An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
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,
He had mutton chop sideburns, a vast quiff and was dressed in black leather, even down to murderers’ gloves, over which he wore enormous silver rings, which he then wiggled in a beckoning fashion while staring suggestively into the camera. Nevermind hiding behind the sofa during Dr Who – for me, in December 1973, as
In the cavernous basement of Bilker Bunker, a second world war air raid shelter in downtown Düsseldorf, the staff of groovy events guide the Dorf are toasting the magazine’s tenth birthday. During the war, Germans sheltered here from the RAF. Today, their descendants come here to party. With an art gallery up above and DJs
The first decade of this century, following Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in September 2001, was something of a golden age for films about terrorism, a spate of them following in quick succession. In the light of Hamas’s 7 October mass-killing of innocent Israelis, it’s interesting and informative to watch
When I first heard about ebooks, I was horrified. Something deep within me flinched. Surely, I thought – my surface brain trying to rationalise this atavistic spasm – the tactile reality of books is an intrinsic part of the joy of books? Nowadays I only read a physical book if there really is no alternative
Despite only being 30, the students at the school at which I work often make me feel old. They love nothing more than testing my knowledge of their Gen-Z slang: no, I don’t know what you mean when you say Romeo is a ‘simp’ or whether Macbeth’s behaviour is ‘sus’. My average 12-year-old student is
An increasing number of British companies are using personality tests to hire staff. Two of the more popular personality tests are the Big Five and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). There’s just one problem and it’s a rather big one: both of these tests are utterly scientifically useless. And Brits are being hired (or not hired) based on the results
The weather is going to play a key role in the outcome of tomorrow’s big race, the Coral Gold Cup (Newbury, 2.50 p.m.). To start with, the cold snap might even claim the card altogether with a course inspection due at 7.30 a.m. on race day. Secondly, after little rain over the past fortnight, the
Tel Aviv is the size of Bristol, with about 400,000 residents each. While Bristol has 400 pubs and bars, and just shy of a thousand restaurants, the rough concrete charm of Tel Aviv yields no fewer than 1,750 cafes, bars and clubs and more than 4,000 places to eat. Tel Aviv is a dense, hedonistic city: friendly,
This month’s timely trivia includes a canny England footballer, an endangered Lady Astor and a confused Nicholas Parsons. Oh, and we learn how many cups of coffee Steven Spielberg has drunk in his life … ANSWER: The stations are Heathrow Terminal 5, Heathrow Terminal 4, Heathrow Terminals 2&3, Hatton Cross, Hounslow West, Hounslow Central and
From my desk, as I write this, in a lofty room in a soaring new hotel in Phnom Penh, I can look down at the bustling streets and see the concrete, mosque-meets-spaceship dome of the Cambodian capital’s famous Central Market. Which also happens to be the place where, 20 years ago, I ate the single
A friend was in town, who rebuts two instances of dull conventional wisdom. The first is that although Swiss Germans may have many qualities – they make excellent bankers – they have no joie de vivre. The Calvinist heritage persists. Second, that the Swiss are an implacably martial race. Other armies, especially the British, use
When the Roman Emperor Justinian finished building the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople in 537 he compared it to the great temple in Jerusalem. ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee,’ he declared. Some 400 years later, as visiting ambassadors from Kyiv were led into the same ethereal structure, they remarked: ‘We did not know if we
The späti is a Berlin institution. These late-night corner shops began popping up in the former German Democratic Republic for workers clocking off from their evening shifts. Serving as a mixture of mini-supermarket and meeting place, spätis have outdoor seating, often wobbly wooden tables and benches on which locals sit and drink cheap bottles of
I never thought it would be possible to feel such emotion about a lump of hot metal but I am in love and like all new passions it’s threatening to become all-consuming. I find reasons to drop it into conversation, I seek out others and join groups on social media that share the same predilection
The big London restaurant opening of the autumn has been The Devonshire in Denman Street, Soho, close to Piccadilly Circus. There was a run on bookings as soon as the reviews appeared. Giles Coren in the Times wrote: ‘What a place. What. A. Place.’ Jimi Famurewa’s review in the Evening Standard appeared under the headline: ‘Nothing beats a good
A couple of weeks ago, I made the dish I always make at this time of year. It’s a Hungarian gulyás – or more correctly, a pörkölt – a mixture of beef, onions, peppers, tomatoes and paprika, stewed very slowly and served with plenty of sour cream. It’s appropriate this dish should be from Hungary, as
So Debrett’s has really got behind the latest technology by issuing a guide to the appropriate use of the mobile phone, or rather, ten commandments. The oldies are warned that young people take fright at an unexpected call – text first to see if it’s convenient – and the young are told that they should
We’ve all been there, dragged along to the office/company/feminist protest group/a cappella throat-singing-society Christmas meal out. The idea of sitting around a huge table eating bad food with a group of people who either bore you rigid or who you actively dislike doesn’t seem particularly appealing. Why will the food inevitably be terrible, wherever you
You didn’t have to like football to feel some sort of affinity with Terry Venables. He had bags of East London charm, oodles of enthusiasm and glossy good looks (as long as you didn’t mind the gold medallion around his permanently tanned neck). As it happens, I like football very much – so it was
Self-pity and Deliveroo go hand in hand. You can’t have the latter without the former. It’s impossible to watch a rain-drenched driver fight with his moped’s side stand – while you sit torpidly in your pants by the window – without the heavy feeling of self-loathing. There’s something shameful about it, something pathetic. If Dante