Spectator Life

Though I hadn’t lived there since 1998, when I was 16 and Bill Clinton was in power, I’d always defended America. Sure, it had flaws. Big ones. It had gun problems, drug problems, healthcare problems, race problems, problems winning wars. But, by Jove, it was still the end of the rainbow. It still had the highest concentration of good of any country

When was the last time you were shouted at by a stranger wearing a lanyard? Or spent hours in a crowded public space with low ceilings and no natural light? Or paid £8.50 for a Pret sandwich? I’ll wager it was in a British airport, the unnatural habitat of humiliation, discomfort and rip-offs. Not to

Ballroom dancers, suicide cases, charlatans: Blackpool has them all. No place has so much possibility or holds so much of the British soul on one bright, windswept drag. I first came here for Conservative party conference, where the cognitive dissonance of pre-Coalition Tories in funeral suits and the reality of the country they sought to govern – love, loss and candyfloss – felt wild. Did these people even know each other? It

A Real Pain was one of my favourite films of recent years, a tragicomic exploration of family, history, place and identity featuring two Americans in Poland – specifically in Warsaw and Lublin.  My wife was also quite smitten – with Lublin as much as the film – and on the back of this began planning a weekend in the eastern Polish city. I was a little wary of

I have recently returned from a fleeting visit to the City of Light. As usual, Paris itself was a delight. It is an architectural and historic marvel that nevertheless manages to offer the best food and wine in the world at all kinds of prices, and somehow also has a respectable number of quirky and interesting independent

Loelia Lindsay, socialite and former wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, is said to have remarked: ‘Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life.’ Well, I’m turning 59 soon and I still use buses. So, by that reckoning, success has so far not only eluded me

It’s because I was on my own in Los Angeles, smoking weed on Venice Beach, that I ended up at Coachella Festival with two girls I’d barely met and the DJs Belle and Sebastian. It was because I was on my own in Nashville that I woke up with a Texan soldier and never had

It’s the largest city in Europe, spans two continents, has been the capital of three mighty empires – Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman – and is visited each year by some 20 million tourists. These days – and I’m only guessing here based on the scores of battered, bloodied and bandaged scalps I spotted – it’s

The problem with conventional ski holidays is that every day is more or less the same. You step eagerly out after your hotel breakfast to take the same ski-lifts and ski on the same slopes every day, and return to the same room every night. It can feel like a work commute, albeit a bit

Imagine going into an English pub and slapping a tenner down on the bar. ‘All I can drink, please,’ you say. ‘Certainly sir,’ says the barman. ‘You’ve got two hours.’ ‘Right then,’ you say. ‘I’ll start with a pint.’ Ten minutes later: ‘Whisky, please, no ice.’ Shortly afterwards: ‘I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’

I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and, to put it mildly, a little squiffy. Most folk go there to play golf (yawn) but I’d gone there to drink and, after a lengthy tequila masterclass in La Hacienda and several cocktails at Platform 18 (‘best US cocktail bar’ in the 2023 Spirited Awards, incidentally) in nearby Phoenix,

For the first time in almost a century, when Arthur Conan Doyle was buried in a Turkish carpet in his garden, my hometown of Crowborough is in the news.  For those fortunate never to have been, Crowborough is a small place in the Weald of about 20,000 souls. The cadet training camp, where my school

British pubs are having a moment. Not in Britain: you can blame Keir Starmer’s rise in business rates for that. Instead, they are branching out overseas. Take Wetherspoons, the granddaddy of British boozers, set to open next month in Alicante airport, or BrewDog, which has opened its doors in Dubai and many other international outposts

Half a century ago today, the Duke of Kent, Anthony Hopkins and 97 other diners had a meal of caviar and lobster canapés followed by grilled steak, all washed down with Dom Perignon. There was nothing too unusual about this slightly ostentatious menu, one that was a typical example of 1970s British fine dining. But it

One of the guilty pleasures of the patriotic British travel writer is encountering yet another country, city or island that we invaded, occupied, colonised or just menaced into submission with a couple of gunboats. For example, did you know we casually took out Uruguay back in the day? It’s true – we demolished the walls

If Greta Thunberg ever docked in Houston, it wouldn’t be for long. Freeways stretch to 26 lanes, flaring oil refineries light the night sky and sports stadiums are sealed against the humidity with year-round refrigeration. At an Astros baseball match, a poster bluntly reminds attendees ‘TODAY’S GAME IS MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO NATURAL GAS & OIL’. Between

Normally rail ticket prices are raised in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) plus 3 per cent. This January, unusually, they didn’t increase. But that is not how it will feel if you fancy a short break in Edinburgh. In that case, you may well find yourself paying double what you used to pay.

Among all the perfidies of public transport in Britain (a nation that can build a £40 billion railway based on the premise that the outskirts of Acton counts as a ‘central London’ terminus), perhaps the most ludicrous of all is this. On 26 December, a day when millions of us need to move about, no

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

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

With the average cost of a hotel room in London costing around £250 a night – and not showing any signs of getting lower, either – most might think that a stay in the capital is a rarefied activity. However, the news that the Zedwell group of budget-conscious hotels have opened a mega-budget establishment in

Westminster is filled not just with politicians, journalists and unemployed protestors, but with tourists. The data would suggest they are mainly Americans, French and Italians who come to see the monuments of central London, visit friends and family, and see how we’re faring after Brexit. They’re probably pretty worried when they see Westminster Bridge.  

There’s a saying – the kind seen on ‘inspirational’ posters on the walls of HR departments – that claims: ‘It’s about the journey, not the destination.’ Clearly it was dreamed up by someone who has never flown from Stansted and found themselves jostling through crowds of stag and hen parties, newly arrived Polish workers (there’s

I was sitting in a hotel restaurant in Cheshire a while back: one of those rambling country manors, full of mock Jacobean wood panelling and fake Tiffany lamps, beloved of football-and-property enriched couples with gravy hued fake tans, sports cars parked outside and more signet rings than GCSEs. I was hungry and alone, aside from,

Nearly everywhere you go in Nymburk, a small Bohemian town an hour or so from Prague, there are reminders of its most famous son, the novelist Bohumil Hrabal. The Czech writer, who died nearly 30 years ago, grew up here, amid the coopers and maltsters at the local Postřižinské brewery, where his stepfather was manager.