London

From Henry James and T.S. Eliot to Wallis Simpson and (albeit briefly) Taylor Swift, US expats have had a long love affair with London. But over the past year the number of Americans – overpaid, what with their favourable exchange rate, oversexed, possibly, and certainly over here – has been escalating fast.  In 2024, 6,100 Americans applied for British citizenship, the most since records began – in what’s been dubbed the ‘Donald dash’. And it seems it’s the wealthy who are leading the charge. According to estate agent UK Sotheby’s International Realty, four in ten of the $15 million-plus properties sold in the British capital last year went to US

Walking into this crowded and clattering restaurant for the first time in more than 30 years, two things strike me almost immediately: 1) it seems to be largely unchanged and 2) the prices have scarcely risen. I can’t claim to have tried every wine list in Soho, but I can tell you with certainty that this is the first time in a very long time that I have seen a glass of wine for under £5 in the West End. But, incredibly, here it starts at £4.50 – with cocktails from £8.The restaurant is Pollo, as it’s still popularly known, or La Porchetta Pollo Bar as the sign outside calls

A Sunday morning in Bethnal Green and Adam, who has been leading Kray-themed walking tours of the neighbourhood for almost two decades, corrals a congregation of eight polite, reserved, attentive customers who, with sensible rucksacks, floor-length M&S skirts, reusable water bottles and neutral-coloured, thin-laced trainers, look as far removed from pool hall brawls and basement flat stabbings as it’s possible to get without joining the Church Army or taking up cribbage. When he started giving tours of the Kray twins’ haunts, Adam tells us, it was impossible to go more than five minutes without some tipsy ageing derelict lurching out of the Blind Beggar pub to inform the group that

The Cherry Tree on Southgate Green began life as a coaching inn on one of the historic routes from London to York and beyond. It has been trading since 1695, when what are now the north London suburbs were open fields. But the other evening, the pub – my local – rang last orders for the final time. The brewery that owns it is having it refurbished as a brasserie, its pub status coming to an end after 330 years. I went on its final evening for the closing-down party. It was like being in an episode of EastEnders, in the sense that it was a pub full of faces

During the course of last year, Alex Greaves and his wife Sarah seriously considered moving out of London. The couple, who live in Southfields in the south-west of the city with their sons aged two and five, were tempted the idea of a new life in the country – inspired largely by friends’ idyllic tales of moving to the sticks and into a home far grander than anything they could possibly afford in the capital. In the end, though, Alex and Sarah decided to stay put. And they are not alone. In the past year the number of Londoners leaving the city has dwindled dramatically. Research by estate agent Hamptons

The suggestion that the Prince Charles cinema in London’s West End could be closed down was the least surprising news of the week. This sort of thing, fuelled by soaring property values, has been happening in Soho and its periphery for three decades now and shows no sign of relenting. The Prince Charles isn’t strictly in Soho, being just south of Shaftesbury Avenue, but it has always felt like it belonged there, with the other left field, misfit and seedy enterprises that gave the place its character and reputation. It was built in 1962 but, on the edge of Chinatown, was just too far off the main drag of Leicester

Recently in Spectator Life Rob Crossan laid bare ‘the unpalatable truth about British food’ – namely that it is, er, in some establishments he’s been to, done badly. Leaving aside the fact he’s looking for his fish and chips in the wrong place (outside the M25 it wouldn’t be such a struggle), encountering a few dodgy versions of British fare is not a good reason to sit idly by and allow our culinary heritage to disappear. British food can compete with the world’s best – if we allow it to. In many ways we have had to develop a thick skin when it comes to the loss of treasured bastions

Partridges, purveyor of ‘nice things for the larder’ to the well-heeled, will close the doors of its Chelsea shop for the last time next month. After 53 years of serving SW3 delights such as ox tongue, macadamia nuts and glace cherries, the shop, run by the Shepherd family and in possession of a royal warrant, will soon carve its last slice of wafer-thin mortadella. Its landlord, the Cadogan Estate, has thanked Partridges for helping to ‘make Chelsea so special’. What Cadogan Estates omits to say of course, is that a branch of Whole Foods, that artisan behemoth beloved of American bankers and vegan, coeliac Gen Z-ers, is soon to take its

Last year a friend who lives in Lyon came to visit me in London. It was only her second trip to the UK and she was determined to venture deep into our indigenous food culture. ‘So, where can I get good fish and chips?’ she asked me. Now, if I was a citizen of Vienna and she was asking me where to find really good sachertorte, I suspect I wouldn’t struggle to reel off myriad cafes. If I lived in Athens and was questioned about where to get decent souvlaki, I would probably have a list as long as Hercules’s personal meat skewer. But fish and chips? In London? I

I awoke in the early afternoon of 31 December 1995 face down on the carpeted floor of a mansion house flat in Notting Hill with the worst hangover I have ever had.  It is customary when writing about hangovers to quote the best description of the condition – by Kingsley Amis: ‘A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.’ And there’s also, of