Angus Colwell

In 1757, the same year that Admiral Byng was executed pour encourager les autres, Simpson’s Tavern opened in the City of London at 38½ Cornhill. It became a popular chophouse in Georgian and Victorian London and people think it’s where Ebenezer Scrooge has dinner in A Christmas Carol. Simpson’s survived wars, pandemics and downturns, but couldn’t get through a rent dispute in 2022. At some point in that 265-year history, someone thought it was clever to outsource the job of landlord to a group of companies in Bermuda. Four years after the tavern shut, the site was bought by the restaurateurs behind Cloth, an English brasserie in Smithfield that opened in 2024.

When David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive was released in American cinemas 25 years ago this Monday, the critic Roger Ebert rejoiced that one of Lynch’s experiments at last ‘doesn’t shatter the test tubes’. Ebert seemed delighted that Lynch had focused on some of the more prosaic aspects of filmmaking – plot, character, dialogue – instead of privileging sound and vision: he argued that his 1997 film Lost Highway was ‘about design, not cinema’. Lynch had been having a bad run. Lost Highway was largely panned by critics for being too obscure, and he responded with the 1999 road drama The Straight Story. It’s tempting to see The Straight Story as a wounded joke: the film was rated a family-friendly ‘U’.

Annalisa Quinn is an editor at the Boston Globe magazine, and through a mixture of good fortune, good journalism and good writing, she published the perfect story for our times last week. On 31 August, a lesbian bar in western Massachusetts called Last Ditch posted on Instagram that ‘it is with love we inform our immuno-compromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional’. Previously, KN-95 face masks were the minimum level of protection required to attend the bar at all times. The owners were swiftly accused of being eugenicists. One commentator said: ‘People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.’ Another wished the venue to be firebombed. Last Ditch attempted an apology.

The worst areas to eat in London are the best places to live. Hampstead, Chelsea, Chiswick, St John’s Wood: all would be lucky to have even one restaurant that would be an 8/10 in Hackney. This is disappointing because Hackney is annoying, but, hey, hipsters make good restaurants. I wonder why these areas are so lacking. Is it because St John’s Wood Man has an underpaid cook on speed dial? Is it because Belgravian Influencer orders a shawarma every night? Is it because Hampstead Family don’t eat where they sh– hmm, yes... A little bruschetta of chopped rabbit livers comes next, visible through a translucent sheet of lardo Whatever the explanation, the exception to this rule is Wandsworth Common.