Ameer Kotecha

Every so often, one stumbles across some long-forgotten text that could have been written yesterday. It’s a reminder that often the answers to today’s problems lie in the past. I had one of those moments when I read Lord Baden-Powell’s Rovering to Success. Recently I had another such moment reading about Kurt Hahn’s Six Declines

In a world of ultra-convenience, I think making the argument for home cooking is important. Because a lifestyle of takeaway delivery apps, ready meals or eating out every day is not a recipe for health and happiness, no matter how easy the modern world makes it.   One of the downsides of the cult of

There are only so many times I can watch Lord Sugar swivelling in his chair and reusing put-downs from three seasons ago before enough’s enough, so I’ve dropped in and out of the latest series of The Apprentice. But one contestant that has caught my eye is Victoria Goulbourne, the flight attendant turned online sweet

In a recent Low Life column, Jeremy Clarke referred to Edward Thomas and his writing of 16 poems in just 20 days. Similarly, practically all of the poems that made Wilfred Owen famous were composed in a few months (and when he was still in his twenties). It has been the same for many of

At this time of year, it is pancakes and hot cross buns that are meant to enjoy a moment in the spotlight. I shall not begrudge them that. But my heart really belongs to the crumpet. They are the epitome of the simple pleasure, and an economical choice in a cost-of-living crisis. There may have

Everyone has their own most loved and hated months. While for Chaucer, Browning and others April was a time of joyful rebirth, it was of course for Eliot ‘the cruellest month’. Still, February tends to get a bad rap from everybody. It manages to be both the shortest and longest month of the year. In

Burns Night always feels like a particularly well-timed celebration. Hot on the heels of ‘Blue Monday’ – supposedly the most miserable day of the year – it’s certainly nice to have a reason to get merry. It also happens to be the perfect refutation to those killjoys determined to make Dry January the new Lent.

Today, shortly before 3 p.m., there will be a collective heave as backsides – weighed down from turkey and roast potatoes – are prised from dining chairs and plonked on to sofas to tune into the King’s speech. So I very much hope. For the royal Christmas broadcast is important, and this year’s of course

Many of the elements of the Christmas spread have more detractors than admirers. Turkey can seem an undistinguished bird thrust into an undeserved limelight: bland and unwieldy, it’s a far cry from a rich goose or even a regular, moist chicken. Carrots and parsnips – uninspiring. Bread sauce resembles the gruel ladled out to Oliver

No overindulgent gourmand worth his salt fails to own a stilton scoop. Mine has a bone handle and Mappin & Webb silver plate. It has an ingenious contraption to release the cylindrical pellet of cheese: a bit like those retro ice cream scoops that, with a little squeeze, crack like a whip, the metal slicing

From Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tabard and Martin Amis’s Black Cross to Thomas Hardy’s Buck’s Head Inn, literature is as replete with pubs as are villages and high streets up and down the land. It is no surprise. They are atmospheric settings for a plot, and places of inspiration and contemplation besides; many authors have written their

Christmas shopping has its challenges at the best of times. Oxford Street crowds and high street tat; Black Friday generating more excitement than a White Christmas. And this year will, for many, be more challenging than ever. Who needs the Grinch when the cost-of-living monster threatens to steal Christmas? When looking to keep down the

The British playwright Somerset Maugham once said that ‘to eat well in England you should eat breakfast three times a day’. I think he meant it as a jibe, but we should take it as a compliment. Our breakfast is as powerfully evocative of England as any part of our cultural heritage. In The Lion

There is no shortage of foodstuffs (or people) jostling for admission into the hallowed hall of ‘national treasures’. Perhaps the best litmus test for right of entry is time-proven popularity, and appeal across class and generational divides. No mere passing flavour of the month or millennial indulgence. Something that unites us all in affection. Branston

The Lord Mayor’s Show is a mix of traditional buttoned-up pageantry and let-your-hair-down carnival. A bit like the state opening of parliament without all the MPs, and Notting Hill without the jerk chicken. I am a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, one of the ‘Great 12’ livery companies of the City of London. The Lord

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Ten or 20 years ago no one would have thought twice about enjoying Nescafé or its equivalent. There is soothing ritual in spooning, pouring, stirring and sipping the mud-brown concoction in a mug. But nowadays, for a generation nourished on slow-roasted Colombian cashew-milk cortados,

When Idi Amin’s voice crackled through the radio on 4 August 1972 with his fateful ultimatum, my family paid little notice, save for wondering briefly why a government announcement had interrupted the blaring Bollywood tunes. My father’s two sisters were getting married the next day (both tying the knot at the same time meant half

At its peak, Battersea Power Station supplied a fifth of London’s electricity, including to Buckingham Palace and parliament. Today, the most electric thing about it is the virtual reality gaming venue on site. Times have changed – but the reopening of the power station allows us to rediscover one of our finest pieces of industrial

Game is a perfect refutation to the sort of militant vegan campaigners who go around placing floral tributes on packaged meat. So long as shoots are responsibly conducted, game is as environmentally sustainable and ethical as meat-eating gets. But this year looks set to be a tough one for parts of the industry. Chiefly because of a severe

Food waste is suddenly the subject on everyone’s lips. A combination of environmental concern and biting inflation has propelled an issue that was already rising up the public consciousness on to centre stage. Some supermarkets are dropping ‘best before’ labels on fresh produce, and this month the British Frozen Food Federation launched a campaign to