New York Let’s face it, sleaze is to professional party-givers what jail is to a burglar, an occupational hazard. I’ve been reading about parties in Cannes, described in glowing terms by stars-in-their eyes hacks who should, but do not, know any better. Well, dear readers of The Spectator, I’m afraid I’ve been there, done it
We cleared the kitchen table for a game of pick-up sticks. Remember them? Thirty long, thin bamboo sticks, their differing values painted on them in red, blue or yellow stripes? You bunch them in your fist and let them collapse in a heap on the table and then the players extract one at a time
After a tense two week stand-off, the Balham Airbnb Crisis has been resolved. My upstairs neighbour and I have drawn back from the brink. He has agreed to let me station bed and breakfast guests in my main bedroom. I have agreed to pay slightly higher building insurance contributions. By the time we signed the
When your mind suddenly goes wonky, you may be the one person who doesn’t realise that there is something wrong with it. That’s what happened a month ago when I was on a country holiday in Tuscany with my wife. It was lovely weather, and lunch had been laid out of doors. I had cooked
‘After a few decades of marriage a man ought to be able to recognise his own wife,’ Mrs Oakley observed a little tartly last Saturday when I picked her up post-Goodwood from Reading station after patrolling the concourse for 15 minutes. But if a woman buys herself a beanie to keep out the rain and
I was in Paris last week to take part in an EU referendum debate at Sciences Po, a French university that specialises in international relations. It’s not an exaggeration to describe Sciences Po as a finishing school for Europe’s political elite. Twenty-eight heads of state have studied or taught there, its graduates include five of
The following wines from Private Cellar are all about summer, chosen with long lunches on the lawn, picnics by the river and crafty evening drinks in mind. I reckon they hit just the right note. And because I’m so wretchedly indecisive I’ve snuck a seventh wine in too. First, the 2015 Finca Salazar Sauvignon Blanc
No place for the faint of heart, Headingley, and certainly not for some sketchy Sri Lankan batsmen at the back end of a cold damp week in May with the two best seam bowlers in the world swinging away. Nobody liked it much on either side, which makes Jonny Bairstow’s big 140 all the more
Q. What is the etiquette regarding asking to drink the wine you have brought to a dinner party? The man I am dating insisted on having ‘his’ wine when our host came round the table with a newly opened bottle. Being shortsighted, our host opened the wrong second bottle but my date persisted until he
The Keeper’s House sits in the basement of Burlington House, a restaurant in disguise. It is quite different from the grand cafés of St James’s and Mayfair, which are raging exhibitionists with banquettes splayed like limbs. It is secretive and it knows, consciously or not, the tricks of children’s literature: the looking-glass, the wardrobe and
‘It was nothing special, but it was a pub,’ said my husband, looking up from his copy of Bar magazine (which is not to do with the law). He was referring to the Grapes in George Street, Oxford. Obligingly, I asked him what it was now. ‘It’s a “craft beer and pizza bar concept”,’ he
