An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
Christmas Day in a care home is often thought to be the saddest shift of the year: a place where staff trudge in reluctantly through the dark and cold, while the rest of the country unwraps presents and gets merry; where residents sit quietly, reminiscing about the happiness of Christmases past. And yet, for those
Chloe Zhao may have co-written and directed Hamnet (a film about William Shakespeare’s son), but she claims that she couldn’t understand Shakespeare’s words and had to rely on the actor Paul Mescal to help her. You might have thought that Zhao, who spent her sixth form years at Brighton College (where, one hopes, she at least sniffed at
‘What time are morning prayers tomorrow?’ I asked the monk who, after meeting me at the monastery entrance, was taking me to my room. He checked a noticeboard listing the various Offices of the Day, the routine of prayers monks carry out each day of their lives. I followed his finger along the listings. Oh
On Christmas morning, as you make your first tea or begin mixing your eggnog, spare a thought for our armed forces. Since the 1890s, they have been starting Christmas Day with a drink that sounds more like a bizarre hangover cure than a festive pick-me-up. Known as ‘Gunfire’, the drink is made of one part
Growing up, it was made very clear to us that if you RSVPed in the positive to a party, you were absolutely honour-bound to turn up. It was the height of rudeness to chuck. How things have changed. These days, people don’t even bother RSVPing: it’s too difficult. Some are even too lazy to click
On more than one occasion, I have found myself being lectured by non-Jews (always men) about why I am incorrect in my Jewishness. Judaism is a religion and I can’t be Jewish if I am an atheist, some say. The ones that accept the atheism then feel compelled to categorise me as a ‘cultural’ Jew
I’m backstage with classical crossover singer Karl Loxley and his pianist Tim Abel at Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Rother Street Arts House. The sound and lighting team are setting up in the empty theatre for what will be one of the final shows in Loxley’s ‘Songs of Christmas’ tour. Since 2015, when Loxley sung Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ on
I can remember when I first realised that something strange was happening to white men in Hollywood. It was around 2014, and my younger colleagues in LA – often British writers, directors and actors who had moved to California to ‘make it’ – began reporting, anecdotally, that their work was disappearing. By that I don’t
The first thing I should tell you about my relationship with Christmas is that I’m not saturated in essence of humbug. My approach to a big family Christmas is the same as my relationship with Mexican food: if it’s put in front of me I’ll enjoy it, but I probably wouldn’t ever purposely seek it
I have been scouring the internet for a Christmas bauble for my mother-in-law. I have fond memories of the blown glass baubles of my childhood – the little wooden cabin in the trees, covered in powdery snow; the half papaya, its orange cocoon concealing bright purple seeds inside. Last year I bought myself a glass
Every time I hear about someone winning ten million pounds/euros/dollars in a lottery, I think (and I’m sure I’m not alone in this): ‘Yeah, but… wouldn’t it have been better if ten people had won one million?’ Well, that’s more or less what happens in Spain. Tomorrow nearly 2,000 people will share the first prize
If OPM had released an antithetical response to their 2000 magnum opus ‘Heaven Is a Halfpipe’, I’m certain it would have been called ‘Hell Is a British Service Station’. Had this song been made, I think it would have gone a little something like this: ‘If I die before I wake / I’ll spend eternity
Jockey James Best rode into the history books yesterday when he partnered Britain’s longest-priced winner, courtesy of 300-1 shot Blowers, who landed the first race at Exeter in attritional conditions. The horse was named after retired cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who is nicknamed ‘Blowers’. Tomorrow, I am hoping the same jockey can ride arguably his
There’s a trading estate, which might possibly need an envoy. There’s a Pizza Express, whose user ratings online are the equal to the Woking branch. And there’s also a branch of Boots which has a solid range of deodorants. Should Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor ever acknowledge any perspiration issues, desire a pepperoni or feel like taking on a
At the end of the 1970s, when I had my first taste of wine, the choice was limited. It was either cloyingly sweet German Liebfraumilch, or something from the Don Cortez or Hirondelle types, both of which were sour and brash. That, younger readers, was how bad things were, and why many of us during
The algorithm got me in the end. It began with recipe content, and once I was hooked on food influencer videos, I began to be pummelled with adverts for attractive pots and pans, then clothes, and from there an ever-widening vista of objets and objects by turns pretty or useful and occasionally both. The result, apart from frittering
Here is a great festive pub quiz question for you. Which film was the song ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ written for? It’s likely, particularly if you’re below a certain age, that your first reaction will be surprise that it was written for a film in the first place. That’s a reflection not so
Something very strange is happening in Britain at the moment. Look at the economy. Things aren’t really too bad: for a start it’s actually growing, if only a little. At the same time, inflation is falling. Real incomes are on the rise too – with earnings going up 4.4 per cent in the year to October, while
A close relation of mine is taking Ozempic. I shan’t name them or give anything else away other than to say this: they are set to ruin our Christmas lunch. They know it, and we know it. Welcome to British Yuletide 2025 – a country where more than 1.5 million people are estimated to be using GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, with the vast majority (90 per cent) obtaining the drugs
It feels, pleasingly, like a scene from a cerebral James Bond film, or perhaps an episode of Slow Horses. I am in a shadowy corner of a plush, buzzy Soho members’ bar. A mild December twilight is falling over London. Across the table from me sits an old acquaintance, a senior English barrister, greying, quietly handsome, in
Food courts appear to be everywhere in London at the moment and, for reasons too boring to go into here, I found myself at three of them across the capital in the space of four days last week. (Yes, before you ask, I am beginning to question my life choices as a result.) Not that
The demoralising decline in the office dress code is long established. Nowadays, stockbrokers and estate agents are the only workers reliably in a suit and tie. For everyone else it’s chinos and knitwear – on a good day. But welcome news is afoot: among a growing legion of men, especially young men, there’s a revival
At some point during this Advent season and the coming of Christmas, you will log on to your computer, and you will see somebody smugly opining that ‘actually Christmas is a pagan festival’. This person will not know anything about pagans, bar some fuzzy ideas about equinoxes (always with the equinoxes) and sacrifice. The reasons
Bring back brothels! It’s not your typical political slogan, but Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has launched a campaign to reopen and regulate France’s brothels for the benefit of sex workers. In an interview last week Jean-Philippe Tanguy, one of Le Pen’s senior MPs, said his party would table a bill to reopen the brothels
Whenever I hear the phrase ‘holiday of a lifetime’, I cringe. Same with ‘dream job’. You know they’re both going to disappoint. How can they not? Expectations have been allowed to build and build, way beyond the ability of reality to deliver. And even if your new job does make you happy for a while,
Sometime in mid-October, my husband and I begin our annual deliberation: should we host a village Christmas drinks party? The conversation is almost invariably instigated by my charming husband who, mindful of all the invitations we have shamefully yet to reciprocate, feels that we ‘ought to do it this year, at least’. Almost invariably, I am the voice of dissent. The arguments I give against are motivated
Back in the early 1990s, I was a teenage visitor to an array of dilapidated Victorian cow sheds masquerading as third and fourth division football grounds as I supported my team, Wrexham FC, on their travels. There were still many pre-Hillsborough fences in place, some of which (most notably in the away end at Crewe
Strong course form is always a major plus for horses contesting races at Cheltenham, whether it is at the Festival in March or any other meeting at the track. The trouble when evaluating the merits of the runners in the tomorrow’s big race, The Support the Hunt Family Fund December Gold Cup Handicap Chase, (1.50
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are all visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. At this time of year, people and events that have gone before feel closer at hand – both the personal and the historical. One of the main ways we experience this is through our tradition of Christmas carols. A recent YouGov survey