An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
I will not be joining in the praise heaped on the current Sky remake of Frederick Forsyth’s classic thriller The Day of the Jackal. Apart from the fact that the series’ star Eddie Redmayne – who plays the Jackal, an ice-cold hitman – is about as menacing as a field mouse, the new Jackal is
For the kind of people who think London ought to be all Farrow and Ball-coated quaintness and whiffs of Dickensianism, Canary Wharf is a rude assault, an obnoxious jungle of the anti-quaint. It is also, to many, an embarrassing paean to a moment that only the 1980s could have produced: one of gauche capitalistic, deregulatory
Next year, I will be 65. At 65, one leaves the plateau of middle age and enters the foothills of senescence. For some, it’s an uneventful milestone marked by tidying up some herbaceous borders or experimenting with pesto; others yield to mortal panic and max out their credit card on something wildly impractical. On reaching
I remember being given a Le Creuset casserole dish for my 40th birthday. I’m 62 and it’s still going strong, though I dropped it on the stone floor in the kitchen and the handle broke in two. It’s also gone a little black inside, and no longer scrubs up as nicely as it did. Twenty-two
Marco Pierre White may have earned a reputation as the tousle-haired kitchen bad boy who once made Gordon Ramsay cry, but these days he spends his mornings rather more quietly, enjoying his kippers. Yet in his retirement, he can still cause controversy. He recently told a podcast how he cooks his kippers. ‘On a plate,
Last month, Keir Starmer made an announcement that sounded full of governmental largesse. From henceforth, the Prime Minister said, ex-servicemen would be exempt from local connection tests for social housing for ever, guaranteeing them a roof over their heads. ‘The military is a brilliant mechanism for social mobility… but it can be difficult to continue
Those casting their eye over the candidate list for the chancellorship of Oxford University might be forgiven for believing that social mobility has drastically reduced, returning to Trollopean quantities of languid toffs taking part in public life. Competing for the honour are Lord Peter Mandelson and Lord William Hague, both, you might think, the younger
Have you been to York? Have you sauntered along its narrow, meandering medieval streets, with their peculiar names – such as Swinegate, Lendal, Ogleforth, or Fossgate – that evoke a pre-modern age? Have you strolled up Museum Street, passing medieval walls and imposing crenellated stone gateways – known as bars for some reason, where severed
The first time I tried the well-known Hungarian wine Tokaj, which I bought from an eastern European delicatessen in London, I was so taken with it that it quickly became a verb – and the expression ‘I was a bit Tokaj’d last night’ stuck. But I soon realised that there are so many wonderful versions
The unusually dry autumn means it makes sense to favour horses with a preference for good ground when it comes to the racing at Wincanton and Aintree tomorrow. Field sizes continue to be smaller than usual because many trainers do not want to risk injuring their charges on quick ground at the start of the
We can thank Herbert ‘Herb’ Cobb McDonald for the modern-day all-you-can-eat buffet. Herb first introduced Las Vegas – and later the world – to this gastronomical abomination in 1946. The Buckaroo Buffet cost one dollar and promised ‘every possible variety of hot and cold entrees to appease the howling coyote in your innards’. The coyote
Rolls-Royce calls the Cullinan Series II, the new version of its 2018 ‘high-sided vehicle’ (read SUV), its ‘most capable’ motorcar. That is an understatement. Rolls-Royces can be understated because they are bespoke and, as such, they are what you want them to be. You are dropping the price of a house on a motorcar, after
‘What sort of book might Satan write?’ ‘Why do people watch horror films?’ ‘Should we give up hope?’ These were three of the questions faced earlier this year by candidates seeking admission to All Souls College, Oxford, Britain’s most elite academic institution. Founded by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, and King Henry VI in
There are many, mutually reinforcing causes of the property crisis: it is too easy to borrow; there are too many people; there aren’t enough houses; what houses do exist are in the wrong place; and many houses have the wrong people living in them. Solutions exist to all of these, some of which involve building
The whirligig of time brings in his… astonishments. Who would have thought it? Even a couple of decades ago, the notion that the Tory party could be led by a black woman would have seemed incredible. I remember 1975, and the doubts that were expressed about Margaret Thatcher: much louder than any adverse comment about
‘Recipes are like magic potions. They promise transformations,’ says Bee Wilson in her introduction to Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake (Faber, £12.99), a collection of classic authors’ recipes. You have to pray that tinned tomato soup will indeed be transformed into something nice-tasting, or that Noel Streatfeild’s filets de boeuf aux bananas will not be
Were The Duke and Duchess of Sussex to leave their mansion in Montecito, California, and head a couple of miles across town, to Toro Canyon, they would soon find themselves at the one-time home of a woman whose story they would find rather relatable. Because the former occupant once drove a wedge between the Prince
As cabin crew for an international airline, I love working in first class. In the briefing room, when all the crew are scrambling to bag their favourite positions before the start of the flight, I make sure to insist I’m the first-class dolly for the day. Usually no one minds, as some people are averse
One of the freedoms of later life, if you’re not Keith Richards, is that you no longer have to worry about being cool. Cool, far more than money, is the currency of youth, and as a teenager I knew who had it and who didn’t. But what was cool, all those decades ago? Who possessed
I can’t remember exactly when I had my first cigarette, but I remember roughly how I started. I was probably 13. I picked up one of my mum’s packets of ten Silk Cut, which was about half full. I slipped one out, put it in my pocket, saving it for later. My friends and I
‘Old soldiers…’ they used to say, ‘never die. They simply fade away.’ What a shame that the same can’t be said of old rock stars. The old codgers can’t be cajoled, shamed or otherwise persuaded to kindly leave the stages they have profitably adorned for half a century or more. My lifelong rock hero, Jim
Dashel Drasher is just the sort of jump horse that I love to watch. A front runner who wears his heart on his sleeve, he will tomorrow embark on his eighth competitive season for his astute Somerset handler Jeremy Scott. Aged 11, Dashel Drasher will make his seasonal debut in the Grade 2 bet365 Hurdle
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. I’m British, divorced, ginger-haired and I once accidentally called the late Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale ‘mum’ during an interview. So there’s very little I can learn about embarrassment. Or so I thought. My perspective changed somewhere around the moment that a male groomer versed in the nascent trend
John Lewis recently returned to its roots, resurrecting its ‘never knowingly undersold’ price-matching promise. But it’s hard to imagine how the company, which opened its first store on London’s Oxford Street in 1864, could apply this undertaking to its latest venture. For, not content with supplying the nation with sofas and curtains, lightbulbs and sewing
I remember, vividly, when working at Raymond Blanc’s Michelin-starred Le Manoir, the moment the truffles were delivered. A frisson went round the kitchen staff as the napkin covering the precious morsels was dramatically whipped off. Physically inspecting the gnarled, knobbly nuggets was a right reserved for head chef alone. As a lowly pot-washer, I was
One of the joys of getting older is the appreciation of the solitary pint. But what to do as you sip your hard-earned beer? Usually after a suitable period of contemplation I’ll start fiddling with my phone. Not Adrian Tierney-Jones; he writes books, and his latest, A Pub for All Seasons (Headline, £20), is a
Bonfire night is more about burning Catholics than haute cuisine and it shows. I’ve always felt for Catholic friends at this time of year, but I am a Jew, and I am told I am oversensitive. It’s also three decades since I made £150 doing ‘Penny for the Guy’ on Hampstead High Street. The last
The Ambassadors Clubhouse is on Heddon Street, close to Savile Row and the fictional HQ of Kingsman, which was a kind of privatised MI6. I wonder if the Kingsmen eat here, being clubmen. Heddon Street needs fiction because its reality is one-dimensional. It is an alleyway behind Regent Street, and it used to be interesting.
I often think of the first time I ate brown bread ice cream. I know how that sounds: it’s the exact sort of pretentious nonsense a food writer would say if they were about to press a recipe for brown bread ice cream on you. But it was long before I became a food bore,
