An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
The debate over whether we will end up going back to the office five days a week is likely to rumble on for the coming years. Desperate employers worried that the genie is out of the bottle are battling with those of us who happen to get more done when we aren’t distracted by gossiping at the
13 min listen
With the Conservatives still taking stock after their loss in the recent by-election, it seems the governments ambitions for planning reform are now firmly under the microscope. ‘When you speak to these MPs… they are absolutely convinced that planning reform is dead’ – Katy Balls And on what would have been ‘freedom day’, there are
Jeremy Clarkson’s latest TV venture, Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime Video, sees the petrolhead learning to manage his 1,000 acre Cotswolds farm. Anyone dreaming of their own rural idyll might want to consider one of these beautiful farmhouses. For artists – Folliotts Farmhouse Image: Clare Goldsmid Currently owned by a ceramicist and artist, Patricia Low, this
There comes a point in every metropolitan potentate’s journey from London to Edinburgh, when he or she looks up from their laptop in First Class and gazes from the window of the train. At this point, they suddenly realise that whatever’s been absorbing their interest for the last hour or two, is completely irrelevant. Chances
Our attention turns to all things literary this week after the return of the Hay Festival. It comes during a bumper year for book sales, when lockdown encouraged many of us to read more and escape our repetitive reality for fictional worlds. But what of the authors’ own abodes? Here we look at five homes
House prices are increasing at their fastest rate for seven years, jumping by as much as 10.9 per cent according to the Nationwide in their most recent survey. Is now the time to stay put and extend rather than go through the hassle of moving into a supply constrained rising market? And if you do extend, is
When Julia Riley ran her Somerset home as a B&B prior to the Covid pandemic a few guests booked in not for her Tripadvisor-recommended breakfast or a peaceful night’s sleep, but because of the Georgian property’s literary connection. Coxley House is the former home of David Cornwell, better known as the spy novelist John le
You might remember, back before Covid, when life was ‘normal’, at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, the Volkswagens, Audis and Jaguars clogging up the pavements of Kensington, Parsons Green and Hammersmith would one by one nudge out, and make for the Great West Road, duly clotting the A4 like a fast-food addict’s aorta. To all
On the day the Office for National Statistics announced a sharp rise in consumer price inflation, albeit to a still modest 1.5 per cent, we discovered that house prices have jumped by a staggering 10.2 per cent in the last year. The average house in England now costs £275,000, close to ten times the average
Like other areas of London, Camberwell suffered from having much of its modern town planning done by the Luftwaffe. As the original bridges over the Thames were built, particularly Blackfriars in the 18th century, the roads leading to them, wide and quiet, became lined with handsome Georgian and Regency houses. Victorian fillers came later along
Is there any television programme as cruel as Grand Designs? At least Jeux Sans Frontieres only offered 15 minutes of humiliation at a time. Grand Designs, by contrast, offers a lifetime’s worth, often with bankruptcy and divorce thrown in. But none have come quite such a cropper as Edward Short who, in 2008, paid £1
Life is peaceful there. Go west, in the open air. So sang the Village People and subsequently the Pet Shop Boys. They had a point as according to Rightmove, Bruton in Somerset is the top country hotspot for home buyers. With a 122 per cent increase in the number of house sales over the past 12 months
Did we end up learning anything from the 2008/09 financial crisis? If we did, we seem to have forgotten it pretty quickly again, to judge by the re-emergence of the 95 per cent mortgage. Numerous deals have been launched over the past week, with interest rates of around four per cent – the result of the Chancellor’s
If there is one thing I have learnt from working in the property market for over 40 years it’s that any market prediction worth its salt takes into account the relationship between London and the regions. Sometimes the capital is a useful bellwether for the rest of the country but not always. In the early 2000s, the central
Pre-pandemic, all you needed for a good London location was a roof terrace, proximity to a vibrant social scene and a tube station. Or a river view. Then everything changed. Whilst central areas have pretty much fallen into the doldrums, a combination of more room, better value and access to green spaces has become essential. If
The rush to leave London has been a staple of property columns over the last twelve months. Built up, densely-populated urban areas were portrayed negatively in favour of remote locations, but as normal life begins to resume does that characterisation still hold? London is already back on the agenda for many professionals and will remain central to
Would you swap living in London for York? According to the latest survey on family-friendly city living, York tops the list. On a range of measures from childcare costs to average house prices and leisure activities, York is it. Unless your work or family ties take you there, I’m not convinced though. The three-hour train journey
It began with a sourdough starter. Then we dabbled with home delivery cocktails. This time round, I watched The Dig and bought a Fair Isle tank top and a blouse with a big collar to wear for Zoom calls. Then, when my husband’s company announced they’d be hiring remotely, we embraced the biggest lockdown cliché
Buy when there is gunfire on the streets, goes the old adage. But could this be a case of the right time to buy being when there is, well, hardly anything happening on the streets? Few investments have been as hard hit by Covid-19 as commercial property in central London. As shops and restaurants have
With Rishi Sunak announcing plans for a Stamp Duty holiday extension and floating the policy of 95 per cent mortgages, the boom in house sales looks set to continue apace. So, in an increasingly competitive market, what’s the secret to securing the best possible price on a house? Firstly, your relationship with the agent is
It’s hard to believe we’re heading towards the pandemic’s first anniversary. The economy has had a torrid time. But if there’s one area that has surprised us all with its buoyancy it is the property market. Ever since the first lockdown, there has been a flurry of activity at a time when a market crash was predicted. So,
As Mark Twain didn’t quite say, there are only three certain things in life: death, taxes and yet another government-backed bung for the housing market. The latest instalment is the 2021 to 2023 Help to Buy scheme, which carries on the theme of offering subsidised loans to first-time buyers – and only first-time buyers. Here’s
A pattern seems to have emerged in the latter stages of the Covid crisis: Keir Starmer gets wind of discussions within government of possible new lockdown restrictions and calls for them to be implemented immediately – just to make it look as if he is ahead of the curve and the government behind it. We
Did anyone get their predictions for the 2020 property market right? I suspect not. We’d barely heard of Covid back in January last year and, if we had, we would have probably written off the housing market for half a decade. But look at property now. Prices are up 5 per cent on average and
Fancy buying half a flat, paying 100 per cent of the maintenance and the cost of putting right a developer’s shoddy work? Therein lies the great scandal at the heart of shared ownership, the government scheme which BBC Panorama exposed last week but which I others were writing about over a decade ago. Shared ownership
I’ve never worked out why anyone would want to buy an outfit over the internet without first seeing it in the flesh and trying it on. I know my wife does it all the time — although the constant piles of parcels by the door, full of stuff waiting to be sent back whence it
Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.— Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson made this remark in 1777 to one of his friends who lived
Buy to let remains a popular investment option for Brits, despite being the subject of major reform over the last three years. Government legislation since 2017 has been increasingly hostile towards buy-to-let owners but could the aftermath of the pandemic prompt a change? Figures from 2018 show that the Private Rented Sector [PRS] provides homes
The latest research from Deutsche Bank suggests that a dramatic shift in working patterns is on the way. 57 per cent of the 450 financial workers surveyed expect to be working from home between 1 and 3 days a week once the pandemic has passed. Covid-19 has not only disrupted our lives in the short
