Spectator Life

So farewell then Arthur Beale, you were the last of the great chandler shops. You and I had little in common… This is how I imagine E.J. Thribb poem starting, and Private Eye’s Poetry Corner would do well to eulogise the passing of one of London’s most eccentric shops. It is to the credit of

After 14 months of subsisting in loungewear, with a social life largely provided by Netflix box sets and Deliveroo, many would gladly attend the opening of an envelope in order to get out of the house. Thanks to the vagaries of British weather, ‘dressing up’ has hitherto meant extra layers and grabbing the blanket off the

If there is one good thing to come out of this godawful pandemic, please can it be an end to the practice of air kissing? You might have spent the past year longing to give your friends a bear hug, or hold your grand children, but how many of us have really missed one of

How far the world of electric vehicles has come in just a decade. Back in 2011, the most prevalent ‘EV’ to be found on the streets of London was probably a G-Wiz, the Indian-built microcar that was so light, small and slow that it was officially deemed not to be a car at all, but

Admit it, the joy of driving is a myth – in Britain at least. Drivers who talk about the thrill of getting behind the wheel should ask themselves, when was it that they last really enjoyed driving somewhere? Because the grim truth is that unless you are on an isolated country road miles from the nearest speed camera –

I didn’t make it down to Valencia, Spain, for the weekend Formula E electric car grand prix. Long trips are more or less out of the question now in my Kona electric car, since Hyundai crippled the range of the battery pack to stop the car from bursting into flames. Not that I missed much.

The Duke of Edinburgh was carried to his tomb in a modified Land Rover, and this is apt. He walked away from a highspeed collision in Norfolk a few years ago because – and probably only because – he was driving a Land Rover Freelander. The Land Rover, which was intially the off-road Rover, is

Even before the news of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh was announced, Buckingham Palace had had to suspend ticket sales for visiting its gardens this summer, due to overwhelming demand. With the annual summer opening of the State rooms cancelled for the second year running due to the pandemic, the opportunity to picnic

I bought an electric car and wish I hadn’t. It seemed a good idea at the time, albeit a costly way of proclaiming my environmental virtuousness. The car cost €44,000, less a €6,000 subsidy courtesy of French taxpayers, the overwhelming majority poorer than me. Fellow villagers are driving those 20-year-old diesel vans that look like

A cooker is not just for cooking. That is the starting point to understanding the Aga. It is impractical, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive. Everyone – including the Aga’s most ardent devotees – knows that. And yet the Aga cooker next year will celebrate its centenary. Despite all the modern appliances that should long ago have

Before H&M launched their new campaign of loungewear with Hector Bellerin, I confess I hadn’t heard of him. I am not aware of how many goals he has kicked or on behalf of whom. What I had noticed was the fact that the collection was what is more colloquially known as the tracksuit, but fairly

If you are on social media, you have probably scrolled past a hundred photographs of Harry Styles’ Grammys performance last week. It was eccentric, quirky. And Styles donned his much-touted androgynous swagger.  The media and menswear magazines keep insisting that Styles’ fashion choices are groundbreaking and are setting the tone for a new generation of

House sales have always been among the things that the major auctioneers do best, especially when those sales involve dispersing collections amassed by ‘great’ families that have spent generations living in equally ‘great’ properties. In the halcyon years they happened on site, the viewing days giving the local proleteriat what might have been a once-in-a-lifetime

On April 23, 1946, Enrico Piaggio filed a patent with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce for ‘a motorcycle of a rational complexity of organs and elements combined with a frame with mudguards and a casing covering the whole mechanical part’. In less formal terms, the machine in question was called a Vespa – and

The campervan is the ideal vehicle for a British spring (at present there is no foreign spring available). There are two extremes to consider. There is the original VW which looks like a fairy princess with big dewy headlamps for eyes. I was driven to Glastonbury in the old VW by a woman who looked like

The Daily Mail has a new target – Pierre Lagrange. The enormously successful hedge funder has found himself in the cross hairs because he claimed money from Rishi Sunak’s furlough scheme for some of the staff at Huntsman – the All-Blacks of Savile Row tailors – which Pierre bought in 2013. As hit-jobs go, it is as

‘I don’t wear a headband. If you want to, you can!’ says karate World Champion Jordan Thomas. ‘Don’t disillusion me, Jordan!’ I bark, perhaps a little aggressively. I’ve watched three seasons of Cobra Kai in a week and I am all about a karate headband / floppy fringe combo. Kick-ass comedy drama Cobra Kai is

Now, in an anxious time, I have an SUV, and this is apt. There is something very comforting about an SUV if it’s yours (though less so if it isn’t). They are designed to dominate any landscape they can fit inside and, if that is a hollow fantasy of control it doesn’t feel like one

Analog motion, the brand behind the incredibly popular AM1+, are back with their latest model, the AMX Stealth. The company — so I’m told enthusiastically by their CEO — claims to have had a rethink, and wants to now ‘focus on making products that people love’. This surprised me, since their AM1+, reviewed last year,

When’s the last time you wore a tie? Was it yesterday? Are you wearing one now? Somehow I doubt it. After all, why should you, sitting there in your home office or spare bedroom, or sitting room?  Of course there was a time, if you’re a male reader, that you would have worn one every

Once mainly associated with portly, middle-aged men of a certain social standing, cigars – along with single malt whisky, fine wine, decent watches and interesting cars – have become part of the arsenal of interests that anyone who aspires to be a 21st century gentleman is almost required to hold dear.  But the current enthusiasm

First things first, I should issue a disclaimer: I’m not a fan of bikes that have apps. It’s always struck me as odd that a lot of electric bike manufacturers make a big deal about making bikes more friendly for riders – and yet so many insist on adding additional tech that your average cyclist

Wild swimming has become almost tediously fashionable recently, and no heatwave is really complete without a flood of articles on how it feels to take a dip in the outdoors (and even more tedious ones about how ‘in my day, we just called it swimming’ from people fortunate enough not to have grown up with