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Over ten years ago years ago, I made the transition from auction house ‘expert’ to antiques dealer. And it came as a rude shock. Nothing like a healthy dose of comeuppance; deference vanished overnight. Auction houses are open to the public for consultation, even the grander ones in London’s West End; or that is how it was in the
From our UK edition
I’ve often thought it slightly odd that the Feast of St Valentine (that day of Love and Romance) commemorates a Roman martyr who was tortured and put to death in the most horrible fashion. Having said that, for us simple creatures of the male persuasion, Valentine’s Day can be sheer torture if you get it
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I’ve just bought my Burns Night Haggis, and it’s currently winking up at me cheekily from the kitchen table. For those of you who claim not to like it, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Okay, it might sound—how can I put this—slightly gothic, but in reality it tastes a bit like
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I’m fascinated by the history and mythology of Christmas. Up until the 1890’s, most English families if they were lucky, ate goose; turkey was a luxury only enjoyed by the few. The Anglo-American Christmas, as we know and love it today, is really a Victorian invention: influenced by the sentiment of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas
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Not so long ago, in a futile attempt to foster the Special Relationship, I once offered to cook a Thanksgiving Dinner for my then girlfriend’s family in Los Angeles. The Americans tend not to eat turkey on Christmas Day itself, as they’ve already had the whole shooting match at Thanksgiving. As well as roasted turkey,
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I love Bonfire Night, with its promise of bangers in the sky, and on the plate. There’s just something about that evocative smell of cordite; the taste of charred sausages and hot jacket potatoes cooked in the embers of a dying fire, and the general anarchic bonhomie that the Fifth of November encourages, year in,
