An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
A.E. Housman once wrote that the English villages of Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun ‘are the quietest places under the sun’. He’s almost right. I grew up in Clunton and the only place I’ve felt a deeper sense of quiet is Escaladei, a village high up in the mountainous Priorat region of Spain, which
This week Billie Eilish served up a reminder of the irritations of veganism. She forced the O2 to go fully plant-based during her six-night run of shows – and the Daily Mail reported that fans, who’d paid £70+ for a ticket to see her, were not happy about the food on offer at the arena.
Ascot racecourse missed most of the rain that fell this week and, as a result, the ground will now almost certainly be on the fast side of good for tomorrow’s big race, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (4.10 p.m.). Despite a first prize of more than £850,000 for winning connections, just five
It begins with an electric swish sound that makes you feel like you are falling backwards, followed by an arresting synthesiser da-da-dum drumbeat. Then we get the voice, in double-time: ‘She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at St Martin’s College…’ With those words, singer Jarvis Cocker and his
Earlier this month, in Haiti’s tatterdemalion capital of Port-au-Prince, armed gangs burned down the Hotel Oloffson. As news of the attack spread, both Haitians and foreigners mourned the loss of one of the most beautiful gingerbread mansions in the Caribbean. Thinly disguised as the Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene’s 1966 novel The Comedians, the Oloffson
England is now and history. The other day, in the Weald of Kent, now was England and pleasure. We were visiting the Balfour Winery, near Staplehurst, on an enticing midsummer day. This was a quintessential English landscape. To the left, a wood with classically English trees. To the right, a country house. In the distance,
I am, for the most part, a rule follower and a people pleaser. It’s one of the reasons I love baking, which essentially amounts to a set of instructions designed to make something to be shared and bring joy. But if someone recommends something to me, I can be resistant to it for ages. The
Even if you couldn’t care a fig for sustainability, it’s hard not to be impressed with the Nostradamus-esque foresight of the milk float. In an era when Old King Coal ruled the roost and recycling meant pedalling backwards on your Raleigh Grifter, the pre-dawn hour across the UK was the stage for a phalanx of
There are 1,000 spaces available for the 6-9 a.m. lane swimming session at Tooting Bec Lido in south London. On Sunday it was fully booked. After a few frantic lengths (at 91m, it is Europe’s longest), we are all shooed out at 8.50 a.m. by the lifeguards to make way for the daytime swimmers. Those
Having just turned 65, I enjoyed a week of firsts. My first ever facial and my first ever yoga class progressed to my first ever impedancemetry session, my first ever photobiomodulation session, my first ever hyberbaric chamber session, my first ever cryotherapy session, my first ever sensory deprivation session, my first ever neurofeedback session and
I love dogs. I love lunching. I love seeing dogs in restaurants where I’m lunching. But one thing I don’t love one bit is a dog being brought to a luncheon which I’m participating in – and, most likely, paying for. Luncheons are for humans – not for our furry friends. Let’s face it, it’s
The Proms – the BBC Proms, to stick a handle on its jug – remains a good deed in a naughty world. Eight weeks of orchestral music, mainly, performed nightly at the Royal Albert Hall by artists from every continent, for as little as £8 if you are prepared to stand. One of those artists,
It was a line on Poker Face (the excellent US detective drama currently streaming on Now TV) that piqued my interest. Hunched over a laptop, Natasha Lyonne’s heroine, Charlie Cale, claimed to be working as a ‘Captcha technician’ – someone who solves those fiddly, occasionally infuriating internet puzzles for money. You know – the ones that ask
There are three little words that strike horror into the heart of every parent of school-age children. They are the words that cause you to break out in a cold sweat or let out a moan in your sleep in the dead of night – even in the middle of winter. They are ‘school summer
Ordering things online can be a lottery. You can’t touch, smell or taste the product you’re buying, so it’s hard to know whether you’ll actually want it when it arrives. But we keep clicking anyway because it’s more convenient than trudging to the shops and things are often cheaper. For me, another reason to order
‘Please call me Mark,’ I’ve always said to the teachers at my son’s school. ‘If you call me “Mr Mason” it makes me feel 85 – and if I call you “Mrs Smith” it makes me feel seven.’ I know their first names, and always use them, in emails, phone calls and in person. A
It was when I saw two other women wearing the same red-and-white-striped Boden swimming costume as me that I realised what I had become. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have been seen dead on a beach in Salcombe in a Boden swimming costume. I would have been topless on a riverbank in Provence, smoking a
Neil Young once saved my life. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. This was at an outdoor show in Finsbury Park in July 1993. I had pushed and squeezed my way almost to the front of a large crowd shortly after being passed something of dubious provenance to smoke. One moment everything was
This weekend’s racing does not get me excited from a betting point of view so instead I am going to put up three ante-post bets at big odds. These horses should give those who follow my tips an interest, hopefully even a profit, at some of the bigger meetings over the coming month. I can’t
Though I’m no fan of Donald Trump, time and again I’m delighted by the alternately crazy and sane things he says, and the way he knows the difference; he’s the antithesis of our politicians, who say crazy things they sincerely believe are sane. This week he spoke to the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue, who asked him
The news that the latest Superman picture has been an enormous hit in the United States, but has been received rather more tepidly here, has been taken in many quarters to mean that there is an anti-American mood at large. Maybe this is dictated by America’s choice of president and administration, which means other countries
After one of Jeffrey Archer’s minor tangles with the absolute truth, his friend the late Barry Humphries remarked: ‘We all invent ourselves to some degree. It’s just that Jeffrey has taken it a little further than most.’ The remark came to mind last week as the media storm over the veracity (or otherwise) of the
I feel for Locatelli, the new Italian restaurant inside the National Gallery, whose opening coincides with the 200th anniversary of the gallery and a rehang which I can’t see the point of because I want to watch Van Eyck in the dark. Locatelli must compete with the Caravaggio chicken, which is really called ‘Supper at
The tub-thumping atmosphere in the Long Room at Lord’s was so raucous late on Monday afternoon as India and England fought out the tightest of Test matches that it made a Millwall home game against West Ham seem like the Albert Hall. So a great triumph for Test cricket, yes? Well, up to a point.
The only political party with a serious chance of winning office I will ever vote for again is the one which acknowledges that in all probability and at least for a while it will increase taxes. Every party piles up promises that they will be the ones to get Britain working again. But building power
Is Stewart Lee a comedy genius or just another smug leftie comic? The country’s 41st-best stand-up, as he likes to remind us in reference to a Channel 4 poll, has built up so many protective layers that he is almost beyond criticism – which I imagine suits him just fine. As if to prove the
Have you ever heard of Duddies’ Branch? Chances are, you haven’t – because, firstly, its brief moment of fame came many years ago and, secondly, Duddies’ Branch does not actually exist. To explain: ‘Duddies’ Branch’ is the politely fake name given by an American anthropologist, Rena Gazaway, to a real and isolated settlement in a
Two British cities, Dundee and Nottingham, have been chosen as trial sites for a new government scheme to be piloted next year: state-subsidised restaurants. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has put up £1.5 million for the 12-month trial, initiated by the campaign group Nourish Scotland. If the restaurants are successful, they’ll be rolled
Rosé, like a lot of wine, is not much good. And yet people love it, for the simple fact that it is pink. This reminds them of all nice things – and especially of warm summer evenings somewhere non-grotty. Like the south of France. Or… the Napa Valley. That is where the new branded rosé
