An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
At last month’s Bafta ceremony, David Tennant attempted to make a joke about the state of Donald Trump’s hair, but it barely raised a chuckle. Not surprising, perhaps, when you consider the dramatic vibe-shift sweeping the western world. In a desperate attempt to stay relevant many on the progressive left are suddenly choosing to distance themselves from the luxury beliefs
Why are women still allowed to do housework? The question used to bother me during the years of my marriage when housework became a running sore between us. Perhaps the friction was inevitable. I was born in revolutionary times, the 1960s, and my mother taught me and my siblings to cook, clean and wash up
In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe was unfeasibly organised, shelf after shelf of cashmere arrayed in all the hues of the rainbow. We regarded him as a thing of wonder. In those days most of us British undergraduates were deeply unsophisticated,
I’m a broke pensioner – quite a jolly one – not like those people Age Concern show wrapped in blankets, the caption informing viewers that she daren’t put the heating on. I’m not like those pathetic old people, I tell myself (untruthfully). I do put the heating on but, like the poor old dears in
Of all the aspects of dating that make me grateful I came off the market when I did – ghosting, choking, sober socialising, facial hair like Brahms’s beard – it’s the spread of large-scale visible tattoos that makes me feel like I got the last chopper out of ’Nam. Neck tattoos and sleeves were once
Could it be? Could the world’s sexiest, coolest woman be turning… basic? It has come to feel as if that effervescent, mercurial quality that kept her aloof from the cut and thrust of the celebrity rabble – the endorsement-chasers, the tell-all-interview mongers – has evaporated. Kate Moss is turning into the very thing she had
Anyone who attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst will never look at a shaving razor in the same way. Ever since my officer training days, when you had to shave on exercise at 4 a.m. in a cold, wet forest, unable to feel your fingers, shaving has been an important topic. Having escaped those dank
I have always marvelled at the attitude of cat owners who point to bloodied arms or dramatic scratches and explain – with docile, almost apologetic acceptance – that Jasper or Bella just got a bit annoyed. It was all the human’s fault for patting them in the first place. Violent animals are a form of
It’s 4 a.m. and my German shorthaired pointer, Percy, is lying on top of me. This isn’t a giant infraction on his part. Percy and I have long shared a bed. We start the early evening as we always do – me reading and he beside me at my invitation, the light on his side
If you’ve bought a card for your partner this Valentine’s Day, I would guess you’re more likely to be a man. This is because men are generally more romantic than women, which is something that’s widely known but seldom acknowledged. It’s actually quite a serious issue. According to a female counsellor I once interviewed, one
It’s a summer’s day in Suffolk, some time in 1992. My best friend Rebecca and I are both 14 and lying on our backs in a field. We have a packet of ten Silk Cut between us, and we are practising blowing smoke rings that will make us irresistible to boys. Everyone we fancy smokes:
My mother hated Motherland, storming out after five minutes, saying Julia’s frantic school drop-off was too much like real life. She’d have loathed Amanda, the self-styled ‘alpha mum’. But I loved it – and was happy with the spin-off Amandaland, where Dame Joanna Lumley plays Amanda’s mother with gleeful froideur. When interviewed alongside her screen
There are two types of people: the hoarders and those who are always chucking things out because they hate clutter. I fall into the latter category. In my view, a well-ordered environment makes for a well-ordered mind. So you’ll not see my desk buried beneath the usual office detritus, nor my car strewn with apple
The news that WHSmith is facing closure seemed inevitable. Good stationery may be one of the pleasures of life, but is anyone actually buying much any more? Of course, people will always need pens, string, bubble wrap and so on, yet the heyday of stationery has definitely passed. There was a time, when people still
Unless your Wi-Fi has been down this week, you’ll be aware that David Beckham has got his kit off again. He’s back in his underwear for a ‘steamy’ (Daily Mail) ‘full frontal’ (Daily Mail again, though it really isn’t – and I had to watch it, dispassionately I stress, three times for the purposes of this
Many people visit Japan because of its food but few, surely, have pastries in mind. In fact, Japan has no discernible tradition in this culinary realm at all. But that didn’t stop a trio of Japanese bakers from winning the biannual pastry world cup, pushing the fancied host nation France into a chastening second place.
The signet ring is back. Perhaps, like King Charles, who has worn his since the 1970s, you think it never went away, but I can confirm that it did – sometime around the time of the New Labour government, when being seen as a raging toff was bad for business. Now, thanks in part to
It’s 30 years since a website called Match.com opened the Pandora’s box of online dating. Until then, with the tiny exception of the classifieds, meeting a mate had to begin out there and in person. But from 1995, dating retreated to a desktop computer – a virtual shop window of real people. Match.com was launched
M y husband earns more than me. A lot more. I am, of course, extremely fortunate to be in such a position and am extremely grateful, especially when a large bill arrives on the doormat. So what, I hear you say. And you’re right – this is hardly a newsflash. According to the Office for
I can’t remember the exact date of my departure from university. It was sometime in the summer of 2021. My flatmates and I packed up our things, had a sombre pint at the pub, hugged, and then went our separate ways. I boarded the train at Bristol Temple Meads with a degree in English and
I read recently that this month marks 40 years since Britain’s first mobile phone call was made. It was in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1985 in Parliament Square, when one Michael Harrison rang his Vodafone chairman father, Sir Ernest Harrison. It would, of course, take many years – and much hankering and
The year was 1982. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher rerouted an RAF Hercules over foreign territory and requested the scrambling of jets and choppers and ground troops. The diplomatic cables burned back and forth. President Ronald Reagan expressed concern. The situation was desperate. This wasn’t the Falklands War – that came a few months later. This,
I was a late starter at everything. After drifting through my youth, and numerous false starts in life and work, I only found a committed relationship in my thirties and married in my forties. Even my second career as a writer waited until my fifties. So, too, did my unexpected third career, as a parent.
Partridges, purveyor of ‘nice things for the larder’ to the well-heeled, will close the doors of its Chelsea shop for the last time next month. After 53 years of serving SW3 delights such as ox tongue, macadamia nuts and glace cherries, the shop, run by the Shepherd family and in possession of a royal warrant,
This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful. I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is that still a big deal
Why do the cool die young? I don’t mean famous, cool people like Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison. They are members of the 27 Club – the pop stars who died at 27. I mean the schoolboy gods of my youth, the marvellous-looking, self-assured ones, effortlessly going out with the prettiest girls. And now seven
I do not want to dwell on the circumstances, except to say that my phone was stolen and that London is becoming a reeking cesspool of criminality. Perhaps, also, that anyone caught cycling a Lime Bike without a clean criminal record should have the book thrown at them. The result of all this has been
The jigsaw is having a moment. Ditto other puzzles, games and brain teasers. Couples engage in post-coital sudoku (apparently). Wordle was played 4.8 billion times in 2023 (the lockdown invention of a young Welsh lad, Josh Wardle). Board game cafes have sprung up in cities. This recent resurgence in the popularity of puzzles is partly
Eleanor Roosevelt said that the role of the First Lady was not a job but rather a circumstance. For Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, it is even more oblique. She is neither the former First Lady – since Canada does not endow the prime ministerial spouse with ‘première dame’ status – nor is she wife to Justin
