Parties

I’ve started a memoir club – in memory of Jeremy

Provence Molly MacCarthy launched the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in the spring of 1920 with two aims. The first was to bring together the old Bloomsbury set who’d been dissipated by the first world war and the second was to encourage her dilatory husband, Desmond, to write his memoir. She was successful in the first but not the second. The original club was composed of old friends and family members: the MacCarthys, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and John Maynard Keynes. The aim was ‘serious but also to amuse’. There were few rules, ‘one of which was that no one should be affronted by

My secret Ukraine trip with Boris

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 all been removed to fox Vladimir Putin’s mercenaries. This country is under martial law, a curfew, and as morning was breaking Ukraine was entering the fourth year of fighting off its vast neighbour’s vicious and unwanted advances. We’d boarded the previous night near the Polish border (I know it sounds ridiculous but I am not

What I can’t tell you about Lamu

Lamu Ever since we arrived on the syrupy, sweltering Swahili coast – where else would your Best Life columnist be in the dead of winter? – I’ve been writing this in my head, and this was going to be the running order. This succulent island paradise has long been re-colonised by celebrities, princes and make-up moguls First, colour. The cream scoops of the dhows racing the channel between Shela and Manda islands, teak masts tipped at a rakish slant; sundowners at Peponi after a long swim in the mangroves; the Lamu dawn chorus, an ear-splitting stereo of the 5 a.m. call to prayer and the frantic hee-hawing of donkeys; the

The hell of bra shopping

It’s probably haram to quote Cecil Rhodes these days, but he was bang on when he said: ‘Remember that you are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.’ We’ve had peak property, peak journalism, peak publishing, peak medicine, peak travel, peak coffee Even as a mere Englishwoman, I’ve had the best of everything (hence this unapologetically smug column). A childhood free-ranging across three countries; the best education money could buy (almost as good as a boy’s); Oxford; first job at the FT… I won’t continue to tweet out my CV, but as my cohort should concur: we’ve had peak property (our houses have

Chanel should be led by a woman

Since I’m considering giving a small Christmas drinks party, I’ve been reading all the festive entertainment features. There are recipes for canapés (does anyone actually make their own complicated snacks?), floral arrangements, garden illuminations and individual cocktails. These suggestions are exhausting enough to put one right off the whole idea. All the experts interviewed on their entertaining skills share an insouciance about hosting which unfortunately bears no resemblance to how I feel in the run-up. They don’t appear to fret about numbers, are able to whip up simple delicious food for a cast of thousands and always hear the doorbell ring. They never seem to stress about whether it’s necessary

The Parties of the Year: my verdict 

As the editor’s brief for this column is ‘Fomo-inducing’, I must push the boat out for my debut and am thus nominating my Parties of the Year before the festive season is under way – which is a bit like poor Rory Stewart saying Kamala Harris would win comfortably just before Donald Trump turned every swing state red. But I’m calling it anyway. These winners, I tell you, are bashes that will be remembered long after the guests are pushing up daisies, although they need a Chips Channon, an F. Scott Fitzgerald or a di Lampedusa to do them full justice. And they are? First up we have – or

The office Christmas party is back with a vengeance

I’m bad at Christmas. I hate turkey, wrapping presents and the idea of forced, planned fun. My family – mostly – shares the same view. Extra shifts are picked up and presents are sent with time to spare to avoid actually having to see each other. Fortunately, even if I’m no fan of Christmas itself, there is one saving grace: the office Christmas party. No other work event can compare. Leaving drinks are strained, after-work drinks are pedestrian and inviting colleagues to things like birthdays often just feels wrong. The office Christmas party is the opportunity for a night of true debauchery before you all head off for the festive