An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
It’s surprising that champion jumps jockey Sean Bowen is still looking for his first winner at the Cheltenham Festival and so it would be fitting if he rode it for his former babysitter, trainer Rebecca Curtis, in today’s Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup (4 p.m.) The Grade 1 race over more than three miles and two
What do you think of when you think of Jameela Jamil? (I realise that I may be talking to the wrong demographic here, but bear with me, and I promise I’ll broaden it out.) I think of hair – lots and lots of shiny, black, beautiful hair. Personally – and I thought this long before telogen effluvium, caused by the trauma of spinal surgery, made half of
Humiliated, disparaged and the object of global scorn for their lily-livered incompetence. But enough about the England rugby team. Last week was also deeply embarrassing for Sir Keir Starmer and his government. As President Donald Trump said of Britain’s Prime Minister: ‘This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with.’ One might say something similar about Steve Borthwick, England’s head
Wiltshire trainer Emma Lavelle knows what it takes to land the Grade 1 Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle having won it seven years ago. Her pride and joy, Paisley Park, then aged seven, went off the 11-8 favourite in March 2019 having already won all four previous starts that season. MA SHANTOU, also trained by Lavelle, has a similar profile to Paisley Park except he has won only three of his
I can still just about recall the exact angle of rotation required of the metal hymn-book casings in the Tonbridge School chapel to produce a piercing scraping sound – perfect for putting any preacher off his stride. God, as St Paul tells us, is not mocked, and as I ascended the pulpit when I returned
The godson of a friend of mine started at Eton last Michaelmas, and she recently told me how wonderfully it was suiting him. He’s a boy who has suffered from some academic and behavioural challenges, but very quickly these seem to have been ironed out. That school really knows its onions, my friend said. Of
Woodcote House, an all-boys’ independent preparatory school of 76 pupils, closed its doors for the last time on 4 July last year. Asked by the editor to write an elegy for the school, I set about making enquiries. Many ran cold. The website had been shut down. Requests to friends who lived in Surrey fizzled
Ancient Greek, once central to a western European education, is on life support. Last summer, 206 pupils sat an A-level in ancient Greek. Of those, only a handful were state-educated. So it’s farewell to the language taught in our schools since the 16th century. Farewell to the language of the New Testament; the language Roman
The 2005 election campaign was brutal. All the major parties succumbed to infighting, the hustings were hostile and the drip-drip of poisonous briefings reached a nadir when a Ukip candidate was compared to Hitler. One special adviser was found crying in the loos. More than two decades may have passed, but the Sherborne School mock
I may be biased because I teach it, but history of art A-level often feels like the greatest, yet most dismally undervalued, subject in the curriculum. It explores history’s most innovative thinkers, enhances visual literacy, teaches history through the prism of creativity and emotion, sharpens critical thinking, and fosters empathy and open-mindedness. Yet it languishes
Is the page finally beginning to turn on children and screens? For the first time since the advent of social media, we are seeing a burgeoning alliance across all political divides to protect children from digital harm. In 2024 Jonathan Haidt delivered an urgent manifesto for change in The Anxious Generation, and at the beginning
‘This is the future, my wife says./ We are already there, and it’s the same/ as the present.’ So begins Ciaran O’Driscoll’s poem ‘Please Hold’, about a husband talking to a telephone robot and becoming ever more frustrated at the mind-numbing automation of modern-day life. There’s a lot of ‘Your call is important to us’
In my mind, there was always a sense of hubris in the air of our tucked-away offices at the Chronicle, Eton’s main student magazine. As in many other domains of our school’s life, we idly assumed ours was the first, as well as the only really consequential, example of a public-school magazine. The early 2000s,
As university admissions have become increasingly obsessed with equal outcomes, many parents fear a kind of reverse discrimination. They worry that a Ucas form bearing the name of an independent school may be bad news for an Oxbridge application. There’s evidence to suggest they’re right. Private-school pupils who transfer to state education after their GCSEs
He’s 12 next month, my eldest son, but he’s rejected the ‘movie night’ party I’ve suggested, and he doesn’t want any of his new friends from senior school to come for a sleepover. And I know why. Our television is a modest one, not the size of one of the screens flanking the main stage
Here’s some life advice Ralph Allwood gives to the teenagers who attend his week-long residential Rodolfus Choral Courses, held all through the summer at various schools and colleges across the country. Some of the singers are being pressured by their parents to take just maths and sciences, or other lucrative career-oriented subjects, for A-level or
You’d be hard pressed to find a more continuous strand in British culture than the chorister. They’ve been warbling in Westminster Abbey since the 1380s. Every national occasion is marked by choirs, the choristers dazzling in their splendidly anachronistic ruffs and robes, present at moments of collective joy or sadness. Funerals, memorial services, royal weddings,
Hurtwood House, Surrey Set in the Surrey Hills, Hurtwood House is England’s only independent boarding school exclusively for sixth-formers. Renowned for its performing arts, the school’s annual Christmas musical is no ordinary affair. The ten-night production is staged with a full West End orchestra and professional directors, choreographers and lighting designers. It is no surprise
Every boy longs to see his school burn down and for me the dream came true twice. In February 1977, I was walking to Sunday Mass when I spotted a cluster of teachers at the school gates. The old Victorian hall had caught fire overnight and collapsed. I couldn’t believe it. This was my personal
Irish maestro Willie Mullins runs a duo of talented two-mile chasers today in the BetMGM Queen Mother Champion Chase (4 p.m.), the highlight of day two of the Cheltenham Festival. However, both Majborough and Il Etait Temps have displayed jumping frailties and so neither appeals at their respective odds. The former will almost certainly win if he jumps as well as he did last time out when landing the Grade 1 Ladbrokes Dublin Chase
Another day, another report on how many children have had to leave their private schools, thanks to Labour’s VAT raid on fees. This particular survey, by wealth management firm, Saltus, found that almost one in ten parents have had to take their children out of the independent sector altogether while 65 per cent of those questioned admitted to
Does everyone fantasise about having sex in a Porsche? Or is it just middle-aged men? The middle-aged women I know are much more interested in having sex in grand hotels rooms than on the backseat of a sports car but then perhaps that’s because they haven’t considered the Porsche Macan, which is as sleek, luxurious and sexy as a Porsche but as practical and spacious as
The decision by connections to run Lossiemouth in today’s Unibet Champion Hurdle (4 p.m.), rather than the Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle on Thursday, is good for racing but not ideal for my two ante-post bets in the big race, the highlight of day one of the Cheltenham Festival. Irish trainer Willie Mullins’ talented mare is unbeaten in her three visits
The daffodils are out, and so, therefore, are the optimistic diners. A couple of rickety tables and wonky chairs are dragged out from their storage and plonked on a bit of uneven concrete on what passes as pavement in London. They are a strange breed, this first flush of outdoor diners who think a tiny
I live on a road where parking is forbidden. This has not stopped any of us from needing cars. Instead, we crowd each evening into the small cul-de-sac opposite, where ten vehicles can park legally, and 15 can park optimistically. The sign is unambiguous: ‘Three hours. No return within two.’ Most days I manage to comply.
Last week, I had the pleasure of heading to the Freud Museum in Hampstead for the launch of Zoe Strimpel’s much-discussed new book Good Slut. Not only was the venue one of the most splendid I’ve been to for a party of this kind, but the guest list – which included The Spectator’s esteemed editor
‘Listen to this drivel’ is not the combination of words a radio presenter longs to see in reference to their exertions, but it’s what The Spectator associate editor Damian Thompson had to say about me on X recently. I’d provoked Thompson’s ire by telling people what was coming up that morning in my Radio 3 programme, Essential Classics, in a one-minute video delivered with a somewhat unserious tone. Thompson did
If you were a teenager anywhere in the vicinity of the late 1990s, the opening bars of Paula Cole’s ‘I Don’t Want to Wait’ will only ever mean one thing: Dawson’s Creek. Airing on The WB from 1998 to 2003, and broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s teen-oriented T4 block, the adolescent angst fest starred James Van Der
Anyone paying attention to the pumps at their local recently might have noticed something peculiar: a swathe of old-school logos. There’s the red triangle of Bass, the red right hand of Allsopp’s, the yellow bees and barrel of Boddingtons. Despite fighting long-term decline, cask ale is having a moment. At some of London’s trendiest new pubs, like