Spectator Life

One of my favourite off-duty pictures of HM the Queen is this photo taken at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in 1979. I love the look of HM’s long pink tweed cape worn with a matching silk headscarf and leather boots. A simple, understated country casual outfit but she still has an air of superwoman

It’s not so long ago that old watches used to turn-up at car boot fairs, charity shops and jumble sales (remember those?), usually in the form of unremarkable models set aside to be ‘got rid of’ after the grim reaper had called time on their original owners. Back then ‘watch collecting’ had yet to benefit

When the famously gloomy British winter starts to tighten its icy grip and spirits begin to wane, a tangible reminder that the sun will shine again always provides a fillip. And I find watching David Niven in the 1958 film Bonjour Tristesse usually does the trick. The movie version of Francoise Sagan’s famous novel about a

It would be interesting to see what people would have turned up in had the Bond premiere not been of the Royal variety with a black-tie dress code. Perhaps Daniel Craig in Yeezys or Lea Seydoux all Parisian chic in a pair of jeans and sweatshirt, we can but wonder. It is a relief that

Once upon a time, the Royal Horticultural Society staged a Great Autumn Show every September in their two Horticultural Halls off Vincent Square in London. It was a fine mixture of colourful nursery trade exhibitions and fiercely-fought amateur competitions, involving fruits, flowers and glowing foliage (Who could forget the amusing annual battle between the Dukes of

After Cabinet members recently took to the microphone for a karaoke evening, is Westminster’s new favourite hobby on course for a winter comeback? With summer days of al fresco cocktails and late-night picnics in the park almost behind us, a let-your-hair-down evening belting out karaoke could be just the answer. Here’s our guide to London’s best booths. Bloomsbury Bowling

It’s a kind of alchemy, transforming worthless clutter into pleasing and valuable collectors’ items, a slow but gratifying process all but forgotten in the modern age. I first learned it from the woman who ran a second-hand record store in my hometown, Tunbridge Wells, from the late seventies to the early nineties, where I misspent

During my first job at an advertising firm, there was a palpable disdain for suits amongst my colleagues. For a newly appointed copywriter, fresh out of university and hooked on Mad Men, wearing a suit seemed like the sensible thing to do in the office. But to the Generation-X creative director I was now working for –

Britain’s staycation charge has seen thousands of people buying campervans for the first time, not least the classic VWs beloved of hippies, surfers and generations of families whose definition of a good day out is a Thermos flask of tea. These clattery, engine-in-the-back vehicles already had cult status, but it seems the pandemic has supercharged their

I once read that after watching a James Bond film men speed in their Honda Civics: they might do 35 mph in a built-up area. If this is so, it is due to the Aston Martin Bond has driven since 1964 (the DB5 in Goldfinger, a man with ‘a cold finger’). The DB5 has appeared in

Searches for paddleboarding locations across the country have risen hugely over the last 18 months, with the global market for paddle boards now estimated to be worth around £7 billion. Stand Up Paddleboarding, also known as SUP, is a popular way to easily and cheaply get out on to the water, without having to purchase a

There are few sports cars as quintessentially English as Morgans. They speak of World War Two and flat-capped Spitfire pilots driving home to their sweethearts through leafy country lanes, taking the bends at maximum speed but courteously slowing down for horses and to wave at the vicar. But now the 113-year-old firm, which has operated

‘I got it in the days when movies moved slower,’ says Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks of the Airstream caravan that served as a home-from-home while shooting some of his biggest hits of the past 30 years, including Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Sleepless in Seattle. But now Hanks is offering the polished aluminium 33-footer at a

In Mary McCarthy’s 1954 novel The Group, Mr Andrews describes the contents of a charity shop (or thrift store if you hail from the States) as an ‘instructive inventory of the passé’. And indeed, all charity shops are repositories of the recent past – a perfect distillation of expended trends and fashions. Worthy of an

There have been various style know-it-alls who have been ruminating over the possible, perhaps inevitable, return of suits which have Miami Vice proportions. The Eighties cop show was bold in its broad silhouette, generous pleats, puffy shoulders and unstructured loucheness that undid 100 years of tailoring’s mission to flatter and ennoble. In 2021 it feels

Have you ever wanted to fly? For me the urge comes whenever I see a bird hovering directly over a hedge, flying into the wind so it can maintain a position and spot prey. It’s not the prey I’m interested in, just the sensation. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to defeat gravity? Like many of us,

Wandering through the sheep pens at the Great Yorkshire Show, it’s clear that a sheep is not ‘just’ a sheep. The sheer array of livestock on display is a lesson in itself. Sheep with fluffy legs; sheep with four enormous horns. Pink sheep, white sheep, brown, black and piebald sheep. Dreadlocked sheep; sheep with huge

In 1983 Cambridge academic W.G. Runciman, reviewing Peter York and Ann Barr’s The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, described the work as an ‘anthropological survey’ in the mould of such distinguished scholars as Malinowski and Veblen. Veblen’s late-nineteenth century The Theory of the Leisure Class was, Runciman explains, an ‘earnest social-Darwinian exercise in the analysis and

Are we witnessing the slow death of manly gardening? A new government initiative urges us that for the sake of bees and pollinators we should leave the mower in the shed and let our lawns turn into savannahs. Some thirty councils are signed up. King’s College Cambridge has turned its lawn into a wild flower

To some, the sight of Prince George wearing a suit and tie at Wembley on Sunday night was simply too much. The Mum mob on Twitter roared ‘Who dresses a child like that?’ presumably hoping that the future King would be wearing a football shirt and shorts like the rest of the child population lined

‘Have you got any advice?’ my friend calls to ask, ahead of going to pick up their pandemic puppy. ‘Well, um, as first-time dog owners, I’d say steer clear of spaniels and poodles… but it’s a bit late for that, ha!’ ‘Ha,’ she says, thinking I’m joking and off they go to fetch their cute,

Most electric cars no longer look peculiar, and the battery powered Mini is a good example of this. Go back a decade and electric cars were either tiny city vehicles with crude, shed like bodies or bigger and a bit weird. The original Nissan Leaf had the contours of a giant child’s shoe. The current,

Yes, we tune in for the tennis on Wimbledon fortnight. But lovers of SW19 also tune in for another kind of spectating on any given day: the sport of the Royal Box. A championship of notoriety and celebrity in its own right. Raised feudally above the Centre Court, the Royal Box has seventy-four Lloyd Loom

On 9 March 1981, a 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, then fiancé of the future king, stepped out in a black strapless taffeta gown by David and Elizabeth Emanuel for her first official engagement with Prince Charles – a Gala charity concert at Goldsmith’s Hall, marking the beginning of her royal life and setting the stage

James Bond might have served as Aston Martin’s greatest ambassador for the best part of half a century, but the Prince of Wales isn’t far behind. He’s been an Aston man ever since mum and dad gave him a Seychelle Blue DB6 for his 21st in 1969, when a gallon of leaded four-star cost a

During the 2018 World Cup, Gareth Southgate turned to a British institution to help get the lads into semis shape, the Royal Marines. It was hailed retrospectively as the key to the advanced-stage success. Now that England have soundly beaten their undoers of said World Cup last weekend, we can begin looking for sensible reasons

When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived at Holyrood House to watch a drive-in screening of the Disney film Cruella with NHS staff last month, the Daily Telegraph reported that the couple ‘paid tribute to the late Duke of Edinburgh’ by travelling in one of his ‘beloved’ Land Rovers – which, as any Landy