James Innes-Smith is author of The Seven Ages of Man — How to Live a Meaningful Life (Little, Brown).
Nepo-narcissism has plunged new depths. Scarlett Curtis, the mauve-haired social justice activist and daughter of filmmaker Richard, has been grilling her hapless father about his wicked pre-cultural revolutionary past. During a creepy Soviet-style cross-examination in front of a crowd at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Scarlett harangued the creator of Blackadder for failing to include a
It used to be that an ‘artist’s impression’ of a proposed building development was just that; an architectural drawing designed to give planners an idea of what to expect. Then along came CGI and a new era of photorealistic visualisations. On the surface, these glossy new artist’s impressions are anything but impressionistic. Indeed the renderings are
Hotel restaurants have come a long way since they were dingy add-ons geared towards a captive audience, once the preserve of holidaymakers too lazy to leave the lobby. London is in the midst of a literal feeding frenzy of swish new hotel restaurant openings. The whole ‘dining experience’ – what is dining if not an
As I gazed upon the first circle of hell, otherwise known as Stansted Airport, I felt as though I was witnessing a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with our hapless nation. Thousands of desperate flyers were left stranded across the UK earlier this week after what appeared to be another air traffic control
When asked how his production of Goodnight Vienna was going down with audiences in Huddersfield, Noel Coward is reputed to have replied ‘about as well as Goodnight Huddersfield would be going down with audiences in Vienna.’ I cannot vouch for Huddersfield’s cultural riches but there has never been a better time to visit Austria’s ‘City of Dreams and Music’. Over
For the past week Hollywood’s film and television actors have been on strike, plunging Los Angeles’s most famous industry into chaos. Performers joined screenwriters (who have been striking since May) on the picket line after talks broke down in what has become the first simultaneous strike in more than 60 years. The strikes have attracted plenty
With Pride Month beginning tomorrow, how proud are you of your sexuality? As a white cis-gendered male, I am frankly a little embarrassed about mine. I mean, it’s not exactly cool to fancy the opposite sex these days, and many of us hetero-normies have become increasingly wary of appearing ‘inappropriate’ when making a move on someone we
I’d always questioned the creative genius of self-confessed ‘living sculptures’ Gilbert and George. Their dogged determination to be seen as ‘different’ felt archly self-conscious and not particularly interesting. Like so many fly-by-night avant-gardists of the 1960s, the duo’s ‘originality’ tended to hang on hoary old controversies such as scatological imagery, sex and nudity – hardly revolutionary even back
When George William Wilton opened his shellfish-mongers close to Haymarket in 1742, he could never have imagined that his business would still be thriving 280 years later. The place has outlived ten monarchs and is as old as Handel’s Messiah. Before visiting, I imagined a typically Hogarthian scene with portly gentlemen in dandruff-flecked suits feasting on potted shrimp and vintage
As the pandemic gently recedes into history, many of us have been embracing the liberties that have followed. For anyone whose work relied on a desk, a chair and a computer, video-conferencing services such as Zoom left us questioning long-held assumptions about the need for those increasingly anachronistic offices to which we once trudged. The
By all accounts, Jacqueline Gold, the executive chair of Ann Summers who has died aged 62, was a devoted family woman. This may come as a surprise to those who associate ‘the queen of sex’ purely with ‘willy warmers’ and frilly knickers. Business-minded Gold managed to transform what had been a male-dominated, backstreet cottage industry into a glossy,
Wow, can I just begin by saying how incredibly excited I am to be given this opportunity to write about such an awesomely exciting subject. Don’t worry, this isn’t the start of some interminable Oscars-worthy speech. In truth, I’m not remotely ‘excited’ at the prospect of writing this article about the overuse of the word
The human desire to turn life’s mundanities into something altogether more agreeable never ceases to amaze and amuse. Take our homes, for instance. Once we were content to live in caves as long as they kept us dry and were reasonably warm. Then we decided it would be more appealing to build our own caves but
The secret of any great sitcom is the delicate balance of sit and com. Mess the ‘sit’ bit up and you lose the ‘com’. Del Boy without Nelson Mandela House is as unthinkable as Alan Partridge without his ‘grief hole’ (aka the Linton Travel Tavern), which is why both of these characters eventually came unstuck. Sending
The video of Tyre Nichols’ arrest makes for unbearable viewing. The 29-year-old father is dragged out of a car before being set upon by five black policemen. Lawyers for his family said the officers acted like a ‘pack of wolves’; after watching the film, it’s hard to dispute that description. As the backlash to the
The reaction to the brutal death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old, after he was stopped by police has been strangely muted. Nichols, a father-of-one, died of his injuries on 10 January, three days after a confrontation with five black officers in Memphis, Tennessee. Lawyers for the family said Nichols, an African-American, was beaten ‘like a
‘It is impossible for a Brummie to open his mouth without making some other-accented Englishman hate or despise him.’ I am misquoting George Bernard Shaw, of course – but maybe the great man had the much-maligned Birmingham accent in mind when he made his famous pronouncement. In a recent study more than 2,000 people were asked to listen
I always thought that ‘Ann Summers’ was one of those made-up names created by corporate brains, like Dorothy Perkins and Ted Baker. But it turns out that Ms Summers was an actual person. The store’s founder Michael Caborn-Waterfield named his first shop after his 19-year-old secretary Annice Summers. ‘Dandy Kim’, as he was known, had been a roguish figure around post-war London, a gentleman adventurer
Our new King isn’t the only royal to have lost his rag over a leaky pen, as happened when he was signing a visitors’ book at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast. ‘Oh God, I hate this,’ King Charles said, before handing the pen to his wife, Camilla, Queen Consort. ‘I can’t bear this bloody thing… every
Once the preserve of only the fanciest of fancy restaurants, the tasting menu has come into its own post-pandemic. Set menus make economic sense for cost-cutting restaurateurs and their harried staff, of course – but customers benefit too, with no nasty surprises or bust-ups when the bill arrives. And for those of us who suffer
