London

Q. My husband has been appointed to a post in Wales and we as a family have moved here for the foreseeable future. My daughter, who is 15, is very happy at her day school but there is a pervasive culture of ‘tweakments’ there and I am worried the pressure to begin having Botox, fillers etc will be too strong for her to resist when it kicks in. We cannot afford to send her away to school. Help! How we can prevent her from ruining her lovely young looks? – S.C., Cardiff A. Simply buy a copy of your local newspaper and put a Post-It note onto every page featuring a story about a local woman. You can then draw to your husband’s attention (with your daughter in the room) the fact that every single one of these local women looks identical, i.e.

Flat broke Sir: John Power’s article on the property squeeze (‘Flatlined’, 18 April) identifies a symptom of a deeper problem, the overregulation of property. Buyers are deterred by spiralling service charges, which are themselves driven by layers of legislation, insurance premium hikes and rocketing labour costs. Those still willing to take the plunge are then hit by a tax system that actively discourages transactions. In the absence of buy-to-let demand, it is no surprise values are dropping. The solution is obvious. Stamp duty, with its crude cliff edges, freezes activity and distorts prices. A landlord or renovator can face £20,000 or more in tax on an entirely ordinary flat, a deterrent by design. This is not a plea for higher prices.

The public disturbances in south London, achieved by social media link-ups, have their precedents. “You can imagine what an exhilarating week this has been,” wrote Harold Nicolson in 1945, “the surrounding of Berlin; the link-up with the Russian armies.” Link-up, first recorded from 1945 by the Oxford English Dictionary, has since been applied chiefly to military connection and that of spacecraft. On the same day as the first Clapham disturbance, three “flash mobs” were honestly busy in Slough High Street, doing little dances and holding up placards calling for the place to be named UK Town of Culture 2028. This outbreak belonged to a slightly old-fashioned trend that began in 2003 for crowds suddenly to materialize to do something attention-seeking.

Last month, a new account called London Price Drop appeared on X. It has already gained more than 14,000 followers simply by posting screenshots from Rightmove, which illustrate how properties in the capital are falling sharply in value. One of these is a leasehold flat in Shepherd’s Bush purchased for £425,000 in 2017, before being re-listed for £395,000 in May 2024, and eventually sold for £325,000 last August. Adjusted for inflation, that represents a real terms loss of close to £250,000. The London Price Drop account is so popular because it contradicts an assumption that many in Britain hold dear. Young or old, owner or renter, almost all of us believe that buying property is the route to wealth, and that house prices, in the long run, always go up.

And there you have it. Britain is a country where a musician who says "Heil Hitler" gets to headline festivals while a musician who plays with a Jew from Israel gets canceled. Threaten to go "death con 3 on Jewish people" and you’ll be grand. Jam with a Jewish person and you’re toast. Selling T-shirts adorned with the swastika? No problem. Doing a duet with someone from the Jewish state? Don’t even think about it. In the eyes of the keffiyeh-smothered windbags of the cultural elite, praising the Nazi monster who exterminated millions of Jews is a more forgivable moral error than hanging out with a Jew from Israel That was my first thought upon reading that Kanye West will headline all three nights of the Wireless festival in London's Finsbury Park in July.

Mezzogiorno is a very serious, golden Italian restaurant inside the Corinthia London Hotel on Northumberland Avenue. Restaurants are increasingly gold these days, as if for a crocodile of Scrooge McDucks trooping through the wreckage of liberalism looking for money, nuts and guns. It follows the trajectory of my beloved Raffles at the OWO [Old War Office] round the corner. What was once a Ministry of Defence building – though formerly a hotel – is now a (quite good) pizza joint. When the time comes, I hope the drones know. Ignore the lie that gold restaurants serve tiny portions for tiny people. These are vast Mezzogiorno is by the gifted Francesco Mazzei, previously of Sartoria in Savile Row. Here, because this is an age in denial about hierarchy– ha!

Dover Street Counter is the tiny sister of The Dover, a very good restaurant on – who knew? – Dover Street, Mayfair. This is the site of P.G. Wodehouse’s fictional Drones Club, if following Wodehouse’s paths is your way of coping, and there is nothing wrong with that. There are some bad restaurants in Mayfair now, with slutty Roman gods and monumental Caesar salads; passive-aggressive tributes to Elizabeth II in bad cake, and enslaved fish staring at sex workers with the mute anguish of recognition. This is better. Good restaurants have the gift of suppressing fear, and this is one such The Dover is delivered by professionals for adults – that is, people who do not put intimacy on expenses, and who can recognise neo-Stalinist soft furnishings when they see them.

"Do you know who I am?" said the voice belonging to the lady who used to be my mother, crossly, at the end of the phone line. The truthful answer is no. Since the dementia took hold, a hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body. A hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body No matter what I do, no matter how many times I ring or visit her, this person who used to be my mother is always cross and disappointed. "Oh, you’re alive are you!" the strange voice barks, before asking me what I’m up to, with a sarcastic edge. Whatever I tell her I’m doing, even if I say I’m lying down with a headache, she snaps back: "That’s nice for you. You enjoy!

Corenucopia by Clare Smyth is in Belgravia, amid a line of interior-design shops, and it is prettier than all of them. It is a female paradise on the ground floor of a mansion block, dedicated to art nouveau and ‘comfort’ food. There are plaster tree branches peeking from the walls and the menu script looks elvish. It is rare that whimsy does not make me kick things, and few things are more whimsical than plaster forests, but Smyth, also of the three-Michelin-starred Core, is one of the great cooks working now. From her, whimsy is merely voice; or, rather, I forgive her. We eat malted sourdough with Ampersand butter and wild venison salami. Both are glorious There is a sanity to this restaurant, even if it is gilded for native Belgravia blondes.