Spectator Life

Spectator Life

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

Olivia Potts

Whisky syrup sponge: the perfect pick-me-up

Bringing something golden, sweet and uplifting into your kitchen and life is exactly what is required at this time of year. And it doesn’t get more golden, sweet or uplifting than a syrup sponge. A syrup sponge is a steamed pudding, laced with golden syrup. The pudding itself is made by pouring a cake-style batter

The art of chocolate pairing

The Mesoamerican Mayans exchanged it as currency; botany boffin Carl Linnaeus christened it ‘food of the Gods’; and fictional fatso Augustus Gloop loved it so much he ended up in a river of the stuff. Yes, if Easter is about anything, then we’re pretty sure it’s about chocolate. And just as chocolate triggers serotonin, so

Ten thrillers with twists to rival Sleuth

Joe Mankiewicz’s classic Olivier/Caine two-handed mystery thriller Sleuth will mark its 50th anniversary later this year, fortuitously in time for the release of Knives Out 2, which promises to be a similarly intriguing whodunnit – at least on the basis of 2019’s initial movie. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s Tony award-winning play, Sleuth depicts a battle of

Laura Freeman

The cult of the extortionate ‘English’ kitchen

A house around the corner is on its fourth kitchen in a decade. Every two or three years, the house changes hands, the pristine kitchen comes out and a newer, pristiner kitchen goes in. They are always white, they are always shiny, and when I peer through the basement windows there is nothing in the

Susan Hill

My love affair with the Wolseley

I was sitting alone at a small table in the Wolseley, Piccadilly, waiting for my supper and feeling a sense of absolute contentment. The evening buzz in that theatre-set of a restaurant has always been slightly more subdued than the lunchtime one. The lighting is lower; there are candles, there is calm. On my right,

Tanya Gold

£120 steak that looks like a M&S meal deal: The Maine reviewed

Last week Chris Corbin and Jeremy King lost control of the restaurant group they founded: Corbin & King, which made the Wolseley, the Delaunay and Brasserie Zédel under Piccadilly Circus where, if they were lucky, tourists would tumble as if into a fairy pool. Corbin and King understand that a superb restaurant looks after its

The death of the guidebook

Is it the end of the road for the guidebook? Since Mariana Starke wrote Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent in 1820, with tips on the most ‘tolerable’ inns and how to hire a horse carriage, travellers have been packing a volume of advice alongside their identity documents before setting off for foreign terrain.

Why vinegar could be the key to losing weight

We all know about the perils of sugar. 90 per cent of us suffer from glucose (blood sugar) spikes every day. You may have even contended with the symptoms without recognising the cause: fatigue, cravings, mood swings, poor energy, bad sleep, acne and, crucially, weight gain. But what if you could mitigate the effects of glucose without

What I learnt from Ludovico Einaudi

Last week I went to The Hammersmith Apollo to see Ludovico Einaudi perform his new album Underwater. I hadn’t been to a concert since before the pandemic and had forgotten the thrill of live music. Recordings can never match the sensual and social experience of live performance. When listened to collectively,  music unmasks the soul – solitary emotions

Why the Welsh are turning their backs on rugby

In the space of a few days last month, two games were held a mile apart in Cardiff. The first was the concluding episode of the Six Nations tournament, the second a crucial World Cup football qualifier. Beyond jubilation and disappointment, the occasions exposed the gulf between the two most popular sports in Wales: the former

The secret to buying in Italy

The best recent advert for the bella vita is surely actor Stanley Tucci sampling regional cuisines in CNN’s Searching for Italy exclaiming ‘oh my god’ at least four times an episode as he swoons over risotto Milanese or Sicilian pasta alla Norma. It’s these sun-soaked visions of a foodie paradise that persuade scores of Northern Europeans

The enduring appeal of Watergate

On 24 April the series Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell and Sean Penn as Watergate-era U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, will premiere on Starz. It joins a multitude of books, films, and TV shows about Watergate, starting with the Oscar-winning All the President’s Men (1976) running through to 2017’s The Post. Granted, Watergate was one

Emily Hill

Is it really a crime to stare?

‘A sky full of stars and he was staring at her’ is a love poem by a dead Roman but on the London Underground, all a man will find if he looks skyward is a TFL advert warning him if he stares at me in an Attican fashion I’m to call the police. ‘Staring’ (Sadiq

The little slice of Route 66 that you can tackle in 24 hours

Blake Shelton’s ‘God’s Country’ plays on the radio as bolts of lightning tear through dark clouds, illuminating the corn fields of the Midwest. ‘Slow down,’ demands Mum, clutching her seat. It’s clear she’s grateful the rental company did not give me the muscle car that I was hoping for. We’re on America’s ‘Mother Road’, otherwise

Bruce Willis on screen: from Die Hard to Looper

The sad news that Bruce Willis is ‘stepping away’ from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis came as a surprise to fans, but the film industry has been rife with rumours about his possible medical problems over recent years. The slew of cheap straight-to-DVD action thrillers (with relatively little screen time) he starred in since 2014

Isabel Hardman

A nature lover’s guide to spring wildflowers

We have reached the time in spring when everything goes whoosh! and the bare brown and grey days of winter start becoming a distant memory. There are so many spring flowers around, and everyone likes to gab on about tulips and bluebells and blossom, while pointedly ignoring some of our most beautiful wild flowers. Even

Olivia Potts

Crunch time: how to make the perfect crisp sandwich

A crisp sandwich is a private and personal endeavour. In my experience (and I have considerable experience in this particular area) it is usually eaten alone in the kitchen, often over the sink. It is deliberately unsophisticated, the ultimate fast food: simple, salty, satisfying. It is a snack that speaks of the person you are,

War, wine and the brilliance of Beychevelle

If only toasts and good wishes were weapons of war. At every serious repast I have attended since the invasion began, someone has raised a glass to the heroes – and heroines – of Ukraine. The rest of us have responded with a blend of solemnity and moist-eyed emotion. One’s emotions are strange. I can

Toby Young

My £50-a-week chocolate habit

As I’ve got older my tastes have generally become less refined. During my youth I dutifully slogged through Kafka, Camus and Sartre, but my current bedtime reading is Sharpe’s Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell. With movies, I used to feel obliged to watch subtitled masterpieces like La Règle du jeu and Le Salaire de la Peur,

Why millennials love midcentury modern

I’ve recently become betrothed, so naturally I’ve started playing the fantasy house game; scrolling through property sites on my phone, highest price first, before I go to sleep at night. I thought I knew what I was looking for; a Georgian townhouse, solid stone steps leading up to a grand front door, basement kitchen, you

The joy of car-free islands

No traffic, no pollution, no sound of engines revving at midnight; car-free destinations may be few and far between these days but there’s no better way to escape the clamour of modern life. Perhaps the most delightful car-free retreats are the ones situated most closely to cities: the contrast only adds to their allure. Sail away from Athens for a couple

Damian Reilly

Will Smith’s slap was a triumph

Will Smith’s straight arm slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars was, for my money, the most interesting event ever to have transpired at any awards show in history. It pips even my previous favourite, which was when Jarvis Cocker ran onstage during the 1996 Brits to reveal his buttocks in protest at Michael Jackson’s

How to eat well for less

Inflation is (if you’ll excuse the pun) biting. So how can you keep down the cost of the weekly shop and get maximum bang for your buck in the kitchen without compromising? I have always shopped by the yellow sticker and the discount aisle. When I first started getting creative in the kitchen as an

What Will Smith’s slap means for comedy

Now this is a story all about how The Oscars got flipped-turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute. Just sit right there. I’ll tell you how I told told a joke about a chick with no hair… Well, I think we all know what the opening routine of Chris Rock’s next Netflix special is going to be.

Brendan O’Neill

Chris Rock, not Will Smith, is the hero men need

There was an explosion of masculinity on the stage at the Oscars last night. Male behaviour was on display for all to see. No, not from Will Smith, who behaved like a big, dumb baby, but from Chris Rock. It was Rock’s calmness and stoicism, his mastery of his emotions, that was truly manly. If

The death of the tweenager

We have the 90s to thank for the birth of the ‘tweenager’: pop bands like S Club 7 and B•witched were targeted exclusively at this age group of girls between nine and thirteen years old. Magazines like GirlTalk indulged in chatter about puppies and Mother’s Day crafts. Pre-teen girls were beginning to be considered as a commercial

How freewheeling Austin drew in Covid-weary Californians

One of Austin’s monikers is the City of the Violet Crown. It comes from the beguiling atmospheric shenanigans known as the Belt of Venus that casts a bar of pinkish, purplish haze above the horizon at sunrise and sunset when the city’s Mexican free-tailed bats — about 750,000 of them — are either returning to or leaving from hanging