An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
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
I’ve just given Elon Musk $8 a month to get a blue tick by my name on Twitter. The fact I haven’t been able to secure one of these ticks on merit like so many other nonentities has been a source of near-constant irritation for the past half decade, particularly given how much time I
Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares with the famous singer. And it wasn’t a compliment when it was given to him: the singer’s father took one look at his newborn son and said he looked like ‘nine pounds of ground chuck’,
Wine-making can have a tragic dimension, and rarely more so than with Italian Pinot Nero: that is, Pinot Noir. It is often made amid blood-soaked landscapes, where tragedy regularly arose out of pretensions to grandeur. If you wish to read an overview of modern Italian history in order to understand why, the place to start
Paul Weller releasing a collection of solo B-sides is cause for mild celebration. After all, the Jam were one of the great B-side bands. ‘Tales From The Riverbank’, ‘The Butterfly Collector’, ‘Liza Radley’ – all A-list songs, relegated to the subs’ bench. Remember the B-side? That bijou, creative safe space which didn’t merely permit but
The standard complaint of anyone doing a Christmas gift books guide is that the books aren’t up to much. I myself may have moaned to this effect in the past. But either they are getting better or my critical faculties are beginning to fail. I think it’s the former, but if I’m wrong don’t be
Do you ever think about the ground beneath your feet? I do. Having read a number of popular science books on this most precious of natural resources, I am now obsessed. So much has recently been discovered about the invaluable symbiotic relationships that form between microbes, fungi and plant roots in the soil that it
We all tend to put a value on what we haven’t got. Talking to a West Indian friend, Mrs Oakley, a foodie to her core, envied her the fresh pineapple, mangoes and bananas of her Caribbean childhood compared with our post-war canned fruit. ‘Oh no,’ said her friend, ‘it was the rare canned fruit treats
The gastropub, an invention of the early 1990s, is a terrible idea. They burst on to the scene when breweries were made to sell off many of their pubs for a song to make way for competition, encouraging Marco Pierre White wannabes to snap them up and replace cheese sandwiches and pork scratchings with kidneys
Golden pineapples, hotel rooms named after spies and the only curved piece of glass in the Gherkin – yes, it’s EC, the second in our series looking at the quirky history of London postcode areas. Step this way for some Square Mile trivia…
When the Prince and Princess of Wales announced they were moving their family to the Royal County of Berkshire this summer, estate agents reported a ‘flurry’ of enquiries about properties around Windsor and the village of Bucklebury, 50 minutes west on the M4. The Middleton family had already been increasing their interests in and around
As ocean-going metaphors go, the news that a £1 billion cruise liner (usually charging £2,434.80 – love that 80! – for a nine-night jaunt, complete with a shopping mall, 14 jacuzzis, six swimming pools and the longest ‘dry-slide’ at sea) will host England’s Wags during the World Cup in Qatar could not have been more splashy. This is a
‘Isn’t Naples beautiful? I’ve always dreamt about it. I always wanted this city all for myself; I didn’t want to share it… I alone deserved it because of everything I lost and I would have done anything to get it.’ So says Ciro Di Marzio – nicknamed ‘the immortal’ because he has survived so much
‘I know,’ I said to my friend recently. ‘Let’s see a film!’ We booked the Everyman Kings Cross, the only cinema that happened to be showing what we wanted to watch at a convenient time and location. You might already be familiar with the Everyman concept. According to the chain, it’s ‘redefining cinema’ with an
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Ten or 20 years ago no one would have thought twice about enjoying Nescafé or its equivalent. There is soothing ritual in spooning, pouring, stirring and sipping the mud-brown concoction in a mug. But nowadays, for a generation nourished on slow-roasted Colombian cashew-milk cortados,
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito some time in early March 1923. The bite became infected. By April he was running a high fever, had pneumonia in both lungs and his heart and respiratory systems were failing. He died in a Cairo hospital on
The 34 early Georgian houses that line Fournier Street, in the heart of Spitalfields, are a perfectly preserved microcosm of East London life through the centuries. Since it was built in the 1720s, the street – which runs between Brick Lane and Commercial Street, in E1 – has variously been home to the city’s wealthiest and
In April 2021 I wrote a piece for The Spectator which became the most-read article I have ever had published here. It began with the words: ‘I bought an electric car and wish I hadn’t.’ It was the story of my ill-judged decision to get a Hyundai Kona Electric. I had hoped to use it
Long before there was tequila, before there was a state of Mexico, there was mezcal. The agave plant – which is roasted, fermented and distilled to produce this traditional spirit – has been a part of life in the region for millennia. When the first stills arrived there in the 16th century they were quickly
It’s hard to imagine how baffled the British public must have been by the arrival of David Bowie on to TV screens in the early 1970s. With his saffron hair, make-up and androgynous clothes, superficially he looked like a rejection of everything his post-war south London childhood had taught him. One of the most pivotal
Farewell, Truss’s twisty lectern. Last week in Downing Street Rishi Sunak used one with a straight column. If he follows recent Tory tradition, he’ll have one made to his own design, paid for by the party (£2,000-£4,000 a pop) and loaned to the government. Each lectern (from the Latin legere, ‘to read’) has sent a message.
Chessington World of Adventures sits in a bowl near the A3. I went in the 1970s when it was a zoo, home to some unhappy orangutans who lived in a cage which made me scream. Being a lonely sort of child, I hugged concrete dinosaurs in the rain. Now it is owned by Merlin Entertainments
Among people of a conservative disposition, it’s long been accepted that the Equality Act needs to be repealed. This legislation, passed in 2010 in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s premiership, was designed to embed Labour’s egalitarian ideology into the fabric of the British state, yet none of Brown’s successors have done anything about it.
When the burly honchos of the Rugby League World Cup gushed about taking the game to new heights, no one was actually thinking about the Golan Heights – but that’s where we are. What sounds like a fascinating quarter–final takes place on Friday (as I write) when the dominant team in global rugby league, Australia,
First comes disbelief that I have done something so extreme, followed by denial as I pick up my phone repeatedly to check it’s not just a bad dream. But no – it’s really happening. Panic segues into frustration; then, finally, I arrive at acceptance. For the next three hours I will not be able to
It’s harder than ever to get away from it all in the Cotswolds. Come Friday night, west Londoners pack their bags and descend on the countryside. Many ‘up from Londoners’ head to places such as Soho Farmhouse. The success of Clarkson’s Farm, a hit TV show based at the former Top Gear presenter’s Cotswolds patch,
When Idi Amin’s voice crackled through the radio on 4 August 1972 with his fateful ultimatum, my family paid little notice, save for wondering briefly why a government announcement had interrupted the blaring Bollywood tunes. My father’s two sisters were getting married the next day (both tying the knot at the same time meant half
Picture the scene: it’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday. You’re sitting on the sofa in the home of someone you barely know, gulping supermarket wine, making inane chitchat with friends of friends as you all put off the inevitable: discussing a book only a third of the women – always women – in the room
Mixing business with pleasure can be risky business. For decades the City of London has upheld this doctrine, religiously prioritising office space over new homes to preserve its reputation as a global financial centre. In his 29-year tenure as the City of London’s planning chief, Peter Rees famously allowed only one new residential tower to