An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
There aren’t many pleasures left in flying these days, but one of them occurs even before you’re on the plane. What’s more it’s free. It’s the smug sense of satisfaction you get from watching everyone else at the departure gate stand up and form a queue as soon as the flight is called. Bags are
Aidan Hartley is a brilliant writer and his piece for this website on buying a gun shows mastery over a subject I have limited knowledge of. He is, however, wrong about one thing, which is the insinuation that a suit is not as fun as a shotgun. Buying a tailored suit is potentially one of
As a child, I couldn’t get enough of Enid Blyton’s books. From the moment I discovered the Malory Towers series, set in a girls’ boarding school on a windswept Cornish clifftop, I was hooked. My strict grandmother called me a spendthrift for frittering all my pocket money (the princely sum of two shillings and sixpence
There is something terribly cheering about Scotch pancakes. Even the best normal pancakes are a bit floppy, a bit (whisper it) flabby. They give the cook the choice of eating them one by one as they cook, or resigning themselves to the reality of a mostly tepid, slightly clammy pile. Scotch pancakes are not like
There are few more iconic British brands than WH Smith, nor many more ubiquitous. 90% of people can reach a store within twenty minutes from their door, and 73% make at least one visit a year. For many, the name conjures up childhood memories of first encounters with classic literature, sumptuous atlases or a beguilingly
When Paul Mason was covertly recorded by the Sun newspaper divulging his private view that Jeremy Corbyn does not appeal to the working classes, there wasn’t much surprise in the Labour leader’s office. The relationship between Corbyn and his celebrity guru has always been complex. Kremlinologists point to a meeting of Corbyn’s closest comrades earlier
Left-wing people in the olden days Left-wing people used to like working-class people. Lots of left-wing people used to be working-class people. These people were known as socialists and joined trade unions. Sometimes working-class people used to frighten left-wing people, but they pretended that they weren’t frightened and were nice to them. Left-wing people supported
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is back with the release earlier this month of The Midnight Line, the 22nd book in the series. The Reacher books are hugely popular, but fail to garner much in the way of critical respect. Here are five reasons why the public love Reacher and why critics should… Jack Reacher Reacher
If there is one word that strikes fear and loathing into the hearts of Labour MPs, it is Momentum. This mixed bag of Trots, tankies, cranks and hipsters who delivered Jeremy Corbyn the leadership has become his Red Guards. Its name is synonymous with the new wave of hard-left entryism into Labour, calls to deselect
My phone vibrates with a three-letter text message heralding another inevitable Westminster hangover: “MoG?”. The Marquis of Granby pub on Romney Street is an old-fashioned sort of boozer: mahogany-panelled bar with a chandeliered burgundy ceiling and a gents you have to wade through. There’s none of your poncey hipster food served on slabs of wood
The Great British Bake Off (GBBO) is like a steaming spotted dick, moist and dense and delicious, and speckled with dried fruit. Paul Hollywood is the flour. He binds it all together. Mel and Sue are the milk and butter. They’re rich and creamy, and maybe a bit naughty in their comedic charm. Mary Berry?
Young people today are very reluctant to assume that anything is certain, and this reluctance is revealed in their language. In any matter where there might be disagreement, they will put a question mark at the end of the sentence. And to reinforce the posture of neutrality they will insert words that function as disclaimers,
In February, a member of John McDonnell’s team accidentally forwarded his diary to a Labour party colleague. The errant email has been a source of gossip among Corbynistas ever since. Among the mundane schedule of meetings were a series of slots allocated for something rather out of the ordinary: ‘Transition planning.’ McDonnell’s aides swear up
When we said we were thinking of moving to Lewisham four years ago, the locals in our pub in Bethnal Green thought we were mad. ‘It’s fuckin’ ’orrible,’ one of them said. Coming from people who’d lived all their lives in the East End, this was worrying. Nevertheless, swayed by a cheap ex-council flat, we
As a teacher and lecturer, I’ve had a fair amount of indirect contact with Soas — the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. I first met one of its doctoral students in 2001, around the time I began to send my A-level students to join its impressive list of alumni, which includes
Thanks to Stephen Fry I had never wanted to be on television. Around the time Fry made the transition from print to screen, and hence real fame, he wrote a piece lamenting the irreversible step he had taken. Now, as a result of his face being familiar, he explained, he could never again complain in
Until August last year, I’d pretty much been in back to back relationships for the previous seven years. The guys I dated varied in height, race, age, style and personality. But one thing linked them together. What? Almost all turned out to be gay. And the few that weren’t would rather sleep in their jeans
On 2 September 1939, as Neville Chamberlain sat down after trying to explain away his latest bout of sucking up to Hitler and the deputy leader of the Labour party, Arthur Greenwood (standing in for his absent boss Clement Attlee), rose to reply, the infuriated Tory MP Leo Amery shouted: ‘Speak for England, Arthur!’ It’s
I’ve been accused of many things since I ventured on to Twitter. Appearing on shows like Question Time and Have I Got News For You, you learn to expect a certain amount of criticism and name-calling. For a woman in the public eye it goes with the territory. According to the good folk of Twitter
Evgeny Lebedev’s famous friends are eager to tell you what a darling he is. Piers Morgan says that he is ‘one of the most charming, well-connected, exotically attired and fascinating figures in English society right now’. Stephen Fry says that ‘for a man of his power, status and wealth, he is endlessly teaseable and humorous’.
Standing on chairs in Parliament’s Sports and Social bar, a band of portly gentlemen are bellowing out Scottish folk songs. A young barmaid, only in her early twenties yet a seasoned veteran when it comes to turfing out unruly Westminster soaks, approaches a new SNP MP and politely asks him to pack it in. Words
Weeks before the Kids Company scandal erupted, I had a message from someone deep inside New Broadcasting House saying there were ‘Jones-esque fights’ going on ‘inside the BBC’ about a story which was going to be unpopular with managers. He meant ‘me-esque’: it was a reference to my battle with BBC mandarins about the decision
One of the first things you realise on arriving at Eton is that while you may be at arguably the best school in the world, you’re also possibly among Britain’s most hated. It’s great being surrounded by 15th-century quadrangles and Georgian boarding houses, and your uniform is as dapper as it gets (so long as
