Kyiv On the morning of 24 February, I woke just before seven as a tentative apricot dawn was spreading over scrubby flatlands dusted with light snow. The secret train was trundling into an unprepossessing town, houses scattered amid spindly pines, nothing to write home about. I didn’t even look for a station sign as they’d
The hay dealer showed me his latest stock and told me the bright green hay would cost me a staggering €165 a bale. ‘I don’t want to smoke it, I want to feed it to my horses,’ I said, looking doubtfully at what was apparently best meadow hay. It was a very large bale, and
Hurrah, they’re back! After years away from our embrace, mighty Berry Bros & Rudd have finally returned to the Spectator Wine Club fold, and I couldn’t be happier. I spent many jolly years working for Berry Bros a few decades ago and it was wonderful to return to my alma mater to taste wines for
Is the ‘Cathedral’ about to fall down? That’s the name given by the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin to denote the 21st century’s most prestigious intellectual institutions, particularly in journalism and academia. He’s talking about the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. But
The confused world of Duhan van der Merwe must seem more confused than usual after last weekend. The Scotland winger with an accent that sounds more Western Cape than Western Isles found himself crowned man of the match despite Scotland’s defeat by England at Twickenham, while at the same time being scapegoated as the man
Q. A divorced male friend, renting in Notting Hill, has had no historic experience of cooking but has discovered Lidgate pies and started giving lunches. His dining table seats 12, he provides good wine and cheese and the ambiance, the quality of guests and the (fake) log fire make for a superb atmosphere. His morale
La Môme is the new ‘Mediterranean’ restaurant at the Berkeley, Knightsbridge’s monumental grand hotel. It has changed, as all London’s grand hotels have changed: it is Little Dubai in the cold and the chintz is on the bonfire. Fairy lights hang from the awning of the entrance, as if in an eternal Christmas. I barely
In 1924 Geoffrey Madan retired, aged 29, and devoted himself to books. ‘A genius for friendship, selfless devotion to progressive causes, a deep and touching love of animals and of natural beauty – he would not have claimed for himself any of these so frequent attributes of the lately dead,’ said an obituary never published.
All night I listen out for you, stalled in my terrace window like Pegasus in a field of stars. A clothes horse between semesters, draped in your colours, a bra for blinkers … I wait, still
Low little thick-walled stone cottage on the dwindling, forest encroached old Usk road. You’d catch it at your eyeline, squat above the hedgerows, like a cup on its saucer; whitewashed, dim windowed, slightly sad outer face. Dad’s last home. His, more than hers, ‘a refuge place.’ After he’d died, Mum toiled in the garden that
In racing, superstitions are rife. I once saw a trainer remonstrate with an owner for displaying a green handkerchief: green, he insisted, was unlucky (although it doesn’t seem to work that way for owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, whose ‘double green’ colours have been carried to success in many top races). Henrietta Knight, who
