An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Getting an interview with Jinichi Kawakami, the man known in Japan as ‘the Last Ninja’, was no easy task – but nor should it have been. Ninjas, Japan’s legendary covert operatives and assassins, were renowned for their elusiveness, so it would have been disappointing if tracking one down had proved a cinch. It took a
Are you hungry, peckish, esurient? Join me at Josie’s diner in Lexington, Kentucky, in the heart of Bluegrass country, where the horses are lean and very many people are, let me be frank, not. Josie’s is heaving at 8 a.m. as the well-upholstered clientele arrive for the morning feed. A mercifully slim student at the
Right beside the airport I often use to fly home from Italy, there is a pod hotel where I am becoming a regular client. These, as most will know, are dirt-cheap places where sleep is stripped down to its absolute core. For about £35 a night here, you get a tiny berth of a room
Let’s cherchez un violon petit! Skiing is now too pricey for the middle classes. According to a recent flash poll by the Telegraph’s ski section, 70 per cent of readers now think skiing holidays are unaffordable. For the bourgeoisie, skiing – along with many of the other trappings they used to take for granted, such
Seldom has a collective term been less appropriate: ‘the Channel Islands’ – as though these were in any sense (other than the geographical) a place. Entertained in my English mind had been a scatter of similar, pretty but perhaps over-manicured little islands stuck in the mid-Channel between Great Britain and France but sunnier, and where
A recent study by the Centre for London thinktank claims that the city’s black cabs could disappear forever, unless something is done to reverse the decline. Thanks to Uber, the ubiquitous satnav which devalues the cabbies’ hard-earned Knowledge of London’s streets, and the Mayor’s anti-motorist measures, there are ever fewer black cabs rumbling around the
The second passport used to be a backdoor: a legal hack for the well-advised, well-connected or well-heeled. You could acquire nationality in a country you’d hardly visited, without necessarily even speaking the language, and still find yourself welcomed with open arms – or at least waved through the fast-track lane at immigration. But that game
Almost 50 years ago, in a hotel bar in central Paris, French wine faced a reckoning. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, decided California deserved a spell in the sun: at the time French wine was the dominant force in Europe, with bottles from the New World – Australia, New Zealand, the US and the
It’s cherry blossom season in Japan and about half the population (according to a Kansai University study) will gather at the viewing spots to pose for photos (Japanese Instagram may collapse) and enjoy picnics in the shade of the sakura trees. Japan will also welcome close to four million visitors to witness the floral marvel.
Waking up to hear the ‘unprecedented’ news about Heathrow Airport, I felt a nanosecond of luxurious relaxation (albeit I’m not exactly over the moon about being in a hospital bed without the use of my legs). Of course I’d rather be scampering about an airport superstore being sprayed with scent by sexy shop-girls rather than
Dubai is the new black: it’s everywhere and apparently for everyone. The steady trickle of first-person tell-alls about starting over in the Emirate has, since the Labour government moved in, built to a tsunami. ‘How I became a Labour school-fee exile in Dubai,’ written by Isabel Oakeshott, partner of Reform’s Richard Tice, was one that
I’m now officially Irish – the proud recipient of a shiny red passport. It arrived, with the luck of the Irish, in time for St Patrick’s Day. But as I gaze fondly at the words ‘European Union’ and ‘Ireland’ embossed in gold on the front, I do feel the awkward guilt of the hypocrite. I
One can see a city so differently over time. Visiting Oxford recently I noticed fine whisky shops and fashion stores which have always been there but which I barely registered as a student 15 years ago. There are new arrivals: some good, such as the handsome Jericho Cheese Company; others less so, such as the
A Sunday morning in Bethnal Green and Adam, who has been leading Kray-themed walking tours of the neighbourhood for almost two decades, corrals a congregation of eight polite, reserved, attentive customers who, with sensible rucksacks, floor-length M&S skirts, reusable water bottles and neutral-coloured, thin-laced trainers, look as far removed from pool hall brawls and basement
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by way of a few hours in Mexico City and Panama. Just five days ago, he was in London. ‘New York was just going to be a weekend trip for a conference, but then I thought
Faithful readers will know of my journey through the French health care system. I have not shared these histories because anyone should be particularly interested in my aches and pains, or to complain. If I wanted to moan about a health system on the verge of a nervous breakdown I would return to Britain. No,
It’s half-term and instead of the Baftas and Anmer Hall in Norfolk, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decamped en famille to Mustique. Old pictures of Kate and Wills walking along the Caribbean seafront hand in hand and a young Prince George in a green polo shirt are accompanied by newspaper commentary detailing how Kate deserves a rest in what is thought to be her favourite place. So far,
It was when the peasant didn’t move for the second hour that I became suspicious. I was in an ultra-expensive hotel in southern Thailand. It was built to resemble a sequence of exquisite villas from some ancient Thai dynasty, arranged around tropical gardens and meadows. I was staying in my very own, beautiful, teak-and-mahogany mini-palace,
I had been kicking my heels in a dusty two-star hotel on a dual carriageway in Leon, central Mexico, for days. One afternoon, I spotted a battered old English language hardback in a junk shop window: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. I had read the book before, half a lifetime ago, in maybe 1985, when
The fall of the Berlin Wall was meant to have been the crowning moment for the West, and for the principles of empowering liberation and freedom. Obviously so – I used to think. Now I’m more along the lines of, well, yes and no. The fall also seems in some ways to divide the former
Entering the New Inn in Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion is like stepping back in time. The only pub in the village (since the Foelallt Arms closed down four years ago), The New Inn seems to hail from the 1970s. Its till is a pull-out wooden drawer full of coins and notes. There’s a coal fire in
You can’t get a Pegu in Rangoon any more. That may not sound like a disaster for the ages – nothing, say, compared to the ongoing chancellorship of Rachel Reeves, MP for Blankstare-upon-Derr – but it is quite telling, once you know the background. To explain, the Pegu is a cocktail. Here’s the recipe, if
Monopoli, Puglia Monopoli is an elegant little seaside town in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, and in summer it’s unbearable. Tourists flock from everywhere. Squares you could normally zip through in a few seconds take ten minutes to cross, and the queues for Bella Blu, the ice cream parlour in Piazza Garibaldi, remind
This year I shall have lived in Edinburgh for a quarter of a century. I fell in love with the city on the 23 bus travelling from the New Town to the Old Town. There was so much architecture. Gothic and Georgian, medieval, baronial. So many turrets and finials, tollbooths and towers. I was drunk
John F. Kennedy opted to serve New England lobster, Ronald Reagan a California-inspired garden salad – and James Buchanan 400 gallons of oysters. Held at Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, the inaugural luncheon for a new president is as much part of inauguration day as the swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural address. Nixon enjoyed
Ski season is upon us, and with it that familiar dump of status anxiety. Sliding down mountains has always been a rich man’s folly, but only a few years ago, normal people could just about afford to go if they saved hard enough. Not anymore. In parts of France, the cost of a six-day lift
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking through the curtains to the cabin behind. ‘I’m so glad we’re in business class, darling,’ she says to her husband. ‘There seems to be some sort of hijacking happening in economy.’ People who have learned
Tourists seeking to understand life in London often come up short. It’s not their fault. It is often said that London is a metropolis made up of city villages, each with its own unique personality and characteristics. Most tourists never make it past the invisible walls of central London. Why would they? No one flies
The homes of famous writers are disappointing. Often, you see the famous desk, and that’s about it. There are exceptions: for example, Pushkin’s home in St Petersburg is interesting because they have the blooded waistcoat he wore during his fateful duel. Hemingway’s house in Cuba is intriguing because it is so macho – pistol, rifles,
