Spectator Life

In 1939 George Orwell took aim at burgeoning British suburbia and its population of lower middle class lackeys in his novel Coming Up for Air, memorably describing the new homes being built on the fringes of cities as ‘semi-detached torture chambers where the poor little five-to-ten pound a-weekers quake and shiver’. More than eight decades on

There are three things that occur to you when you travel the length of Japan: that kimonos are surprisingly good for any occasion; that the country’s reputation for cruelty may partly derive from breakfasts comprising tea porridge and prawn soufflé; and that the hordes of camera-wielding Japanese tourists taking thousands of snaps – a comic trope in the 1980s,

As the recent heatwave simmered on, tempura oysters were being washed down with chilled rosé on the beachfront tables at Little Rock, an offshoot of Folkestone’s Michelin starred Rocksalt restaurant. Looking from the shipping container that houses it past a handful of palm trees down the long shingle beach, a huge crane punctuated the clear

It has been ten years since work began in earnest on the regeneration of one of the few surviving sections of old-school central London. While the rest of Zone 1 seemingly saw wall-to-wall gentrification, Elephant and Castle remained an outpost of stubborn, scruffy ordinariness, an oasis of discount stores, greasy spoons and traditional boozers. Over the

Once I thought nothing could make residential Britain look uglier than pebble-dashing, PVC windows and satellite dishes. I was wrong. As if the country had not been brutally homogenised enough by the fact that every high street has the same shops, now every residential road is reduced to being an identical backdrop for a very persistent

With its perfectly soaring Jacobean-style architecture, leaded windows and enchanting walled garden, all set within 17-plus acres of East Sussex countryside, Grade II* Listed Possingworth Manor is the rural idyll of an English country house.   Despite its tranquil appearance, however, the 11-bedroom, 8,500 sq ft manor near Uckfield has had a disproportionate share of drama over

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a Jane Austen heroine. Nearly two decades on, in my late twenties, I am living in the guest room of a married older cousin in a leafy suburb of London, house-hunting in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting on a security clearance for a public-sector job,

House hunters nearly always have to make a compromise to suit their budget – the size of the garden, say, or those dated avocado bathroom suites, or the slightly inconvenient distance from the station. You might think that being a multi-millionaire would exonerate you from such stresses, making finding your dream home trouble-free.   Not so,

They are expensive to maintain, plagued by tourists and influences seeking picture-postcard holiday snaps and cost more per square foot than houses in some of London’s most affluent neighbourhoods – despite lacking basic amenities such as running water. And yet such is the allure of the traditional seaside beach hut that, amid an otherwise shaky

In Britain’s battle to cut carbon emissions, the government sees heat pumps as a key weapon. Unveiling the latest energy efficiency plan in March, energy secretary Grant Shapps doubled down on Boris Johnson’s offer of a £5,000 grant for anyone willing to install one. These smart bits of home technology work by transferring thermal energy from the air,

As Cicero is often (mis)quoted as saying, if you have a garden and a library, that is all you need. And since the pandemic, our love of a garden has only got greater. Yet these days it’s often less about getting your hands dirty in the flowerbeds and more about having somewhere to kick back

You don’t get much further from the seaside than Derbyshire, a county landlocked at the heart of England. During lockdowns house-hunters simply couldn’t get enough of coastal property, and prices in Wales and the West Country boomed. But three years after the start of the pandemic, a new property powerhouse is emerging.  According to the latest UK

You might think someone who grew up in the 356-room Belvoir Castle wouldn’t be too worried by a traffic fine. But when Lady Eliza Manners was caught speeding, she avoided paying off the full £100 ticket by claiming ‘financial hardship’. And apparently she’s not the only budget-conscious occupant of the Leicestershire property. Her mother Emma,

Few British cities can rival the musical heritage of Liverpool – and as the Eurovision Song Contest arrives back in the UK after 25 years, Merseyside is getting ready for its moment in the spotlight. An extra 150,000 visitors are expected to descend on the city for the sell-out event this weekend. While the world’s

Everyone has a story about the stress of moving house. For those buying a new home, the process of exchanging contracts is perhaps even more nerve-racking than loading their worldly possessions into the back of a van. When I started in the property game in the late 1970s, buying a property – that’s when you

You have to feel a little sorry for Rishi Sunak. When you have a wife as rich as Akshata Murty, just how do you keep tabs on all her investments, making sure that each one of them is properly declared as an interest in the House of Commons Register? The Prime Minister has suffered the

Eunice Day’s breaking point came when her neighbours asked if she would move her car from a communal grass verge in their cul-de-sac so that it could be mowed. After several weeks of polite hostilities, Day stormed a neighbour’s home in the Dorset town of Ferndown, a row ensued, and the resulting scuffle left the

Peloton has peaked and troughed, wild swimming has made its splash – and now, it seems, it’s padel’s turn for the prime spot. Said to be the world’s fastest-growing racket sport, the game – a hybrid of tennis and squash, with a dash of ping pong – is fun and sociable (it’s played in doubles)

Joseph Mallord William Turner continues to occupy a singular place in British cultural consciousness. The English Romantic artist, watercolourist and printmaker – often referred to as ‘the painter of light’ – elevated landscape painting to high art and, when he died in 1851, left a legacy of 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours and 30,000 works

In recent months, Michael Gove has been upsetting not only the house-building industry but its defenders, too. The Levelling-up Secretary has been accused of ‘blackmail’ by online newspaper Cap X, which compared his actions to ‘Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey’. The Telegraph mocked him up on a wrecking ball Miley Cyrus-style, and several trade press

At the end of last year, the subject of the ‘15-minute city’ began to creep into neighbourhood WhatsApp groups, interrupting the usual discussion of lost cats, car crime and blocked drains. Oxfordshire County Council had proposed a traffic-zoning scheme to reduce car usage in the city – and suggested that to address unnecessary journeys, every

At the start of this month, the modish kitchen appliance brand Sub-Zero & Wolf proudly announced the launch of its Classic French Door fridge-freezer. This beast of a machine, featuring Nasa-inspired air purification technology and an automatic ice-maker complete with ‘party mode’, will set you back £23,868 ­– or the best part of a year’s salary for the

Almost 30 years ago, my journalistic career began in the faded seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea, where I spent six months undertaking a crash course in shorthand, typing and all the basic skills of local paper reportage. With no previous experience of just how dismal an out-of-season holiday town could be, my spirits were high on

Many English country houses lay claim to literary legacies. Blo Norton Hall, however, has more right than most. In the summer of 1906, while in her early twenties, Virginia Woolf rented the Elizabethan Norfolk manor house with her older sister, artist Vanessa. The seven-mile journey there from Diss station, through isolated countryside, and their arrival

In the early years of the 19th century, the extravagant, spoiled and hard-partying Prince Regent had a surprisingly good idea. Encouraged by pals like Beau Brummell, and with the financial backing of the property developer James Burton, the future King George IV hired the architect John Nash to design a new London neighbourhood. His vision was for a series of magnificent