An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Iranians adore a picnic. During the country’s most ancient festival, Nowruz, the Persian new year, they brandish baskets of food as they swarm into parks and gardens to celebrate Sizdah-bedar, the 13th and final day of the Nowruz celebrations and the coming of spring. In Britain, it’s only just getting warm enough to enjoy a
Amid the bronze cladding of Soho, with its pop-up, suck-down restaurants – the Cadbury’s Creme Egg Café was a nadir – Maison Bertaux hangs on, the oldest French patisserie in the UK, and 151 this year. It was founded by Monsieur Bertaux, a Communard fleeing France with a book of recipes. Their loss, our gain.
‘Was that Will Smith?’ This was Chris Rock’s characteristically quick and hilarious reaction when his friend, comedian Dave Chappelle, was tackled by an audience member on Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl. Comedy venues need to be a sacred space, free from the threat of violence We don’t yet know the motive, we don’t yet
According to the NHS, one in seven Britons lives with a phobia. But how many take the plunge and face their fear directly? Looking at the growth of bespoke phobia ‘experiences’ – in which sufferers get the chance to challenge their fear in a controlled environment – the number might be higher than you think.
The Duchess of Cornwall revealed a surprising hobby during a visit to a charity shop on Tuesday. After splashing out on a £1.50 mug celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee, Camilla confessed that she has a ‘whole collection’ of royal memorabilia at home. With the Platinum Jubilee just weeks away, there will be plenty more opportunities for the
There are moments in life that serve as a wake-up call to adulthood. Perhaps, the first was sitting in the beige office of a mortgage broker, wondering how my soon-to-be-husband and I had made the leap from meeting on a sweaty Durham dance floor to this airless room in Holborn. More recently, it was looking
Being a city with tightly-packed buildings and frankly aggressive weather, London doesn’t immediately announce itself as a place to grab an alfresco drink. However, a renewed love of the great outdoors – something to do with being inside a lot recently, I imagine – has seen Londoners flock to the city’s terraces at the first
The biggest long-term threat to the Conservatives is neither partygate nor even the cost of living crisis – but declining rates of home ownership. As Mrs Thatcher understood, when people are able to afford their own home, they become more conservative in outlook. They put down roots in their local area and they gain a
Is there anything more extraordinary than dining in New York City? Whether you’re sitting down for the Michelin star experience of a lifetime at Le Bernardin or squeezing in at the counter of Vanessa’s Dumpling House on the Lower East Side ($1 a pop), the New York restaurant combines atmosphere with quality food in a
I would do anything to help a friend. Need money? A shoulder to cry on? A place to stay? A confidant to confess to? I’m your man. Want me to read your new novel? Forget it. I would do anything for a friend, but as the late Meat Loaf would say: I won’t do that.
It is hard to think of a vegetable which is as eagerly anticipated as that of home-grown asparagus. Partly it is because the season is so short: St George’s Day traditionally marks the start of the season which typically lasts for just eight weeks. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and, so long as we
You don’t see Waldorf salad so much nowadays. It’s a simple dish: raw celery, apple, grapes and walnuts, tossed in a mayonnaise-based dressing. Although you might still find it packaged in the bigger supermarkets, it’s fallen off dinner tables and restaurant menus alike. We wrinkle our noses at the prospect of combining fresh fruit and
Until recently a ‘special military operation’ typically referred to a particular action/plan rather than all-out war. Unless you happen to live in Putin’s Russia, that is. John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) take on the real-life Operation Mincemeat is a solid entry in the canon of WWII movies that concern themselves with a particular military objective and
Fringes have in recent years been considered attractive – Bettie Page, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Birkin, Kate Moss – so it is easy to forget the period we have been living through is something of an aberration. For most of history, cutting a fringe has tended to mark a woman out as odd, mad or suspicious.
Amid the grandeur of old Edinburgh, in the lee of the castle, is one of the finest buildings in Scotland: George Heriot’s School. But Heriot’s is more than an architectural gem. It is an epitome of Scotland as it used to be, before the Scottish esprit de corps succumbed to kailyard grievance-mongering under the rule
Is Steve Coogan a one trick pony? It’s a question that has dogged the Mancunian actor’s career ever since his preening Partridge flapped into the nation’s affections over thirty years ago. Since then, with a couple of notable exceptions (his turn as Stan Laurel was a triumph), Coogan’s projects have been little more than variations on
Prime Central London has always been viewed as safe. It has some major plus points for the world’s wealthy – it’s on the Greenwich Meridian so can trade East and West, is an island considered geographically safe and geo-politically stable. Wherever you lived in the world you could stash a considerable portion of your wealth in
Wine tourism is booming. France alone attracts 10 million oenophile tourists each year, generating almost $6 billion (£4.6 billion) annually, according to CNBC. But with places like Bordeaux, Champagne and Napa Valley in the US suffering increasingly from overtourism and rising prices, many wine lovers are seeking more offbeat destinations. From tiny islands to primordial
If there’s one company that’s a kind of stock market indicator of the condition of the British middle classes, it’s Lakeland. It specialises in very good household stuff – cleaning and cookware and any number of ingenious gadgets (the catalogues are, I have to say, addictive) – and it has an uncanny knack of registering
Most of life’s guilty pleasures eventually lose their lustre, but one decadent delight that never fades is spending a long weekend with a significant other in one of Europe’s grand hotels. For a few days you’re living a different life, a more glamorous existence, like characters in a Continental film noir. You’re bound to have
With its high society intrigue, gossipy plotlines, raunchy love scenes and gravity defying hair do’s, all set against the backdrop of spectacularly sumptuous homes, Netflix series Bridgerton has rewritten the rules for small-screen period drama. The Shonda Rhimes exec-produced series gained 193 million hours of viewing time for its second series in the first three days –
Beef is one of our proudest national exports. Though showcasing British beef to the world has at times had its challenges, one story raises a smile: as a result of BSE, British beef was banned in France during Lord Jay’s tenure as our ambassador in Paris. He and his wife Sylvia made a principle of
The onset of summer makes me feel giddy. And it seems from those piling into beer gardens and loading up their hampers for picnics in parks, I’m not alone. Perhaps this is because it is of course too early for summer, I’m not ready for it. And to be fair, it’s barely arrived. Spring is
News of the Anatomy of a Scandal billboards on Sunset Boulevard sits in my DMs while I shepherd my teens through the preschool chaos. It’s the morning I drive my youngest to school. ‘Have you seen my goggles?’ he calls, while I covertly flick to the Insta app on my phone and see that one
This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex. This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects.
Nine years ago, when I invested every-thing I had in a part-rent, part-buy, one-bedroom, government-backed eco-home which proved to be a boiling box in summer, my first instinct was to throw myself out of a window – but I couldn’t because they opened only ten centimetres. My second was to complain about it in The
‘It makes me hungry,’ said my husband when I mentioned the word salmagundi. That is his reaction to many words. But he liked the sound of it. I think in its sound, suggestive of something impossible to pin down, it resembles serendipity. The obscure French original of salmagundi, a dish of chopped up meat and
I am never bored with Harrods, only disgusted, and it is disgust of the most animated and exciting kind. It is Nabokov’s fish-tank of a department store, but with lampshades, not hebephilia. Its wares have surpassed its beginnings, which were haberdashery. Charles Harrod’s first shop was at 228 Borough High Street when George IV, who
The Queen has spent more time than most deciding what to wear to work each day, having spent the last 70 years as monarch. As one of the most photographed women in the world, her dress sense has played a large role in defining her image as a timeless figure who rises above cultural trends and
