An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
The Union Jack is back. No TV interview with a government minister is complete without a flag and their departments have been ordered to hoist them above their offices. Soon our country will look like a never-ending Golden Jubilee street party, but with neither refreshments nor festivities. We’d all like a street party, but many are
They came in their droves. Labradors, Alsatians, French bulldogs, Spaniels, Cavapoos, Cockapoos, Labradoodles, Corgis, like a roll of dog poo bags, the list goes on. No sooner had Boris locked us up in the March sunshine last year than the nation rushed to acquire a dog. After years of standing firm, parents finally gave in
The game is afoot! Yes, yet again! Hot on the hob-nailed heels of Enola Holmes, the Netflix film about the great detective’s younger sister, comes yet another spin on Sherlock. This time the streaming service brings us The Irregulars, a gaggle of Victorian urchins hired by Dr Watson to investigate crimes with a supernatural element.
Not for the first time in its history, Eastenders managed to make a bit of a stir last week. In a break from the more harrowing stuff, viewers were treated to the sight of the ever-sprightly Patrick Trueman waltzing into the Minute Mart to jubilantly announce he’d received his second Covid vaccine. ‘Good for you!
Do 16-34 year olds still watch terrestrial TV? More importantly, will they still be watching in a year’s time when BBC 3 re-launches as a linear station? Six years ago, the youth orientated channel switched to digital-only as part of a £100 million cost cutting measure. Since then they have produced a couple of runaway successes
Next week marks the 40th anniversary of Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, the Oscar-winning true tale of Olympic glory which captured the affections of critics and mass audiences alike. Fondly cited by everyone from Maggie Thatcher to Joe Biden, parodied by Mr. Bean, beloved and bemoaned for its Vangelis score and heightened slow-mo cinematography, Chariots
Whilst the genre has never gone out of fashion, the 1970s were seen by many as a Golden Age of the paranoia-thriller, with Watergate, the Vietnam War and speculation about the Kennedy assassination leading to classics such as The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Winter Kills (1979) and others. For this
As fireplace salesman-turned-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson enters the ‘cancel culture’ wars with his planned campus ‘free speech law’, what better time to investigate the phenomenon as depicted in the movies? There are a surprising number of films that deal with the subject, from every side of the political spectrum, with right-wingers, the left and libertarians
Asked to defend France’s reputation on the global stage, a French diplomat once told the International Herald Tribune, ‘If Germany has Siemens, we have Voltaire.’ In this vision lies something very obviously French: a single-minded belief in superiority grounded not in the future but in the glorious intellectual past. Schooled in the tradition of exception
It should be the basis for new playlists, exciting discoveries, the leftfield, the overlooked, the forgotten gem. But too often these days listening to Desert Island Discs is akin to being stuck in a minicab with the radio locked to Golden Greats FM, where the hits just keep on coming. It’s not so much that many
There is no finer sight in spring than a blossom tree. Planting one is, to my mind, a public service, as it will cheer generations of people plodding down your street, both with the blooms that appear on its branches, and with the confetti of petals thrown along the pavement. In the next few weeks,
‘A notion at which we had but guessed.’ So said the poet Paul Muldoon recently, publicising Paul McCartney’s forthcoming book The Lyrics, an autobiograpy-through-the-songs based on conversations between the ex-Beatle and Muldoon. The notion in question was the one that ‘McCartney is a major literary figure who draws upon, and extends, the long tradition of
Fancy a more sophisticated slice of entertainment to lighten up the last few weekends of lockdown? Here’s our pick of the best foreign language films you might not have seen yet: Minari, Amazon (to rent) The extremely moving Minari triggered a bit of a debate when it was first nominated for Best Foreign Film at this
Many of us have been watching in awe at the profound impact that Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview has had on the fight against endemic injustice. There has been an outpouring of empathy for the Duchess’s suffering at the hands of the British. Not only has she had to live through the public spectacle of a
If your genetic code survived the Pleistocene epoch, and prospered sufficiently that you find yourself reading this, I feel I ought to warn you that you are in great danger. For though the woolly marmoset and sabre-toothed sloth may be extinct, a new apex predator has emerged: human beings, or more specifically, other human beings.
Until the mid 19th Century, most of us believed that we had a soul. It was what separated us from the animals. This belief could be modified to accommodate slavery, Malthusian economics and to allow dogs into Heaven, but the principle was pretty stable. A hundred years later, thanks largely to Darwin, and innovations such
He might now be one of the most powerful men in global media, but I find whenever I see a photograph of Nick Clegg, Orwell’s quote about everyone getting the face they deserve by 50 comes to mind. Now 54, the remnants of the boyish idealist are still just about there, but the eyes to
It’s Mother’s Day and, once again, I muse on how little some friends really know one. I never expect anything in a friendship that I can’t return – hence I do not look for loyalty or kindness – but the only area in which I am ceaselessly short-changed is in the business of being seen
Mindfulness makes you smug. And not just mindfulness; a whole raft of alternative spiritual practices such as chakra cleansing and past life regressions feed a sense of superiority over normal mortals. That’s the finding of research from Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands involving some 3,700 people. The leader of the research, Professor Roos
The world is obsessed with clutter. Today, untidiness is seen as a moral failure and messy people are cast as incontinent reprobates lacking in all self-discipline. In his new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson tells readers that cleaning up their homes and offices is nothing less than a ‘moral obligation’.
There is something intrinsic to the British novel-writing tradition of a good espionage story. From its beginnings in the early twentieth century with Rudyard Kipling and Erskine Childers through to the thoroughly contemporary likes of Mick Herron and Charles Cumming, there is apparently no shortage of gripping, witty and brilliantly executed spy tales, all of
Every weekend Spectator Life brings you doses of topical trivia – facts, figures and anecdotes inspired by the current week’s dates in history … 13 March Earl Grey (born 1764). The Prime Minister gave his name to the tea. It was specially blended for him by a Chinese mandarin to suit the water in Northumberland, where the
Forget statues: the latest victims of the colonialism culture war are racist plants. Ah yes, those menacing snowdrops with their overly white petals and dangerous daffodils. As Mr Steerpike reports, Kew Gardens has entered the fray with a promise to ‘decolonise’ its collections. Presumably the next step is for its sister site in Sussex to
Fortunes shift quickly in Chinese cyberspace. On March 1, Chloé Zhao, the Beijing-born film director, was the ‘pride of China’, according to the Chinese Communist Party’s The Global Times. Zhao had just won the best director Golden Globe for her film Nomadland, becoming the first Asian woman in history to win the award, and only
It seems at first an unlikely ingredient for global domination – particularly if, like me, you first encountered it as an unappetising squidge at the centre of a badly-made seventies moussaka. While the actual aubergine – the palpable purple signature ingredient from said retro Greek bake – remains a relatively minor player in the western
Whilst not exactly (to paraphrase Richard Burton as Marc Anthony in Cleopatra) the ‘biggest thing to hit Rome since Romulus & Remus’, Oprah Winfrey’s recent interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was certainly A Big Deal. With over 17 million viewers watching in the States and 11.3m here, the renegade former royals cannot
When Kazuo Ishiguro first appeared on the literary scene in the 1980s, his work was often described using terms such as ‘exquisite’, ‘refined’ and ‘understated’. The supposedly Japanese sensibility of this Surrey-raised writer was on full display in his fine second novel An Artist of the Floating World (1986), narrated by a retired artist called
As if the Labour party didn’t have enough to worry about with its withering opinion poll ratings, yesterday’s Times reveals that party officials are warning MPs of another potential danger: malicious TikTok parodies. The paper reports that Sir Keir himself is one of several Labour MPs whose names have been used by hard-left TikTok pranksters
What better way to get shoppers back into London’s West End than by, er, building a large hill in the middle of it? That’s the latest plan from Westminster City Council, who hope that the Marble Arch Hill will lure people back to the area with the promise of stunning views around the city from