Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Why a nightcap is a dream Christmas present

Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? I ask because there is a must-have item for 2022 that may have so far escaped your attention. And that’s a small irony because at some point in the weeks ahead it will almost certainly be staring you in the face. Whether you’re reading A Christmas Carol and

His Dark Materials is the perfect Christmas viewing

When you’re sitting on the sofa in the week ahead, stupefied into submission by food and alcohol and relatives and God knows what else, you’ll be tempted to watch something that will divert you from the gluttony. And, yes, the likes of Elf, It’s A Wonderful Life and Love Actually are all available, as they were last year. But

How to get the most from your wood-burner

Recently, Sadie Nicholas shared ten lessons she’s learnt from ten years of having a wood-burner. In response, Spectator readers offered their own advice for getting the most from your wood-burner – from maximising the heat and minimising the mess to fire-lighting tricks and cooking tips… Join the fan club Try cooking with it Choose your

A guide to buying scent for Christmas

Is it presumptuous to buy perfume as a gift without knowing the recipient will like it? Scent is such a personal choice, we are told, ad infinitum. But those in close confines with a person drenched in fragrance will experience it as much as (if not more than) the wearer. Purchasing an eau de toilette

Cheryl Tweedy’s West End debut is one to watch

For an industry so dependent on glitz and glamour, the West End has never quite mastered the celebrity debut. While big names might be a surefire way of shifting tickets, they have an unfortunate knack for ending up in mediocre plays – even when they’re as famous as Madonna. The problem is partly structural. A-listers

Two 20-1 shots for the festive period

The likeable Joe Tizzard was a talented jockey and he is proving equally adept as a trainer. His father, Colin Tizzard, retired at the end of last season after a hugely successful training career so this is Tizzard Jnr’s first season with only his name on the licence. Tizzard has already trained 32 winners this

Rum deal: the fight to save Trader Vic’s

I have just been proposed to in a somewhat slatternly tiki bar in Mayfair. Not just any tiki bar, but Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian-themed restaurant and lounge underneath the London Hilton on Park Lane. Approaching its 60th anniversary, the bar has seen better days, but for historical purposes my partner of 12 years decided that

Bring back the handwritten school report

The end of term is here and parents up and down the country will be awaiting the arrival of their child’s end-of-term report. But I hope they won’t be expecting too many pearls of wisdom from the impersonal emails that will ping into their inboxes shortly.   Ten or a dozen years ago (the exact date

South Africa and a toast to democracy

Not everything in the entire world is going to hell in a half-track. A few days ago, I tasted some South African wines. Although there are many reasons for a gloomy appraisal of South Africa’s prospects, wine is not among them. The industry is benefitting from new investment, encouraged by easier export markets made possible

Roger Alton

Wesley Hall represents everything that cricket should be

Few sights in the history of cricket have been more thrilling – or more terrifying for batsmen – than the great West Indian fast bowler Wes Hall coming in off his 30-yard run. He is now Sir Wesley, and frail at 85, but still as forthright and impressive as ever. I was privileged to be

Olivia Potts

A last-minute alternative to Christmas cake: boiled fruit cake

This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December due date, I’d ensured everything was squirrelled or squared away. I’d bought all my presents by October, wrapped them by December; I’d made my Christmas cakes and bought my Terry’s Chocolate Orange. For the first

Antarctica: the best journey in the world

If there is one minor pitfall of being a travel writer, it is this. Whenever you tell a bunch of people what you do, invariably someone will ask: ‘Where’s the best place you’ve ever been?’ I struggled to answer until I got on a special new boat called the Greg Mortimer, operated by a Australian

What makes the perfect pub?

From Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tabard and Martin Amis’s Black Cross to Thomas Hardy’s Buck’s Head Inn, literature is as replete with pubs as are villages and high streets up and down the land. It is no surprise. They are atmospheric settings for a plot, and places of inspiration and contemplation besides; many authors have written their

Lisa Haseldine

How to make the most of Vienna’s Christmas markets

Oh, Vienna. Home to Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Freud, the Danube, waltzing and coffee house culture, to name but a few. Famous for its history and culture, the Austrian capital’s cobbled streets fizz with stories of ages past.  In my opinion, there is no better time to visit than in the winter – and the run-up

Have Christmas cards had their day?

The festive season brings with it many enjoyably trivial decisions to fret over. Sprouts with or without chestnuts and bacon? To tastefully colour-scheme the Christmas tree or throw every garish bauble at it? Presents before or after lunch? This year, however, I have another decision to make and it’s one that I’m finding surprisingly tough:

A house-hunter’s guide to haggling

Not so long ago buyers were treating house-hunting as a blood sport – price ceiling-shattering bids and gazumping were commonplace everywhere from the Cornish coast to the London suburbs to the Lake District. But six months is a long time in property. Following the debacle of the mini-Budget and amid rising interest rates and soaring

The art of the stocking-filler book

The best stocking-filler present I received last year was the bumper Christmas edition of The Spectator. But it wasn’t the only erudite reading matter crammed into a moth-eaten ski sock. Nestled under a mouldy tangerine and some chocolate money destined to be stolen by my children were: How it Works: The Dad (Ladybird for Grown-Ups);

The empty eco-activism of renting clothes

From time to time my Instagram algorithm will taunt me with a dress. It is – unequivocally ­– the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. Satin, emerald green, halter-neck. The dress retails for about £200, and is always sold out in my size. The ad that Instagram teases me with is for a rental, which

Melanie McDonagh

Turkey isn’t the only option for a Christmas feast

Christmas is coming – but if the geese are getting fat, the turkeys aren’t terribly happy, cooped up indoors on account of avian flu. Around half of the free-range birds produced for Christmas in the UK have been culled or died due to the illness, according to the British Poultry Council – and for those

Tom Goodenough

Shamebridge: why is Cambridge so embarrassed about its past?

Finding Cambridge’s ugly side isn’t easy, but a walking tour of the city promises to show you it. Uncomfortable Cambridge, which bills itself as the ‘perfect introductory tour’ of the city, suggests tourists are wrong to think this is a place of beauty. Rather, Cambridge is a place we should be ashamed of – or

What are the best alternatives to Twitter?

From the moment Elon Musk suggested buying Twitter, users began threatening to leave – and the Tesla kingpin’s erratic behaviour since he took over hasn’t exactly helped his case, with thousands of workers laid off and hundreds more resigning. The MIT Technology Review estimates that more than a million Twitter users have jumped ship since

How Australian rock art warns us about 2023

If you had to choose an obvious place to look for clues about what will happen in the coming year, it probably wouldn’t be the lush, green, watery tropic wilderness of Mount Borradaile, West Arnhemland, in the Northern Territory, Australia, hard by the sizzling blue reaches of the Arafura Sea. For a start, this lost,

Who to back at the Welsh National

The Coral Welsh Grand National is my favourite jumps race of the whole season, largely because I have enjoyed a good record in the race over the years. You need a strong stayer, a good jumper and a well-handicapped horse to win the race. Usually, you want a mud-lover too but that’s not guaranteed this time around because of the lack of

The remaking of Margate

The faded splendour of 1980s Margate is the backdrop for Sam Mendes’s new film Empire of Light, starring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. Coming to UK cinemas on 9 January, it’s about a romance in the north Kent seaside town and the revival of a striking 1930s cinema with a distinctive brick ‘fin’ tower. Renamed

Julie Burchill

How ‘iconic’ became anything but

Though I love words, I don’t generally get on other people’s cases about them as I don’t expect everyone to have my almost parasexual attachment to the English language. I’ve suffered silently through the flagrant misuse of ‘epic’ and ‘awesome‘ and numerous moronic reference to food as ‘orgasmic’ and ‘artisanal’ featuring ‘curated table-scapes’. If you’re

Lisa Haseldine

The best cookbooks to give this Christmas

I love a good cookbook. In an age where endless variations on any recipe are no more than a few clicks away on the internet, there is still a certain magic to buying, or receiving, a physical, curated collection.  Cookbooks can teach you something in a way that individual online recipes can’t. Whether exploring a

Olivia Potts

You don’t need a fondue set to make fondue

‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two of us for a weekday lunch, alongside a teetering pile of bread cubes. He is, I’m afraid, right: it really is my favourite kind of eating. There’s nothing better than a communal pot in the