phrases like ‘waste of money and resources’; some even mentioned
