London

Thursday

Camilla Swift

Sloane Rangers vs Arabs – the battle for Chelsea

Perhaps you’re aware that it’s Ramadan right now, the month in which all good Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex during daylight. What you might not know is that Ramadan also marks the start of an annual turf war in London; a battle between the tribal Sloanes and the young Gulf Arabs to dominate Chelsea. The skirmish actually begins before Ramadan. The Gulf States heat up to an intolerable degree and their oil-rich young migrate over here in droves to escape both religious censure and the sun. They descend first of all on the department stores in what’s become known as the Harrods Hajj, to flash their cash

Ian Thomson

Why I’m now scared of book clubs

‘Hi Ian!’ the email began. ‘We are a group of mostly females who meet regularly in London to review really good reads. We are currently reading The Dead Yard, and were wondering if you would like to join us as our honorary guest while we fire you (gently) with questions about your book.’ The email concluded: ‘You will be well fed and thoroughly entertained! Kind regards, Phoebe.’ Very nice, but I sensed a danger. My book on Jamaica, The Dead Yard, has earned me a lot of enemies. For good or ill, it exposes a dark side of island life at odds with the ‘paradise’ of travel brochures. Bookshops in

Thursday

Andrew Roberts

From jailbird to social butterfly – the return of Conrad Black

The former proprietor of this magazine, Conrad Black, is in London at the moment with his gorgeous wife Barbara, and I’ve got very bad news for those of his enemies who predicted that he’d be a social pariah when he got out of jail. At lunches, parties and dinners I’ve attended this week in his honour, he and Barbara have been feted by the leader of one of Britain’s largest political parties, a household-name supermodel, a former foreign policy adviser to a revered prime minister, members of the royal family, a senior industrialist, a former Commonwealth prime minister, a former British foreign secretary, several House of Lords colleagues of his

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

‘Dark pools’ are just another conspiracy of bankers against the public

It was at the Mansion House dinner last year that a City gent two seats away announced himself to be the custodian of one of London’s ‘dark pools’. The phrase sounded pleasingly Tolkienian but his first explanation — an electronic exchange in which large share transactions are completed in total privacy — dispelled the charm. My reaction was sharp enough to make the Downing Street spin-doctor between us fiddle nervously with his Twitter feed. If institutional investors can shift blocks of stock on the quiet, without moving public markets, what happens to the normal process of ‘price discovery’ between buyers and sellers? Surely small investors are being ripped off? Sounds

Thursday

Tanya Gold

At the Chiltern Firehouse, smugness should be on the menu

Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is a restaurant in a newly opened hotel in a Victorian Gothic former fire station in Marylebone, a proud and grimy district in total denial about its shocking levels of air pollution. The building has a fairytale intensity, with red brick turrets; it is a Roald Dahl prison repointed to its extremities by the man who made the Chateau Marmont in LA. The chef is Nuno Mendes, formerly of Viajante. But what else? Ah — now we are sucked into a wind tunnel of paps and buzz; like so much nonsense,

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I may not know much about khat, but I know banning it is crazy

Khat is a leafy stimulant chewed mainly, I gather, by Somalis. This week the government banned its possession and sale. And, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. Not being a Somali (or, indeed, a Russian murderer, whatever the sketch above might suggest) I can’t pretend that my life will now have a khat-shaped hole in it. Dimly, if I’m honest, I can remember a Swiss German hippy once giving me some leaves to chew on an Indian beach once, but they tasted horrid and I spat them out. So if I have taken khat, ever, it was then. Generally, I prefer to buy my leafy stimulants

Steven Mcgregor

Discovering bourbon on Brick Lane

When I was stationed in Kentucky I never drank bourbon. It wasn’t until I came to London that the drink became something special to me. I always passed a bowling alley on Brick Lane with fluorescent lights and unmarked taxis waiting by the door. One night they had two for one drinks, so I went inside. It was just as I suspected: clattering pins and certified drunks. But the barman, Mike, loved bourbon. ‘People here only have this with Coke,’ he lamented, and snuck a drink from a small tumbler without ice or water. Booker’s, an uncut, small-batch bourbon made by Jim Beam, was his choice. But behind him on

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Young Italians flock to London – for just the same reasons it scares me

Although I live in the country in Northamptonshire, I go to London often — almost once a week — and I find it more and more intimidating. This isn’t just because of the skyscrapers that spring up boastfully everywhere, parading one’s own insignificance, but also because of the aura of terrifying wealth that pervades its central area and now even its inner suburbs. Fifty years ago, when I got married, my wife and I bought our first London house in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, for £9,500. I wonder how many millions it is worth now. My parents, who were quite well off if not exactly rich, lived in Knightsbridge

Wednesday

The Spectator

Video: London cabbies, Über alles

What’s upsetting London cabbies? Is it really that Transport for London aren’t fairly implementing the special privileges awarded to Hackney Carriages, or are they simply against a bit of healthy competition? According to some, it’s all Goldman Sachs’ fault, but can the iconic London taxi stem the tide of technological change forever? We sent The Spectator’s intrepid Harry Cole down to the frontline of Wednesday’s London taxi protests, conveniently located outside of 22 Old Queen Street, to find out more.

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Uber is for Londoners. Black cabs are for tourists

Black cab drivers are striking in London today because they are angry that Uber – a rival taxi service supported by Google – is undercutting their market. They will argue that Uber’s drivers are using a smartphone app to calculate fares, despite it being illegal for private vehicles to be fitted with taximeters. I couldn’t care less about the intricacies of this argument (the High Court can figure that one out). All I care about is getting home safely and it not costing too much. Uber offers me that. I’m wary of jumping into unlicensed minicabs. As those spooky tube adverts remind you, ‘If your minicab’s not booked, it’s just

Tuesday

Steerpike

Boris tribute tavern opens

Mr S has oft remarked that you have only made it in life when someone has named a watering hole after you. So congratulations to the Mayor of London, who has joined this elite club thanks to the Japanese-style South Bank spot ‘Izakaya Boris’, translates as ‘Boris Tavern’. Situated in County Hall, the old fiefdom of Boris’s sworn enemy Ken Livingstone, the bar opens today according to London SE1 news. Political nerds will recall this was the exact location where Boris launched his bid to be mayor back in 2008.

Thursday

Peter Robins

Clement Attlee’s conversion

In the early 1960s, The Spectator ran a series called ‘John Bull’s first job’ – reminiscences by various prominenti about how they started out. One of the most startling, published in the 13 December 1963 issue, was by the former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, respectfully bylined ‘Lord Attlee’, on his time as a young barrister. His verdict on himself was characteristically terse and frank, and gives a vivid impression of a turning point in his life: ‘I got very few briefs and occasionally devilled for someone else, but made very little headway. I was at the time ridiculously shy. I was not really much interested in law and had

Tuesday

Steerpike

London’s party-hungry Russians suffer Putin problem

Word reaches Mr S of the plight of Mr Alexander Sucenko, organiser of next Saturday’s annual Russian Summer Ball. The ball is said to be in jeopardy because nobody wants to come. It seems that many regular attendees of this staple of the Russian expat social calendar have cried off this year because of the actions of a certain Russian President. It all strikes Mr S as a little ironic, bearing in mind that the Summer Ball is geared towards the exiled Czarist side of Russian culture. Her Highness Princess Olga of Russia and His Highness Prince Rostislav are set to be the guests of honour. Hasn’t the Russian royal family

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Labour has proved that it speaks for London – and nowhere else

So, now almost all the votes have been counted — except for those in the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets, where the vibrant and colourful political practices of Bangladesh continue to keep the returning officers entertained. Allegations of widespread intimidation of voters at polling booths, postal voting fraud and a huge number of mysteriously spoiled ballot papers; so much more fun than the usual dull, grey and mechanistic western electoral procedure. You wonder, looking at the exotic political fervour of Tower Hamlets, how on earth the British people could be so mean-spirited as to have developed this sudden animus against immigration. White British people now make up less than one third

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Fight Thomas Piketty or face a mansion tax

The postman at the door is stooped by his burden like an allegorical statue of Labour Oppressed by Capital. His wearisome, low-waged task is to deliver a copy of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century — or perhaps multiple copies all round the town, since this breezeblock of a thesis on the iniquities of accumulated wealth stands second in this week’s bestseller lists, pipped only by the life story of someone called Guy Martin. His core argument — the celebrity French economist Piketty, that is, not Martin, who turns out to be a celebrity motorbike racer and lorry mechanic — is that the return on unfettered capital will always

Thursday

Rod Liddle

I’ve had it with the insufferable London elite. Have you?

‘I’ve had it with these people. They are so smug; they think they know everything and they know nothing. They want a good kick in the face.’ So said a close friend of mine, more usually a Labour voter, before she went out to vote for Ukip earlier today. I think it was the Jasmine Lawrence thing which tipped her over the edge. Jasmine is, improbably enough, the boss of the BBC’s News Channel. She had ‘tweeted’ that Ukip was a sexist and racist party – yesterday. Of course, she should be sacked. Right now. The BBC’s News Channel is supposedly impartial – that’s what we pay for, an impartial service.

Thursday

Tanya Gold

The rudest restaurants in London

Wong Kei is a mad Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street, Chinatown. Until recently it was considered the rudest restaurant in London and, because human stupidity is without end, it became a tourist attraction in its own right, a destination for masochists too frightened to visit an actual dominatrix who would hit them with a stick. The owner decided this notoriety upset him so he instructed the staff — no more deliberate or casual or accidental rudeness. This was considered so notable that it was reported in national newspapers. I never thought Wong Kei was particularly rude, but then I am Jewish. I had an interesting reaction to a meal there

Dot Wordsworth

How DO you pronounce ‘Marylebone’? 

‘Take a trip to Marylebone station,’ chanted my husband. ‘Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ I had been to the station to take the rather nice Chiltern Railways train to Stratford-upon-Avon. En route I had developed doubts, not about my destination, but about the pronunciation of Marylebone. I’ve always said marry-bun, with the vowel of bun indeterminate. But a taxi driver and a ticket collector had said marly-bun. So, back at home, I turned to How to Pronounce It by Alan S.C. Ross, the man who invented U and non-U, but a proper linguistician for all that, and a man guaranteed to take into account traditional tendencies. He

Ed West Ed West

Should London leave the union?

We’re four months away from Scotland’s day of destiny, with the London-Scottish media fraternity becoming increasingly alarmed, and ironically (considering their total unionism) far more noticeably Scottish. At the Telegraph Graeme Archer made a characteristically elegant appeal to Sir Malcolm Rikfind to step forward, and there would indeed be something touching and rather beautiful about the grandson of Jewish immigrants being the man who saves Britain. The film script would write itself, if someone were to make a film about the Scottish referendum (which I admit is pretty unlikely). Sir Malcolm’s son Hugo meanwhile seems to think that the end of a 300-year union that helped export liberal democracy and

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Are we killing investment banking? And if we are, should we care?

Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous zeal? By ‘we’ I mean politicians, regulators and public opinion, and by ‘kill’ I mean rendering it unattractive or unviable for any shareholder-owned financial business except on the most limited scale — and as uncertain a career choice as, say, Liberal Democrat politics or freelance journalism. The announcement last week of a radical scaling back of Barclays’ trading and deal-making arm has stoked a debate that had been smouldering for some time; for background reading, I recommend recent articles by Philip Augar in the FT and Frances Coppola in Forbes.