Spectator Life | The Spectator

Civilisation in a sausage: River Restaurant at the Savoy reviewed

When the Tory party set itself on fire last week a restaurateur told me: ‘Don’t worry, Tanya, we’ll still be here when it’s over.’ She was wrapping a scotch egg as she said it, and it’s very true. There is a soothing continuity to restaurants: no matter what fresh hell, people need to eat. I will know civilisation has ended when I can’t get a sausage at the Savoy hotel. People always say that the Savoy has the only slip-road in Britain on which people drive on the right. That is the least interesting thing about it. It is, for instance, the only London hotel built as a dosshouse for people who like light opera (now musical theatre).

13 July 2022

Esther Watson

What to drink when it’s hot

As temperatures soar and the will-to-live wanes, there is something that promises to get us through this unbearable heat. No, it’s not a pair of Chanel espadrilles, or a Balenciaga beach ball. It’s something versatile, accessible and varied. When it’s this oppressively stuffy outside and in, the only real pleasure is to quench the unavoidable thirst. I’m talking about drinking — and I don’t just mean alcohol. Here are five cooling liquids which do that better than the rest: Mango Lassi Lassis originated in India 1000 BC. The drink is widely believed to have Ayurvedic healing properties and can calm both stomach and mind.

Marianna Hunt

London’s finest rooftop bars

London has one of the most distinctive skylines on the planet - and what better way to enjoy it than sipping a cool beer or cocktail? As we approach peak summer season, rooftop bars are popping up across the capital. Follow our picks of the top places for great atmosphere and a privileged bird’s eye perspective of the city. Tattu, Denmark Street Tattu's Cherry Blossom Negroni Rise above the buzz of the West End with this latest addition to the WC2 food scene. A Chinese restaurant and bar with sweeping views of the city, Tattu challenges the view that London sets the nation's foodie trends; it first burst onto the scene in Manchester and Birmingham before opening in the Capital. The cocktails are as easy on the eye as they are on the tongue.

Simon de Burton

How the America’s Cup gave rise to world’s most elegant yachts

With the 37th America’s Cup a mere two years away, a small number of the world’s billionaires are busily pouring vast quantities of cash into building the AC75 monohull racing yachts that will skim across the sea off Barcelona at speeds of up to 60 mph, all in pursuit of a trophy colloquially called ‘the Auld Mug’ that the winner will be allowed to take home, but not keep. The America’s Cup is possibly the most bizarre and arcane contest in the history of international sport, having started at the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851 when the Earl of Winton, Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, gracefully invited members of the fledglingNew York Yacht Club to pop across the pond and make the most of the facilities.

12 July 2022

Liam Pape

Why TikTok reels are reshaping comedy

Bella Hull started standup six years ago. Back then, she lived in fear of a bad set being uploaded to YouTube, where a shaky camera and lacklustre crowd might stain any Google search of her forever. Now, due to the rise of video ‘reels’, popularised by TikTok, Instagram and YouTube during the pandemic, for Bella and other digital savvy comedians, creating online video is a necessity for reaching fresh, young, and more global audiences. Bella has been publishing funny short-form videos in portrait (AKA TikTok reels) for one year and has amassed over 888k likes on the platform. Jacob Hawley on TikTok (jacobhawley) For a lot of circuit comedians, lockdown forced them to put down the microphone and pick up their smartphone.

Ameer Kotecha

The bliss of second-hand shopping

I know of few greater pleasures than a Saturday morning spent moseying around one of my local second-hand shops in Pimlico. These charity and vintage stores attract a varied crowd. Old-timers, but youngsters too, for whom vintage shopping is hip: not just for its ethical and sustainable credentials but thanks to the current clothing fashion trend for oversized and baggy. Preloved clothing is most definitely having a moment; this year's Love Islanders are even dressing in second hand outfits. Indeed, second-hand shops are perhaps one of the few places that attract both geriatrics and Gen Z. What’s more, vintage shopping is not just for the hard-pressed and hipsters, but for traditionalists too. They are often a refuge of quality British-made products and heritage brands.

11 July 2022

Eleanor Doughty

What to look for in a post-prime ministerial property

After the pomp of high office – the convoys of ministerial cars, police on the gates, the £840-a-roll wallpaper – what are a former prime minister and his spouse to do for a home? Boris and Carrie Johnson must be considering their next move. They might be hoping for the kind of arrangement that was put in place when Alec Douglas-Home lost the 1964 election. The new prime minister Harold Wilson ‘kindly put Chequers at our disposal for a day or two,’ Douglas-Home remembered. ‘Then [the hotelier] Sir Hugh Wontner, with great consideration, allowed us to stay in the penthouse at Claridges for a fortnight, so that a sense of perspective and pose was gradually regained.’ Sadly such generosity seems in short supply in the Conservative Party of 2022.

Lucy Kehoe

Where is Britain’s best beach?

Many of us are opting for a seaside jaunt in old Blighty this summer. Our local beaches might not boast the sunshine levels of Greek islands, but with spectacular vistas, tolerable water temperatures and even the chance to take your dog along, there are plenty of reasons to find somewhere new to hammer in your windbreak this summer. For picturesque perfection – Barafundle Bay, Pembrokeshire After a gentle amble across windswept fields from Stackpole Quay, your first glimpse of Pembrokeshire’s prettiest beach is framed by a crumbling old stone archway. Duck under, traversing the rocky path down towards the waterfront and you’ve reached Barafundle Bay – arguably Britain’s most beautiful beach.

Will Gore

This summer’s most gripping crime reads

As ever, there is an endless supply of crime novels and true crime books out there to pick from for summer reading. Here are five of the best to pack in your hand luggage… City on Fire by Don Winslow Don Winslow is rightfully regarded as one of crime writing’s big hitters. His monumental ‘Cartel’ trilogy about America’s war on drugs is a towering literary achievement. Now, he’s embarking on another three-book run. Set in 1980s Rhode Island and inspired by The Iliad, this first instalment sees a beautiful woman spark a war between Irish and Italian gangsters – and Danny Ryan, a faithful but undervalued member of the Irish clan, is thrust into the centre of the mayhem.

8 July 2022

Damian Reilly

The only thing stopping Nick Kyrgios is himself

It’s hard to watch Nick Kyrgios for long without the sense he wants the world to know he considers everything beneath him. Clearly, journalists are beneath him and he treats them with open contempt at every opportunity, but so too are the officials he abuses, the opponents he mocks and even tennis itself. 'I don’t really like the sport of tennis that much. I don’t love it', he has stated publicly, claiming instead that his real affection is for basketball. To say Kyrgios has failed to realise his talent for tennis is one of sport’s great understatements, and something he seems to accept. 'I thought my ship had sailed,' he said this week about the prospect of ever winning a Slam.

Cressida Bonas

What are we without our memories?

Every once in a while, a book comes along that causes me to undergo a genuine shift in perspective. Abi Morgan’s This is Not a Pity Memoir had exactly this effect. Abi’s partner and father of her two children, Jacob, was put into an induced coma after his treatment for multiple sclerosis had caused a series of seizures. When he regained consciousness, he recognised his family and friends, but insisted that Abi was a stranger, or, worse, an imposter. The story is heart breaking, profound and even funny. Abi describes the challenge of caring for someone who no longer remembered her. She found the journey of making a new life when so much had changed to be terrifying.

7 July 2022

Olivia Potts

Sundae best: how to make a knickerbocker glory

I grew up by the seaside. More precisely, I grew up near South Shields, on the north-east coast – somewhere which is British summer beach country for one, maybe two days a year, and salt-lashed and grey for the rest of it. But come rain or shine, ice cream is a permanent fixture. Ice cream was such an important part of life that the first school trip I ever went on, aged three, was to an ice-cream factory. I remember being handed an ice cream as big as my (admittedly then quite small) head, and vehemently declining the bright red sauce offered, known locally as ‘monkey blood’. A kindly nursery nurse reassured me it was just raspberry sauce, but I simply wasn’t taking the risk.

Bruce Anderson

My memorable night at the Carlton Club

‘Club’ is a four-letter word. Whenever a club is mentioned in the press, it will inevitably be portrayed as a sinister meeting place where men gather in secret to plot against the common weal. If only. The main point about all clubs is that they are fun. That is true in St James’s. It is also true in the working-men’s clubs of the north and Midlands. That said, the Carlton Club could claim to be a special case, although anyone entering its portals in the hope of coming across louche behaviour would be disappointed (almost always). But it could be regarded as a trustee of the Conservative party. As such, it has provided the setting for crucial events, most notably in 1922.

6 July 2022

Daisy Dunn

Just Stop Oil’s protest is doomed to fail

The eco-mob is at it again. Members of the protest group Just Stop Oil have progressed from blocking fuel terminals to disrupting the British Grand Prix and gluing themselves to the frames of paintings in galleries and museums across the country. To which anyone with even the vaguest recollection of the traffic-stopping stunts of Insulate Britain must sigh, 'Not very original'. Last Wednesday, a pair of activists stuck themselves to the frame of a nineteenth-century landscape by Horatio McCulloch at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow. The following day, another pair selected the decidedly more famous ‘Peach Trees in Blossom’ by Vincent van Gogh at London’s Courtauld Gallery for the sticky-fingered treatment. Further attacks have since followed on a J.M.W.

James Max

When is the right time to move house?

When the winds of economic change are blowing, it’s often a good idea to make your property move, batten down the hatches, and stay put for a while. We aren’t quite at that point in the cycle. However, with interest rates on the rise, inflation beginning to kick in and all the signs of a slow-down at best and a possible recession, now is the time to take some decisions. There are costs to moving and if you are going to go to all the trouble, you may want to increase your property exposure. Otherwise, you’re investing more money in an asset that will most likely grow in value at the same pace as your previous abode. Moving to similar sized properties is best done in a rising market where you secure your sale and purchase a new home at a similar time.

5 July 2022

Alicia Healey

The art of choosing sunglasses

Only Princess Diana could carry off Wimbledon white-rimmed aviators with such style. Pictured in the Royal Box at The Championships in 1986, The Princess of Wales brought an edge to her natural elegance in these striking shades. White sunglasses scream summer so are a great addition to a holiday wardrobe, pairing well with colourful fabrics. If you find white too stark then opt for ivory as a softer alternative. Quay sunglasses, £39 Coloured shadesYou can’t go wrong with a classic Audrey Hepburn style black shade paired with monochrome outfits, but they can sometimes look too harsh with the softer colour palette and floaty frocks of summer. A tinted lens and tortoiseshell frame can be a softer option for paler skin complexions and lighter hair colours.

Tanya Gold

Is there anything more beautiful than a Rolls-Royce?

I am in the south of France in the Maybourne Rivera: a mad, modernist hotel on a rock above Monaco filled with cashmere blankets, and beds. The cloud rolls in and Monaco disappears like an eye closing, and I am glad. Monaco is a land of defibrillators at bus stops and street signs that say 'Prada'. It smells of petrol and tax avoidance. Far above, this is the sort of hotel that creates its own reality, in which nothing can harm you, which is the point of any great hotel. It’s hard to write well about luxury because it numbs you into a state of infancy. By the end of a trip on the Orient Express, for instance, I could not find my slippers in a cabin that was less than 30 square feet.

Joe Rogers

The best coastal pubs for a pint by the sea

There are few pints as good as the one you drink after a day on the beach. The sea air, the promise of a good fish and chips on the way, and the phantom warmth of a sunburn settling in all make that beer or cider taste even sweeter. British beach pubs can sometimes let the views pick up what the service lets down but this doesn’t have to be the case. Here to make sure your post-paddle pints are spot on perfect are some of the best places in the country to drink by the seaside. Xylo Taproom – Margate, KentXylo taps into Margate's artistic vibe This stylish microbrewery sits on the corner of Margate’s fashionable Old Town, offering a great view of the beach and the Harbour Arm.

4 July 2022

Alec Marsh

The Brompton bike has overcome its biggest drawback

Brompton is one of those brands that has Britishness baked into it; it's the reason why the bike has become a status symbol amongst China's metropolitan elites and why 75 per cent of Bromptons are exported. But it was always hard to tell whether riders loved the idea of the bike more than its reality. On paper, a folding bike is a no-brainer for city commuters short on space, but packing in so many mechanisms while keeping the bike light has proved more than a little challenging. If you’ve ridden a standard Brompton then – say it quietly – you’ll know that despite their massive success they do have a tiny bit of a weight problem: not that it’s polite to talk about these things any more.

Melanie McDonagh

Why I threw out my Ottolenghi cookbooks

Nothing beats a spot of decluttering - throwing things out of your wardrobe that you don’t use or need to see what you have and make space for things you do need. I am useless at it when it comes to clothes and other clutter, but cookbooks are another matter. I review cookbooks; I probably had about 150 of them, some of which have been used for just one recipe. When it came to the point when they were falling off the shelves – and they’re hefty, being mostly hardback – I had to let some go. So, which ones justified the shelf space? Most of my cookbooks don’t get used in their entirety. I make for two or three familiar and reliable recipes, and use them again and again.

3 July 2022

Julie Burchill

Where have all the Bad Girls gone?

Where have all the Bad Girls gone? They used to rock up regularly at the Love Island villa – now in its eighth and rather underwhelming season – only to find themselves on the EasyJet back to Blighty after having full sex on prime time TV. (One of them, Zara Holland, being stripped of her Miss Great Britain title.) They brawled, boozed and bonked with gusto; now it’s two drinks a night and a cheeky snog on the terrace before an early – and chaste – bedtime. They used to be all over the soaps but now the women of EastEnders and Corrie suffer wall-to-wall ‘challenges’ like bulimia and infertility instead.

1 July 2022

Damian Reilly

The glorious return of the England cricket team

Let civilisation fall apart if it must. I no longer care. The England men’s cricket team is suddenly playing with such swaggering magnificence that everything else – endless culture wars, inflation, even the threat of hypersonically delivered nuclear annihilation from Russia – pales into insignificance. I just want to watch my heroes – Ben Stokes, Joe Root and the rest – play the game I love like deities. If Putin is going to press the big red button then so be it. As the temperature rises to a million degrees celsius here in Putney, I will console myself that at least I witnessed Jonny Bairstow’s transcendentally perfect innings at Trent Bridge earlier this month. We deserve this, don’t we? We England cricket fans who over many decades have suffered so much.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The British villages that will soon be lost to the sea

On the Welsh coast, surrounded by Snowdonia, the village of Fairbourne sits on a low, flat stretch of land. With sea on one side and mountain on the other, it seems perfectly situated. It is also doomed. Defended by high banks, the village is already substantially beneath sea level during storm tides. As sea levels rise, the government has decided to abandon it to the waves. Funding for sea defences is set to end by 2054. Fairbourne is far from the only community to face this fate. Over the next 28 years, some 200,000 buildings in Britain are set to end up below sea level. In some places, sea walls and embankments will hold the line. In others, nature will be left to take its course. People have been living in Happisburgh, Norfolk, for a very long time.

Stephen Arnell

The highs and lows of Brad Pitt

This December Brad Pitt will hit the grand old age of 59. Hard to believe, considering that he has retained much of his youthful appeal, despite a well-documented penchant for cigarettes, weed and booze, habits apparently now finally kicked to the kerb. As he approaches his seventh decade, Pitt has discussed his desire to transition from acting to a production-focused role, which has already long been a feature of his career. Pitt’s impressive production credits include many pictures where he didn’t appear onscreen, including Running with Scissors (2006), The Departed (2006), Kick-Ass (2010), Selma (2014), Moonlight (2016) and The King (2019).

Olivia Potts

Lemon drizzle cake: how to bring out the zing

Call it nominative determinism, but a lemon drizzle cake is perfect for disappointing, drizzly weather. It’s cheering: brightly flavoured, and packed with zest, but still comforting, filling your home with a warm citrus scent as it bakes. It’s also a more enjoyable food-based activity than picnics or barbecues when winds are high. A lemon drizzle cake is really just a pound cake – equal quantities of butter, sugar, eggs and flour – that’s then spritzed up with zest and juice. But it’s a pretty glorious one, managing to be both zingy and sweet, light and sticky.

30 June 2022

Tanya Gold

Pub food, Disney-style: the George reviewed

The George, Fitzrovia, was Saki’s local, and a pub for men talking about cars when Great Portland Street was called Motor Row. I imagine them sucking down gin and weeping for early Jaguars; a ghostly Max de Winter rising to leave for Manderley; Mr Rolls and Mr Royce squabbling over ale. Felix Mendelssohn and Dylan Thomas came here too. Nowadays they would be called local creatives by marketing literature, so I suspect they are pleased to be dead. Many pubs have failed, which is an incremental tragedy, though it’s pleasing for women seeking men who are not always drunk. It’s true that if you want to see a fantastical neo-Tudor ceiling on the Kilburn High Road, you will only find it in a pub, specifically the Black Lion.

29 June 2022

Freddy Gray

Why I fancy Emma Raducanu’s chances of winning Wimbledon

I just stuck £15 on Emma Raducanu to win Wimbledon at 22/1 — and I think you should too. I’m no tennis expert, far from it, but I’ve a reasonable sports betting record and like many others I’ve watched Emma with patriotic enthusiasm over the last two years. It’s quite easy to see when she’s hitting form. And, in her victory last night over Alison van Uytvanck, we saw that raw and ridiculous talent that propelled her towards the US Open title last year coming back. Raducanu is a hot streak player — and her hottest streak yet came in America last year, when she just started blasting her way past various high quality opponents to become the first singles qualifier in the Open Era to win a grand slam. Emma struggles with nerves, famously.

Lara Prendergast

The finest hotels in Marrakesh

British travellers have found solace in Marrakesh for many years. In early February, I visited the city and happened to be on the first flight out of the UK to Morocco after travel restrictions were lifted. The plane was full of all sorts of characters – old hippy types desperate to feel the thrill of the city once more, stylish couples dressed in matching head-to-toe black, younger families keen for some not-too-faraway winter sun. The city has many hotels and riads tucked away within its walls. Here are a few of my favourites. The Royal Mansour The Royal Mansour is the jewel in the crown of Marrakesh’s hotel scene, in large part because the King of Morocco is the man behind its creation.

Kenny Tutt

The homemade sauces that will transform your barbecue

Sauces are the unsung hero of any barbecue for me. We tend to focus on the big hitting items like the burgers, sausages, and steaks – and don’t get me wrong, these are an extremely important part of the barbecue experience – but what really brings a barbecue to the next level is what goes with it. The beauty of sauces is that they can be prepared in advance. With so much to think about during the preparation, anything that can be made ahead of time for a barbecue is a winner in my eyes. The key to impressing your guests is choosing sauces that are going to complement what you’re cooking. If you’re having fish, for example, you need a sauce that is light and citrusy – or something with Asian flavours.