An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Last weekend, Ferrari contested the top category at the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time in 50 years, and they took me along for the ride. The greatest endurance race in the world celebrated its centenary, and the grandstands and campsites were even more packed than usual – 325,000 fans descended on France’s
As Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson trade insults, here’s a look at some of the best – and most wounding – barbs in film. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Amazon Rent/Buy Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, the master of full-on, spittle-flecked abuse, eventually gets his comeuppance for belittling conscripted recruits in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam war classic. A prime
If you needed more proof that gay men aren’t in control of things any more – at least where the activist set is concerned – look no further than the evolution of the LGBTQ+ Pride flag. If, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter
Apparently much of the notoriety – or perhaps by now it has become allure – of Essex is my fault. In 1990, weeks before Mrs Thatcher was defenestrated, I wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph called ‘Essex Man’, in circumstances that Tim Burrows describes entirely accurately in this exceptionally well-written and intelligent book. Although
What an idyllic setting. We were amidst the joys of high summer in England, with just enough of a breeze to save us from the heat of the sun, and the further help of a swimming pool. Water without, wine within. We were also surrounded by roses, England’s flower, luxuriating in their beauty and innocence.
You can take a jockey who has ridden there out of Hong Kong; it’s a lot harder, I reflected, after a chat at Newbury with Neil Callan, taking Hong Kong out of the jockey. Even though this is his second season back on home territory after spending ten years in that racing pressure cooker, Neil
‘Will someone steal my coat?’ ‘No, you’re on a holy pilgrimage,’ my son’s Irish carer-companion Rosemarie reassured him. We were going to Lourdes, where in 1858 a poor peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, had 18 visions of the Virgin Mary. At Stansted I’d lost a tooth. I had a bad knee and an ancient foot injury.
With its perfectly soaring Jacobean-style architecture, leaded windows and enchanting walled garden, all set within 17-plus acres of East Sussex countryside, Grade II* Listed Possingworth Manor is the rural idyll of an English country house. Despite its tranquil appearance, however, the 11-bedroom, 8,500 sq ft manor near Uckfield has had a disproportionate share of drama over
Haruki Murakami said that ‘I feel that most of what I know about writing fiction I learned from music.’ Music and literature enjoy a close relationship. Authors rely on rhythm and tone for their writing. So when a writer chooses to incorporate music into their work, it always makes for a powerful moment, connecting the
On hearing of the Duchess of Sussex’s alleged fondness for the Diabolo de Cartier Music Box (retailing for almost £3,000, in lacquered wood and gold-finish metal, freed bird motif turns when ‘La Vie En Rose’ plays), I reflected on the adult liking for childish things. Though the box is ostensibly for Meghan’s infant daughter Lilibet Ltd – sorry, Lilibet Diana – a
Standing on the quayside beside the River Rhine, gazing at the happy teenagers swimming in the dark water down below, I wonder where the last forty years have gone. Forty years ago, I was one of those teenage swimmers, swept along by the fierce current through the centre of this ancient city. Now, half a
They’re now such common ingredients that you can buy them in all but the smallest shops: halloumi, pesto, couscous, salsa, roasted peppers. But their origins as culinary staples can be traced back to the publication 30 years ago of Delia Smith’s Summer Collection. This book and the accompanying TV series changed British cooking forever. Delia didn’t invent much
First Charterhouse, then Winchester – now Westminster. In the past two years alone, three of Britain’s most famous schools have recently turned, or are planning to turn, fully co-educational. How many more boys’ schools will follow? One popular argument for the change is, as ever, that girls will be a ‘civilising influence’ upon teenage boys
When I was younger, I dreamed of being a Jane Austen heroine. Nearly two decades on, in my late twenties, I am living in the guest room of a married older cousin in a leafy suburb of London, house-hunting in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting on a security clearance for a public-sector job,
Artificial intelligence (AI) has rarely been out of the headlines over recent months, creating foreboding that computers will soon be an existential threat to humanity. Movies have long anticipated this, beginning almost a century ago with Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic Metropolis (1927). Seven years earlier, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s stage play R.U.R. – Rossumovi Univerzální
You don’t need to be a genius to know that if you are training for HM The King and HM The Queen, then it would be a shrewd career move to land a Royal Ascot winner for them later this month. This is, of course, the first time that the King and Queen will be
Better located, conveniently compact and free from busloads of tourists, the city of Lucca is emerging out of the shadow of Florence. Tourists and holiday home buyers are discovering that the northern Tuscan province is an excellent alternative to Chiantishire. Within an hour of both Pisa and Florence airports, it’s the perfect weekend getaway, but
Walking into the Sedlescombe Sainsbury’s superstore recently I passed a girl in tracksuits carrying a stack of steaming pizza boxes. ‘I didn’t know Sainsbury’s does takeaway pizza,’ I said to my husband. ‘Anniversary dinner?’ (two days away). Why not? Sainsbury’s has been toying with made-to-order takeaway food for a few years, while shutting down their butchers,
In the heart of Shoreditch, a handful of arts students have strayed from their typical east London mould. Those who study at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts are taught, through research and the practice of traditional arts and crafts, to ‘experience the beauty of the order of nature – a spiritual, sacred beauty,
With its inbuilt suspense, twists and turns – not to mention its many opportunities for scenery-chewing – the courtroom drama has long been a staple of cinema. Although plots tend to concentrate on capital cases, there are a fair few where reputational damage, corporate malfeasance, freedom of speech, education, religion, sexuality, race, military justice, politics
I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to most aspects of cooking. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from being dogmatic or dictatorial. It’s just supper, at the end of the day. There are, as they say, many ways to skin a rabbit. And cooking is supposed to be about joy; it’s not an
As a travel writer, I can get blasé about many aspects of travel: the free five-handed massage, the private plunge-pool out the back, those odd bits of overchilled orangey cheddar in an average Biz Class lounge. But one slightly childish thing that always pleases me is stamps in my passport. They should be emotionally meaningless:
There is a growing fashion for fake books. Not fake as in written by a series of AI prompts, but fake as in things – cleverly painted empty boxes, or a façade of spines glued to a wall – designed to mislead the casual onlooker into thinking that they are books. A recent New York
The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed, leaving a glut of blankets and ice cream, the remnants of Cornish drama. It’s a truism that Mousehole is hollowed out – tourism changes a place, and no one knows that better than Mousehole. Eating
If you couldn’t watch the Europa League final between Sevilla and Roma, then you should count yourself fortunate. It was a nasty, bitter and forgettable excursion, blighted by fouls and time-wasting, that should make anyone connected with it ashamed, apart from the doughty English referee Anthony Taylor, who had a fairly good game. But for
I’m writing this with headphones in, sitting at my desk on Old Queen Street. Please don’t tell Debrett’s. Apparently listening to headphones in the office is a huge faux pas, akin to cutting camembert with a fish knife. The company’s etiquette adviser, Liz Wyse, told the Times: ‘If you work in an open-plan office where
One of the great pluses of electric cars is that they are so quiet. The driver’s seat is a peaceful place to be, although safety regulations dictate they must emit artificial noise to alert pedestrians to their presence when travelling below certain speeds. Now that steps have been taken to prevent the visually impaired from
Earlier this week, Apple unveiled their latest product: the Vision Pro ultra-premium mixed reality headset. It’s sleek, advanced and luxurious, powered by Apple’s class-leading M2 and R1 chips, running their new VisionOS operating system, and built with a blend of glass, aluminium and plush fabric. Seven years after that messy launch, the Watch division made
Holly Willoughby returned to the This Morning sofa yesterday with a brief scripted statement on the fall of her long-time co-presenter Phillip Schofield: I imagine that you might have been feeling a lot like I have – shaken, troubled, let down, worried for the wellbeing of people on all sides of what’s been going on, and full
