An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
At the former Chiswick Works in west London, I recently celebrated the Routemaster’s 70th birthday. I owe my existence to this majestic mode of transport. My mum was a conductress on a Routemaster – the No. 16 – which cut a merry swathe from Cricklewood to Victoria, right through the centre of London. My dad, like
What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make you laugh. I was strolling along to Richmond station after spending the night with old friends. (Very Jorrocksian: ‘Where I dines, I sleeps.’) I was carrying a scruffy overnight bag containing one shirt, one pair
The next time you drive or walk down a country road, you may well notice that something is not quite right. Look around and you might see that tall ash trees in the verge-side hedgerows are no longer as handsome, their leaves sparse and scattered, even brown and wilting, while naked branches point accusingly to
It’s become a regular occurrence: a friend or a friend-of-a-friend is visiting London, wants to go to a football game and messages asking for help getting tickets. My standard response is: no chance. The most recent of these was from New Zealand-based Spectator contributor David Cohen, whose son will be in London in the autumn.
‘How do you cope with this?’ The poor woman is looking up at me with the big Bambi eyes I’ve seen grown men adopt when extreme turbulence hits. I have to say something comforting; it’s part of my job description as cabin crew. They even tell us what to say on the cabin crew training
I love salad but there need to be rules. Salad should never be squashed in with hot food (e.g., in burgers); must never be dressed with anything from a bottle; and salad must never be served buffet style. Oh, and if it’s warm it’s quite simply not salad. For this reason, today I am speaking
I’ve never been seduced by the circus. As a motif in children’s literature, particularly taken up by Enid Blyton and Disney. In fact, as an animal-loving child, I think I found it cruel; I wanted Nellie the Elephant to pack her bags and say goodbye to the circus, I longed for her to slip her
Over the years, I have spent a pretty penny on therapy. I have also spent a lot of money in Waitrose, of which there is a big branch that I like to call a ‘flagship’, very close to my flat. Of the two, therapy and Waitrose, it is probably Waitrose that has provided the most
Whether it is the anti-immigration riots in the UK, with hundreds of arrests and prosecutions, Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI for breach of contract, or the UN’s International Court of Justice cases about the Israel-Palestine and Ukraine-Russia conflicts, the law is all around us. Teaching children about this invisible but powerful force can improve their
At this time of year, the heat of Naples wakes me up around 7. A five kilometre jog takes me over Monte Echia, from where I can see Vesuvius, Capri and the city below me framed in bright blue. After a cool shower, I go to a café for breakfast: a pastry and puddle of
The other week I popped into my big Morrisons after the school drop-off. It was a biggish shop, including things like socks, olive oil and washing powder, hence going to a proper supermarket rather than just whizzing into my local Tesco Express. Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on
I used to think a lot about Switzerland and how to accrue enough morphine to top myself when the time comes. But yay, at last, an assisted dying law seems likely and I can stop plotting. No one talks about death. But oldies think about it all the time, not deliberately – it just inserts
As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive
York’s famous Ebor meeting will be here before we know it and trainer William Haggas will be attempting to plunder many of its top races with his talented string. Although his stables are in Newmarket, Haggas is a Yorkshireman and so he particularly enjoys seeing his runners win at the course which lies some 40
Visiting San Sebastián last month, I was reminded of the joys and hazards of grazing. The speciality in this chic city, and throughout Spain’s northern Basque region, are pintxos – miniature open sandwiches topped with everything from chorizo and padrón peppers to anchovies and baby eels. Pintxoing, as I’ll call it, becomes almost like a
It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent to which the characters still live inside your mind, bobbing about just below the level of consciousness. I still find myself puzzling over the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, decades after I first read
There are many old dishes in the UK that are hyper-regional, whose reach has never extended beyond geographical boundaries but remain much loved where they originated. Yorkshire curd tart is a good example: it is barely known beyond God’s own county (or God’s own four counties, which now technically make up what we think of
White, lacy cow parsley frothing along the roadside is a familiar sight during the British summer. But 2024 is the first year I can remember when it’s been superseded by the retina-scorching yellow of ragwort. Whether you consider common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) the ‘yellow peril’ or a precious wildflower crucial to biodiversity depends on whether
You knew it was going to be a superb Olympics from the moment Celine Dion belted out an Edith Piaf classic from the Eiffel Tower. And nothing since has disappointed – not least commentator Mark Chapman having to say things like ‘She was late with her eskimo roll’ during the incomprehensible kayak cross. But amid
I’m autistic, I teach autistic children and I care for autistic adults, but I never kid myself that we are better than other people. When I asked a fellow autistic man if he could name any famous autistic people, he replied: ‘Hitler and Einstein.’ I love his answer because it punctures the romanticism around autism.
I used to think that chefs were egotistical maniacs. Some of them are. But the vast majority of chefs are hardworking individuals coping with enough stress to send a beta-blocker into cardiac arrest. I spent more years than I care to admit moonlighting as a bartender and waiter. I worked with dozens of chefs. Some
I’ve lived in Brighton and Hove since 1981. I’ve been surrounded by seagulls for most of my life, but somehow I’ve never really got used to them. There’s something unsettlingly prehistoric about those gnarled beaks and oversized, reptilian feet. While the feet can occasionally lend them a pleasingly comic aspect, the sheer size of the seagull
To finish or not to finish? The dilemma of whether to give up on books we aren’t enjoying or plough on to the end lasts a lifetime, but as we grow older it gets easier. We not only have less time, but also the increased confidence to decide that if a great novel isn’t engaging
Family holidays always carry a risk of dismaying revelations. Suddenly you are thrust together, 24/7, over many days, in a way only matched by Christmas (which is equally perilous). And so it was that, after ten days of driving around Provence and Occitanie, from Arles to the Camargue to the mighty Gorges of the Tarn,
The elegant, serpentine word ‘lesbian’ had a place in the sun only briefly. In the first real novel about lesbianism, 1928’s The Well Of Loneliness, the protagonists are gloomily and somewhat puzzlingly called ‘inverts’, conjuring up an image of some sad Sapphic wondering why she was condemned to spend her life upside-down. Amazingly, Christopher Hawtree, writing
It’s a painful process many of us must go through: culling a big book collection, amassed over a lifetime, before moving home. You know it makes sense, as you’ve struggled to house all your books – thousands of them – and they include quite a few you frankly wouldn’t miss. This chore awaits me at
Summer is the season most associated with the enjoyment of life. It’s when people forget their cares, down tools, and head for the beach to enjoy sunny days and sexy nights. That’s how it was for me anyway until I came close to life’s polar opposite – barely surviving two close brushes with death. So
It’s 7.54 a.m. and we are waiting for the doors of the Intermarché St Remy de Provence to open. A vast sense of excitement is building within our group that spans the ages of nine months to 68 years. My mother wants espadrilles, my husband wants wine, my brother-in-law wants cheese, the children want toys,
My wife and I have only ever dated by accident. After our third date a decade ago (well, what I thought was our third date) that she texted me asking, ‘So was that just dinner and theatre, or was it “dinner and theatre?”’ To this day, she insists that she had no idea what was