Tanya Gold is The Spectator's restaurant critic.
Harry Potter is a fictional orphan locked in a cupboard by his aunt and uncle, after which he discovers a magical world and a better class of nemesis than his ugly suburban relatives. It seethes with class. The Dursleys are lower-middle-class, golf-club-haunting gammons. I suspect their MP is Dominic Raab, and I suspect they vote
Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953 like a rebuke. Some people loved this Hungarian ‘left-wing’ restaurant, with its terrible food, its library of Labour-themed political biographies, its raging cartoons and fond memories of Harold Wilson. But you can’t eat political biographies
The only car I have felt unsafe in is a Morgan. It was a sort of pink leather bath on wheels that screamed down the road while men over sixty waved at it. I was right to be nervous. The delivery man crashed it on the way home. A photograph of the crushed Morgan –
This is not a novel about four chickens of various character — Gloria, Miss Hennepin County, Gam Gam and Darkness — that belong to the nameless narrator of Brood. That is incidental. It is a novel about a miscarriage — ‘our baby had been a girl’ — and, because it is a novel about the
The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a bazaar — opposite a Waitrose I didn’t know existed. (Waitrose seems too human for Belgravia. Food seems too human for Belgravia.) This thrilling building, which should be a library — it has Doric columns —
17 min listen
In this episode, Richard Dobbs reads his piece on why he’s considering giving up his second vaccine for people more in need (00:55); Tanya Gold reports from her Kent road trip in a Ferrari (07:50); and Rory Sutherland on the unexpected joys of lockdown and why we may miss it when it’s gone. (12:45)
Before pandemic I thought I might drive across America, or even France. Now — what about Kent, the garden of England? Why treat English Heritage and the National Trust like guardians of the graveyard: you must be old or possessing a dog to enter? I need a car and so I borrow a Ferrari. The
We can enter restaurants on Monday, and I wondered if I should tell you where to eat if you want the most fantastical or expensive or original food in London, or where I will eat in the early days of re-opening. What have you missed? A ball of ice on wheels containing champagne bottles at
You cannot have cars and dining tables in the same dreamscape: it doesn’t work, unless you think carbon monoxide is a herb, or are wearing full Hazmat, like some teachers. London is in much denial about its air pollution; in the East End child asthmatics are choking. But we must embrace it for a few
The St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys is as expansive as its name, but ghostly. It is an immense Art Deco restaurant spilling on to an empty platform at the station. When restaurants opened their patios and gardens, I fretted that they would be too busy to be enjoyed: a diner would cling
The Duke of Edinburgh was carried to his tomb in a modified Land Rover, and this is apt. He walked away from a highspeed collision in Norfolk a few years ago because – and probably only because – he was driving a Land Rover Freelander. The Land Rover, which was intially the off-road Rover, is
The west end of London is still pale and necrotic, but there are points of light. Hatchards the bookseller is open and its memorial to the Duke of Edinburgh is relatively, blissfully, restrained: a portrait in the window, with minimal text for a writer to trip up on his own sycophancy. People are buying whisky
The comic David Baddiel has written a book which explains that much of the far left hates Jews. There are exceptions. They are OK with dead Jews (the Holocaust gets a sad face emoji if it isn’t ‘exploited’ by living Jews, in which case it gets an angry face emoji), and penitent Jews (the ones
This week my son came home from school and asked me if it was true that the Jews killed Jesus. Um, I said. Read the Gospels. Read Hyam Maccoby. Ask your father. My husband is a religious maniac, though Christian. Any patriarchy will do. He insists I pretend to be an ultra-Orthodox Jew for festivals,
Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of takeaway boxes, which have none of the glamour. Which of us fell in love on a takeaway? I wish I did not have to write about them, nor you to read about them, but if
36 min listen
Is it fair to blame Meghan for the Royal Family’s problems? (00:55) Why is China censoring a book of Dante’s poetry? (12:40) Would you go to moon? (24:50) With The Spectator‘s US editor Freddy Gray; The Spectator’s restaurant critic Tanya Gold; author Ian Thomson; Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London; The
The words pouring on Meghan’s head are written for a witch, because that is the natural progress of the story. The royal family are our national myth and sacrifice: our small flesh gods, without whom we would have to have a serious political system requiring serious engagement, instead of which we have this. Interlopers are
Monarchy is madness, a national delusion in which adults behave as children and project onto the objects of their desire. (Children make excellent monarchists. They believe whole-heartedly). You look at monarchy and see what you want to see: a wholesome family (really?); a powerful nation in, say, 1912 (not anymore); the security that comes from
The campervan is the ideal vehicle for a British spring (at present there is no foreign spring available). There are two extremes to consider. There is the original VW which looks like a fairy princess with big dewy headlamps for eyes. I was driven to Glastonbury in the old VW by a woman who looked like
The Stein’s at Home steak menu box (£65) says ‘Love from Cornwall’: it is not for people who live in Cornwall. It is, rather, a cardboard mirror of Padstow, Rick Stein’s slate-covered, teal-painted, monstrous Cornish Center Parcs for upper-middle-class holiday-makers, and it has its own whimsical map of Rick Stein outlets in case you stray
