An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Picture the scene: it’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday. You’re sitting on the sofa in the home of someone you barely know, gulping supermarket wine, making inane chitchat with friends of friends as you all put off the inevitable: discussing a book only a third of the women – always women – in the room
Mixing business with pleasure can be risky business. For decades the City of London has upheld this doctrine, religiously prioritising office space over new homes to preserve its reputation as a global financial centre. In his 29-year tenure as the City of London’s planning chief, Peter Rees famously allowed only one new residential tower to
In his first interview since being reappointed, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly laid down some clear diplomatic water between his party and Labour – confirming that, unlike Keir Starmer, he would attend this winter’s Qatar World Cup. The Foreign Secretary won’t be alone. The Football Association expects that some 10,000 England fans will make the journey
Once upon a time, well within living memory, a free-born Britisher could drink as much as he or she liked and smoke with a carefree abandon – all within working hours, and even without leaving their desk. You may remember elevenses – immortalised in those moments when M briefs Bond in the 007 films and
From Fawlty Towers to Psycho, hotel horrors have long provided a rich seam of material for big screen and small. HBO’s The White Lotus, which returns to Sky Atlantic tonight for its second series, swept the board at last month’s Emmys, with ten wins in the limited series category for its sharp social satire set at an upmarket
Ziplining and beekeeping may not be your typical city break activities – but then again, Ottawa is not your typical city. Sandwiched between the more sought-after Toronto and Montreal, it’s also not typically at the top of travellers’ wish-lists. When I started planning my visit, the question I kept being asked was ‘why go there?’.
Since the pandemic, the UK’s dog population has boomed to more than 12 million, with a third of households owning one. But while once we might have been content to kit them out with their own kennel, now it seems they’re dictating what sort of home we want for ourselves. Buyers are increasingly seeking out properties
He is completely bald but his eyebrows are grotesquely hirsute; his ears and chin are both weirdly elongated, as are his bony fingers; and as he creeps up the stairs towards the bedroom of a young woman in white, his hunched frame casts a sinister shadow. Count Orlok in Nosferatu is as instantly recognisable a cinematic figure
Three cheers for whoever came up with the title of the Duke of Sussex’s upcoming autobiography, Spare. It’s punchy – and it evokes a sense of sadness. Is this how Harry has always felt? Like a disposable spare part? The ‘heir and the spare’ describes the first in line to the throne and the ‘reserve’ monarch.
A few days ago, when everything looked black, a small group of us were consoling ourselves over a couple of good bottles. ‘In politics,’ said I, ‘things are never as bad as you fear, or as good as you hope.’ ‘I entirely agree,’ replied one friend. ‘At the moment, things are not as bad as
I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am compelled to pick it up. That’s probably one of the reasons that I love bananas Foster so much: it owes its existence to a challenge. In the 1950s, New Orleans was a major port of
A few years ago I wrote here about the unexpected symbiosis between economy passengers and business travellers on commercial flights. Largely unnoticed by people in either cabin, those buying each class of air ticket are unintentionally helping out their fellow travellers at the other end of the plane. Precisely because the two classes of passenger
Under the sink. That’s where most of us will be keeping a stash of candles in case the lights go out this winter on account of an erratic electricity supply. There’s nothing worse than finding yourself in darkness and not remembering where you’ve left the candles and the matches. Be prepared. We’ve got out of
Here’s a treat for Christmas: a bona fide literary treasure for under a tenner. And a handsome little hardback, too, which you could certainly squeeze into a stocking. On Travel and the Journey Through Life is an anthology of one-liners and observations on travel, from the high-spirited and romantic to the moody and downright cynical.
It seems our course is set. Food prices are rising at the fastest rate in more than 40 years, taking the average family’s yearly grocery bill over £5,200 – and there’s no relief in sight. Lord Woolton would be rubbing his hands at a situation so ripe for his ingenuity and optimism – and perhaps his namesake
I stumbled upon it in one of the darkest corners of the internet: a Facebook parenting group. The mother’s intentions were pure, I tried to tell myself. But I couldn’t help feeling exasperated – and even a bit saddened – by her post: ‘I’m desperately looking for a Rubik’s cube tutor for my son,’ read
The British middle-classes are a predictable breed. We love nothing more than to take goods that were once prudent and pragmatic and give them a luxury edge. From the Mini Cooper, first marketed as an affordable car for the masses, to Land Rover Defenders that we have no intention of spoiling with mud, we like
If you’re going to visit Costa Rica, my advice is to steer clear of all the stuff that looks most exciting in the brochure: the zip-wires, the thermal springs and the white-water rafting. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it. Nor realistically – especially if you’ve kids in tow – are you likely to be
It’s a rocky rural idyll on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The craggy sea cliffs – Europe’s highest – are swathed in the orange setting sun. Animals – sheep, cows, donkeys – gambol rather than walk on the ancient bog and jump over the babbling brooks. The sand is golden, the ocean as green
The fifth series of Netflix’s The Crown will soon be upon us. Scripted, as ever, by Peter Morgan, the show will cover the travails of the royal family throughout the 1990s, spanning everything from the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marital difficulties and eventual divorce to the rumours of Prince Philip conducting an affair with a
From the man down the pub/on Twitter to major lenders and think-tanks, homebuyers and sellers can barely move for so-called experts dishing out advice on the property market. Rising interest rates and increased mortgage costs have prompted fears of a house price slump, with Capital Economics predicting a 5 per cent drop over the next
My day had started as it always does, with a near 40-mile round trip to school, then an hour’s walk in the pretty country park close to our home near Nottingham. As usual, I parked in the small car park and exchanged ‘good mornings’ and ‘beautiful weather, isn’t it?’ with the familiar faces I see
When Carrie Symonds first emerged as the paramour of Prime Minister Johnson, I liked what I saw. I admired her bravery in waiving her anonymity to reveal that, as a teenager, she had been targeted by the serial rapist John Worboys to campaign against his release from prison. And I appreciated her love of our
The late actor Christopher Plummer once likened working with Julie Andrews on The Sound of Music to ‘being hit over the head with a big Valentine’s Day card’. Reading the latest bulletin from the Duchess of Sussex, the image returned unbidden; having to listen to the ceaseless stream of platitudes that this bad actress expels
As the credits rolled on the series finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, things got awkward. My partner turned to me to express his excitement for series two – just as I realised with absolute certainty that I couldn’t, in good conscience, watch the show again. My reaction came as
‘Come along, kiddie-winkies! Come and get your treacle tart,’ the Child Catcher trills in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, to lure children away. The youngsters are particularly taken with the idea of treacle tart, and it’s not difficult to imagine why: unapologetically sweet and sticky, it’s irresistible to small, greedy hands. It’s easy to dismiss treacle
Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde, a story of Marilyn Monroe’s life based on an adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates novel, has been the subject of much divisive discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Caren Spruch of Planned Parenthood told the Hollywood Reporter that she sees the film as ‘anti-abortion propaganda’. A tweet that went viral said filmmaker
The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves of the Royal Opera House, now restyled and open to those without tickets to the opera or ballet. If it were honest, Piazza would name itself Attic or Eaves, but the Garden, as idiotscall it,
I have a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II and her parents on the wall of my bathroom, not out of any lack of respect but because the gloom there prevents it fading. It is signed Albert, with an odd droop forward of the bar of the T to join a single flourish beneath, and Elizabeth