An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
There are plenty of reasons to be depressed about Britain right now. From our government, which consists mainly of sixth-formers with special needs, to our sporting teams, which conspire to lose across the world. And polls show this depression is real: in a poll on ‘national happiness’ in different countries Britain has plunged from 13th place to 29th, in only a
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a meme circulated on Facebook suggesting the same thing could never happen here because the potholes would prove too much of an impediment. Given the current state of the roads, I think we can safely say any invasion plans must surely now have been shelved. And thank goodness. Owing to the paucity of
The first time I took a ride in a Waymo was in 2024. It was summer in San Francisco, and my wife and I had spent several weeks watching these curious, sensor-laden Jaguar I-Paces gliding– driverless – up and down the city’s famous slopes. Intrigued, we downloaded the app, summoned one and climbed in. It was the stuff of sci-fi.
Nostalgia is often seen as a positive emotion, but the word actually derives from the Greek nostos, meaning ‘homecoming’, and algos, meaning ‘pain’. Nostalgia is really a type of homesickness, an ache for something lost. As audiences watch the new trailer for the HBO Harry Potter television series, the algos may hit pretty hard: those tantalising two minutes are the reminder we need that you can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice.
When we describe something – or someone – as an ‘acquired taste’, it is rarely a compliment. If we say it of Sharon, for example, it means that she is a bit of a pain in the neck. It’s the same with food: olives, anchovies and oysters are some of the finest foodstuffs on God’s earth but sometimes, in order to truly enjoy them, you have to first quiet your inner doubts by tuning out all the reasons
The past few years have seen a slew of devastating style assaults on the English language known as ‘LinkedIn speak’. You know the type of word salad: ‘synergise’ instead of ‘combine’, ‘ideated’ instead of ‘thought of’, ‘holistic’ instead of – well – looking at something as a whole. Alarmingly, there is now an app, Kagi Translate, that allows you to type
Bottomless brunch: it sounds disreputable, to start with. There’s the suggestion of indecency; that lower garments are optional, perhaps on the part of the poor waiting staff, like those ‘Butlers in the Buff’. And ‘brunch’ is surely the louchest of meals, invented purely so that people could roll into a restaurant after a long lie-in
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once wrote: ‘[T]he man who feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out its immortal teachers in the quiet sanctuary of their works.’ That’s easier said than done: philosophical classics have a terrible reputation outside ivory towers – as big, boring, difficult books, filled with obtuse theorising about irrelevant problems, their covers featuring ghastly old
Men who cook Spanish omelettes look a bit gay. Or at least that is how American film executives reacted to Harry Palmer cooking in The Ipcress File. The cable said: ‘Dump Michael Caine’s spectacles and make the girl cook the meal. He is coming across as a homosexual.’ This was 1964, when London was the cultural centre of the
If you tweeted about a particular snooker referee being the ex-boyfriend of one of the women in The Human League, and a friend of yours replied with ‘Don’t cue want me baby?’, how would you react? Would you groan, sneer and dismiss the pun as the lowest form of wit? Or would you – like
The Japanese are fascinated by the scandal concerning the aristocrat formerly known as Prince Andrew. The main themes resonate powerfully. The concepts of duty, shame and being a burden to one’s family are deeply woven into Japanese culture and so embedded in the language that it is hard to express yourself without touching on them. There are at least four expressions for ‘black sheep of the family’ in Japanese and
The forces of taste, fashion and regard have long colluded in a disconcerting way around Banksy. He is an ‘artist’ that the great and the good of the auction world take as seriously and reverently as your more common or garden fan who gazes upon his grim graffiti and feels they really ought to like it. In
Beulah Hill in Norwood is an overwhelmingly uninteresting stretch of South London road; the kind of anonymous thoroughfare that can induce mild depression on a day of drizzle and delayed buses. Yet, as is often the way with these tedious parts of suburbia, visual perseverance can reap rewards. It was only last week, on my hundredth trudge down the hill towards
Peter Mandelson — twice-resigned Cabinet minister, architect of New Labour and, until recently, His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States — went to the University of Oxford from Hendon County Grammar. Mandelson read PPE at St Catherine’s College from 1972 to 1976. Young Mandelson’s impressions of Oxford, as detailed in Donald Macintyre’s Mandelson: The Biography, are mixed at best: Hertford College ‘stank of
Flitting between runway shows, new collection previews and cocktail receptions under the blaring sound of air raid sirens is now the norm at Ukrainian Fashion Week. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Ukrainian brands travelled abroad to fashion weeks in cities including London, Berlin and Budapest to exhibit collections, before coming home to Kyiv in September 2024. After covering international
An interesting new perspective on London is doing the rounds. Our capital city is being advertised as a paradise. London, it seems, is suddenly a place where every building is a Wren, where every sunset is a Turner, where every neighbourhood is Notting Hill. The sentiment has even got a name – ‘Londonmaxxing’. It’s been
There is a moment in a recent University of Cambridge study into Artificial Intelligence in children’s toys that unintentionally recreates one of the most disturbing scenes in film history. The report, AI in the Early Years, published earlier this month, involved observing 14 children aged three to five as they played with a conversational AI soft toy called Gabbo, a
It’s a Friday evening, work has finished and pre-drinks have kicked off with cheap spirits and even cheaper mixers. Outfits have been chosen strategically to cope with the frosty commute and a sweaty dance floor. Discussion is dominated by tonight’s head-lining act. It’s a routine that has existed since the birth of club culture. Except
I almost spat out my toast (smothered with the As Ever, The Raspberry Spread Trio – ‘Made To Keep On Hand And Enjoy Often’ $42 – natch) in pure molten anticipation when I read that my role model in spreading jam to flour, sorry, speaking truth to power, will be hosting a women-only weekend ‘retreat’ in Sydney during her forthcoming
The ermines have been mothballed; the coronets stowed away. The United Kingdom has, at last, thrown out the hereditary peers from Parliament. This levelling process, begun by Tony (not yet Lord) Blair, and stymied for decades, has come to an end. It’s as if the lion and the unicorn had been torn from the royal
What do you consider the distinguishing marker of wealth in Britain today? Is it privately educating the kids? Is it the £60,000 Tesla parked out front with a black cable running to a gleaming box attached to the wall? Let me tell you what I think signifies real wealth today: it’s eating at Gail’s. Because you can’t have failed to have notice the conspicuous unaffordability of Britain’s fastest rising bakery – the one that began
The recent ‘school wars’ farrago was an act of madness – or, more accurately, Madness. ‘All the kids have gone away/Gone to fight with next door’s school/Every term that is the rule’. So the Camden ska band sang on ‘Baggy Trousers’, their 1980 classic about their school days. Schoolchildren organising to duff up their contemporaries is not new; social media
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
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
It was a given that the critics would indulge in emotional onanism when they covered the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Tate Modern – apt enough when you consider the sexual content of so much of it. But what surprised me was that it wasn’t just women. For the art is almost entirely about Being Tracey: her abortions, her
Reports that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have been banned from the Royal Ascot carriage procession raise an important question: what is the optimum fighting weight of the Royal Family? For years now, we’ve been hearing about King Charles’s plans for a ‘slimmed down’ monarchy. Prince William, too, has declared that ‘change is on my agenda’ — which presumably means fewer floppy hats and chests stuck
There’s a new exhibition on Picasso which is actually transgressive: Picasso and the Bible. That promises to stir things up among worshippers of the great man, who was known for being Republican, Communist and atheist. The premise of the exhibition – which was opened this week with great fanfare at Burgos Cathedral in Spain – is that an artist can leave the Church, but the Church