An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Shane MacGowan spent much of his life in pubs, working in them, drinking in them, performing in them – even living in a couple. He would have turned 66 on Christmas Day, state retirement age, so he was only three and a half weeks short of reaching a finishing line of sorts when he died at
I go to my local church. But not my very local church. There’s a Pentecostal church, a plain building used mostly by worshipers from the Caribbean, on my very road. Happy music sometimes spills out and I have often seen smartly dressed worshippers outside. When I told my wife that I planned to go to
As a travel writer, you soon learn that there are countries which, when you mention them, elicit a polite smile of incomprehension, which says: er, where’s that then? Laos is a classic example. Also Kyrgyzstan. And maybe Eswatini. But can it be true that there are chunks, regions, entire departments of France that conjure the
My grannie, a proud working-class woman, had a fake crystal decanter on display in a glass cabinet, filled with weak tea. We all assumed it was sherry, and she didn’t disabuse us. I discovered the truth when I opened the lock with a hairgrip and took a swift glug. My face must have been a
Come on, it’s 6 o’clock and time for bed my mother said, there is a lot still to do before Christmas Day. Now, hang up your stocking at the end of your bed, put out biscuits on the edge of the bath for the reindeer while I ask daddy to leave a glass of warming
It’s that time of year. The sound of a Silesian Bratwurst connecting with cold lips. A security guard getting aggy with the actor playing ‘the elf’. Ketchup spraying into the air like celebratory champagne. Spilled mulled wine inebriating the local rat population. Overpriced tat sold in gift box form to drooling tourists. It’s Christmas market season.
One small but significant loss to culture that streaming sites like Netflix or Amazon Prime have ushered in is the slow death of the DVD commentary. Usually given by a film’s actors or director (or both), they could be played over the film and were packed with insights on filmmaking, the artists’ take on life
I have followed the fortunes of GIN COCO closely for the past two seasons and, even though the gelding will turn eight on New Year’s Day, I am convinced his best days still lie ahead of him. He has been lightly raced during his career with three wins from just nine runs and he could
Lord Lebedev, the proprietor of The Evening Standard, has been using the paper to wage his own ‘major inquiry’ into free speech. ‘I’ve donned my body armour and I am ready,’ he wrote in an article launching the campaign. One of Lebedev’s free-speech interviewees was Azealia Banks, the ranty singer. According to Lord Leb, Banks
Christmas means different things to different people; for Mary Sue, it will be yet another excuse to queen it over her friends. Her Christmas pudding will have been made from scratch, her carefully curated tree decorations will tell myriad stories of a perfect home life, her tasteful National Trust Christmas cards will have been sent
Ceramicist Sophie Wilson’s Christmas decorations at her Lincolnshire manor house are calmingly analogue. For her, there are no flashing lights, tawdry tinsel or store-bought baubles. ‘I love to have bare trees around, and always have a huge one in the main kitchen, big enough so I can tilt my head back and gaze up
One in, one out, as Rick says in Casablanca. Le Gavroche, which was the first restaurant in Britain to win three Michelin stars – and this was before Michelin stars indicated poor mental health in gifted chefs – closes in January, which is serious news in the land of London restaurants: a kind of Congress
A couple of years ago, I saw a charming cartoon. A boy and a girl aged about seven were in an earnest conversation. ‘Of course I don’t believe in Father Christmas,’ said the boy. ‘But we’ve got to keep up the pretence for the sake of the parents.’ This Christmas, all over the world, many
The housing market indices have stabilised, started rising even. So is that it? Is the great housing market crash over, before it had had a chance even to begin? Not according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Buried in its latest Economic and Fiscal Outlook report is a prediction that the slump is far from over.
Remember the lockdowns? I wish I didn’t, but I do. Especially that insanely grim third lockdown, the winter one, which went on and on and on and which bottomed out, for me, as I did my one allotted weekly walk along the Richmond riverside, in freezing horizontal drizzle. I made sure I had a thermos
My family is from Canning Town in London’s East End. One thing’s for sure, we never curated Christmas, never had it with bells on and we looked forward to the next one the moment it was over. There were essential elements: winkles on Christmas Eve, with my dad rather solemnly getting out the winkle pins.
On a snowy night in Nuremberg, a city that encapsulates the best and worst of Germany, a huge crowd has gathered in the ancient Marktplatz for the opening of the Christkindlesmarkt, Bavaria’s biggest Christmas market. Cradling mugs of steaming Glühwein, stamping our feet to keep out the cold, we’re all waiting for the Christkind (Christ
It has been four months since my dog died and I still feel like something is missing when I open my front door. At first, I can’t quite work it out. Did I leave the heating on at work? Should I have gone to the shops? Am I in the wrong flat? No, what’s missing is the patter of
Is champagne a wine region or a state of mind? The small bubbles have a way of getting into the bloodstream and the imagination, creating a slightly euphoric sensation which encourages pleasant chatter. But who put the sparkling genie in the bottle? Who pioneered the intricate process of secondary fermentation in a bottle strong enough
My mother passed away last year and it fell to me to sort out her house. Returning from four years in Russia and the Caucasus, I moved into her Suffolk home to get it ready for selling. There was a huge amount to do. Alongside organising my mother’s headstone – no small or hasty business
Before I started researching my book Vines in a Cold Climate, I had a particular image of English sparkling wine as consistent but rarely that exciting. It was all a bit formulaic, like big brand champagne but leaner. I am pleased to say that I could not have been more wrong as the wines now
There are a lot of extremely able jump trainers in Britain but only a handful are really adept at successfully preparing a horse for a big target, such as a race at the Cheltenham Festival or one of the season’s most valuable handicaps. These are typically the contests in which the leading Irish trainers also
It was about a year ago when my dying father, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, turned to me and said ‘Sean, can you get me some heroin?’. For a moment – understandably – I wondered if he needed this ultimate painkiller for some fairly ultimate pain, but he didn’t look like he was in agony.
This year A Christmas Carol is 180 years old, first published in December 1843. It had sold out by Christmas Eve. And it has a lot to answer for, not simply because it ultimately spawned Kelsey Grammer’s Christmas Carol musical, but because it is credited with having popularised the idea of turkey as a festive staple.
Swanage is a town torn from a picture book on the Isle of Purbeck: loveliness and vulgarity both. It is famous for fossils, Purbeck marble, a dangerous-looking small theme park, and Punch and Judy. My husband is very attached to Swanage, because it exists in a state of 1952 – in homage to this, it
Amazon has teamed up with Disney to launch a new app, Hey Disney! – a joint voice assistant feature which will allow your child to ‘Interact with Mickey Mouse, or Dory from Finding Nemo’. Just what we need. Customers can use Hey Disney! at Disneyworld theme parks – ‘ask “Disney Magical Companion” to request fresh
At the age when most children are being read The Tailor of Gloucester or ’Twas the Night before Christmas, my father took a very different approach to bedtime stories during Advent, and read me my first M.R. James story. I can’t have been much more than five years old, and he was probably a few
Not much of Hong Kong still feels British. There is the odd tube stop – Admiralty, Kennedy Town, Prince Edward – but that’s about it. On the car ride from the airport, I chatted to the driver as we passed under half-built concrete arches covered in green construction cloth. He told me the authorities were
The flamboyant, ridiculous mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor is considering a run for the Irish presidency. ‘Potential competition if I run,’ he tweeted yesterday, along with a picture of Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny, the three septuagenarian current favourites for the job. ‘Each with unbreakable ties to their individual parties politics… Or me,
