An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell into administration in 2020. It is a famous brasserie — London’s version of La Coupole — once owned by Michael Caine, a famous actor, and Peter Langan, a famous drunk, who would crawl across the
As Sigmund Freud once told me in a YouTube video: ‘Who lacks sex – speaks about sex, hungry talks about food, a person who has no money – about money, and our oligarchs and bankers talk about morality.’ So beware anyone who starts preaching ‘self-love’ at you. Chances are they hate themselves quite as much
I’m not sure how a family of Warsaw bakers – my own – ended up in the northeast of England, specifically Sunderland, in England in the 1860s. The family myth – and it is a myth, because we have absolutely no evidence for it – is that they planned to take ship for America, but
That Essex County Council is spending £300,000 on an advertising campaign to rehabilitate its reputation can’t come as a surprise. The only surprise is that it didn’t think to do it before – or that somehow they believe £300,000 is enough to turn the tide. As far as I can tell, £300,000 won’t touch the sides.
Every now and then you watch something that makes you realise how much the likes of Netflix have skewed our viewing habits. While the kings of streaming may have injected more money into Hollywood than ever before, they’ve also stacked the deck yet further in favour of the celebrity blockbuster, the big and the bombastic.
The poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote of South American waterfalls that spill over the sides of mountaintops ‘in soft slow motion’, and I was reminded of her lines on the Colombian Pacific coast where seemingly every bay has a wonderful waterfall tumbling down into it. As there are no roads to speak of, the only way
Being Henry VIII’s confessor must have been a nerve-racking job, but it’s one John Longland – who also held the titles Dean of Salisbury and Bishop of Lincoln, and was thus a major ecclesiastical figure of the Tudor era – held with aplomb. Although he was closely associated with influential men (and bigger names) such
The paperback’s cover showed a woman and man walking down Ludgate Hill towards Fleet Street with St Paul’s behind them and a red double decker passing to their right, dressed in the office fashions of the post war years. It looked like a still from an Ealing Comedy. A friend posted the image on his
Our countryside is one of the wonders of the world – a great patchwork quilt of green fields, hedgerows, and rolling hills. But our sad little secret is that England ranks among the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Countless species have vanished altogether, and others cling on in isolated patches of remnant nature. While
I’ve long been drawn to sketchiness. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, I always preferred the dodgy and slightly dangerous old-town Piazza area to the trendy and sanitised Bole area next to the international airport. But even by my sketchy-embracing standards, it was hard not to find the grim state of Athens deflating. After all,
I don’t quite know how the Americans got away with it: convincing first their own people, and then the rest of the world that a muffin is a suitable breakfast food? A foodstuff which is, let’s be honest, cake. But then, we are quite happy to sprinkle our worthy porridge liberally with demerara sugar, to
The news that film censors from China’s Tencent streaming service have restored the original ending of David Fincher’s cult classic Fight Club will be warmly welcomed by cineastes around the globe. If you, recall, the picture ends with Edward Norton’s narrator offing his alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and initiating a lethal city-wide bombing
What better way to mark the action in Beijing than a thematically appropriate Winter Olympic cocktail. These recipes feature alpine liqueurs and cold-weather flavours to keep you fortified throughout the event. Norwegian Wood With Norway set to top the medal table once again, it seems fitting that our Winter Olympic cocktail party feature a bottle of
Cooking for romance is no laughing matter. The stakes are high. Get it right and woo the love of your life — lifelong happiness, marriage, kids. Get it wrong, and who knows what will happen? At best, you’re serving up a disaster sometime around midnight. You’re not getting lucky. You may be poisoning your intended.
‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.’ That’s Niels Bohr. Or, as Oscar Wilde put it: ‘In art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.’ Like
Novak Djokovic’s readiness to walk away from tennis on a point of principle is an act of sporting heroism on a par with Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. Like Ali was when he said he had ‘no quarrel with them Viet Cong’, Djokovic is widely accepted to be the greatest master
Seafood has been at the centre of the Japanese diet for more than 10,000 years, with the Japanese consuming an amount that’s more than triple the world average. But it’s not just about food — sake is also an integral part of this seafood culture. Japan’s national alcoholic drink has a 2,500-year history, but its
The old banger is a vanishing breed. And it’s not because all drivers want new cars. On the contrary, not everyone wants to pay out monthly for a fast-depreciating asset. Many drivers would rather opt for a cheap, serviceable car in its dotage. Although I write about cars for a living, and shiny new ones sometimes cross my path, cars
Hands up if you’ve ever had your house decorated and strategically placed a couple of empty tins of Farrow & Ball Dead Salmon on the doorstep so the neighbours appreciate your excellent taste. It happens a lot, says Henry Prideaux, a London-based interior designer who agrees that a certain kind of paint brand, ‘can appeal
On Monday supermodel Naomi Campbell was pictured posing with her new baby daughter for the first time on the cover of British Vogue. Having become a mother in her 50s, she described having a child as ‘the biggest joy I could ever imagine.’ And yet it’s a ‘joy’ few members of the younger generation want to share. New statistics reveal that half of
Set on a frozen Alpine lake in the glitzy Swiss ski resort of St. Moritz, the 37th annual Snow Polo World Cup — the world’s oldest snow polo tournament, held over the last weekend in January — is quite the sight to behold. With 322 days of sunshine per year, St. Moritz’s cloudless winter sky is the kind of
There was a moment, about 20 years ago, when Londoners began to realise, and then boast about, the transformation in our food scene. No longer deserving of mockery compared to other global centres, our restaurants were suddenly producing delicious food every bit (well, almost) as good as that associated with the likes of New York.
Brooklyn Beckham, the eldest son of David and Victoria, has launched a new television show Cookin’ with Brooklyn which allegedly took £70,000 and a team of 62 professionals to create. The result is an 8-minute episode that produced a fish-finger sandwich. Brooklyn oversees an assembly of chefs preparing the ingredients, he looks into the camera, totally
Ever since Prince Harry moved to Los Angeles, royal commentators with an interest in the English language have been watching what he says. He may have walked the walk but has he also started to talk the talk? In October 2020, the Mail ran a piece headed ‘Prince Harry calls opening the bonnet ‘popping the
We’ve been warned about Aswan’s ‘little crocodiles’ – and it’s not long before they make their appearance. Gliding through the water, sleek bodies shining in the sun, they circle the felucca slowly, eyes glinting with curiosity. As only a handful of tourists currently exploring the Nile, we’re the exotic species – and potential rich pickings
‘There’s no such thing as bad snow, just bad skiers’ (Popular skiing saying) The 2022 Olympics have to an extent been overshadowed by diplomatic boycotts over host nation China’s alleged human rights abuses. The US, UK, Canada, Australia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia will not be sending any ministers or officials. Other countries (New
There’s something inherently romantic about eggs: whether you’re preparing them for another person, or being served them, they always strike me as a little act of love. Maybe it’s that they suggest breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed is not about flirting or seduction, it’s more than that. You don’t make breakfast in bed for
The centre could not hold, at least for Piggy’s. The drama of being the only greasy spoon in the West End — in Air Street, of all places — was too much, and it swelled, panicked, and fell apart. Yesterday I ate a mean sliver of almost cold bacon inside hard white supermarket bread. The
Last week, the nominations for the BAFTA film awards were announced and very swiftly afterwards the annual chorus of lamentation started up. For whatever poor old BAFTA does, a vocal segment of film fans and critics alike will declare themselves unhappy. BAFTAs-bashing, it can often seem, is how those in cultural circles like to keep
