An easy one: what links Jack Straw’s Castle, The Labouring Boys and The Jolly Taxpayer? No, not the parliamentary expenses scandal of yesteryear, but the weird and whimsical world of British pub names. It was in 1393 that Richard II ordered brewers to announce their beery business by a prominent sign. Colourful names quickly abounded,
‘A love of boats and sailing is the surest of all passports to a happy life,’ wrote Arthur Ransome. Standing on Windermere Jetty on a crisp clear morning, gazing out across the cool grey water, you can see what he meant. Sailing around England’s largest lake is a great way to spend a lazy day,
‘You can get away from everything,’ said Harold Wilson of the Isles of Scilly, ‘not only in distance but also in time’. During recess, Wilson would frequently catch the sleeper from Paddington to Penzance before making the notoriously choppy crossing to Britain’s most westerly archipelago. There he would unwind in his cottage on St Mary’s
The other day, as I walked with my partner through Notting Hill, we came across a shop which deserves to be visited just as an experience, or perhaps an education, for people not yet aware how extremely silly the 21st century can be. We had heard strange and interesting things about Goop, an online store
It is claimed that the prophet Muhammad loved cats. His favourite was called Muezza and he would do without his cloak on a cold day rather than disturb his sleeping pet. Muhammad was not alone in finding these creatures beguiling. Indeed, despite there being no mention of them in the Bible, cats have a prestigious
You may have noticed the Connaught a little more since 2011, when ‘Silence’, the steamy fountain by Japanese ‘architect philosopher’ Tadao Ando, was installed outside the entrance. But actually the hotel doesn’t want to be noticed. It prides itself on guaranteeing famous guests their privacy. Eric Clapton added his own layer of protection by checking in
Standing on Warren Hill in the morning mist, watching Britain’s finest thoroughbreds thunder past, you realise what makes Newmarket so special. Racehorses are all around you — there are yards all over town. Every morning, there are hundreds of horses out training. And these aren’t any old horses. They’re some of the fastest racehorses in
The tale of forced Yorkshire rhubarb has the makings of a David Lean film. Frosty Slavic beginnings, wartime devotion, steam trains. Rhubarb was brought to Britain from Siberia towards the end of the 17th century, and it’s hard to imagine a more eccentrically British fruit — though technically it is of course a vegetable. The
There is a particularly magical West Country woodland that I know, through which a sunlit stream meanders, braided by a series of neatly dammed pools that hum with life; dragonflies and mayflies, swallows, swifts, kingfishers, amphibians and small fish teem here in numbers rarely seen in Britain. The birdsong is cacophonous. The water’s edge is
The Celtic Tiger has come and gone. Over the past 30 years, billions of pounds poured into Irish houses and then drained out again. The ruins of Ireland have slumbered on through the peak, the trough and the current blessed recovery. Medieval castles, Georgian country houses, Victorian lodges… They cling on, disappearing under the ivy,
For a few years before coming to Italy, I lived in Paris and I cannot tell you the life-enhancing difference I felt as I crossed the frontier from France into Italy in my metallic burgundy Honda Prelude. On arrival at the Italian motorway toll that stifling summer of 1998, I discovered I had no money
For most Latin Americans, who are themselves no strangers to sporting eccentricity, cricket remains a baffling proposition. The game is dismissed as being far too English (for that read ‘bizarre and snobbish’) and is often confused with croquet. Ignorance, however, does not preclude peculiar theories on how the game is played. I remember a Uruguayan
Benjamin Britten was adamant that he did not want any memorial sculpture of himself in Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town where he lived for 30 years. He died in 1976 and he is remembered there by the Britten-Pears music school and Snape Maltings concert hall, by John Piper’s magnificent window in the church, and at
If you’ve ever travelled on London’s Piccadilly Line, you may have noticed that on the stretch between Green Park and South Kensington, the north-facing tunnel twice changes to a peculiar dark grey rather than the familiar charcoal black. I always used to look out for these grey bricks when I took the Tube back home
The woman on the path has come to a dead stop. She’d been shuffling along in that bunched-up posture we all developed when we bought smartphones, a two-fingered salute to the millennia of evolution that managed to pull humans into an upright position. Now she’s staring, open-mouthed, at her surroundings. I rather enjoy the shocked
There are piles of stones and then there are piles of stones. Anyone can place one rock upon another, but it takes a special endeavour to get the Ordnance Survey to take notice. Once a clutch of cartographers formally recognise a cairn, it will stay mapped for centuries, if not millennia. Wander around Britain’s fells,
Constable painted only three religious paintings, and when you see the one in St Mary’s Church in Dedham you realise why. The Ascension is a tricky topic, even for a master painter like John Constable, and his Jesus Christ looks distinctly awkward as he ascends into heaven — like a bloke at a toga party
If you mention the word ‘Booths’ anywhere south of Knutsford, you will usually be met with a blank expression, followed by someone wondering if you are mispronouncing the name of a nearby pharmacy. But in the north-west the name is associated with a store native to Lancashire, which, uncharacteristically for a supermarket chain, holds a
‘Yes, it’s here!’ says the sign above the English épicerie in Paris. ‘Yes, at last,’ thinks the starved expat wandering in a desert of croissants, magret de canard and monts blancs. Now for some real food: Fray Bentos pies, Quaker Oats, Fentimans lemonade, HP Sauce, Marmite, Tetley’s, Twinings, Dorset cereals, Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut, Altoids
It always amuses me at this time of year to observe the fuss people make about quitting booze for a month. Because three years ago, after three decades of taking cocaine on a daily basis, I gave it up overnight. Over-eating, gambling, shopping, pornography — there’s no cheap thrill that can’t be mastered with a
