An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
I am not in the habit of bringing viral TikTok recipes here. It is a safe space, away from digestive biscuits submerged in yoghurt masquerading as cheesecake, baked oats, or sugary instant coffee whipped up like foam (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ignorance is bliss). No, here we are in the realm
There’s a trend on YouTube at the moment for videos in which older people give advice. They speak directly to camera, frankly and without pretension. One can almost sense the care home staff hovering in the background, coaxing their barely extant charges into making one last testament of their time on Earth. The videos have titles such as ‘Things I’d
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
Iloved my moustache. Unfortunately, my fondness for it seemed inversely proportionate to its popularity among my peers. After much unsolicited feedback from friends (‘You look like a young Peter Mandelson’) and online strangers (‘You look like a 1970s porn star’), I put a poll on my Instagram asking my followers whether or not I should
This St David’s Day weekend, I devote this column to a celebration of the world’s most under-appreciated ethnic group. Under-appreciated, certainly, in the pages of The Spectator, whose editorial policy suffers from a Pictish delusion that its readers are eager to hear of the appointment of a new procurator fiscal in Ayrshire, or political divides
Look out from the balcony of your room at Le Sirenuse and you’ll see the trio of rocks jutting out of the Tyrrhenian Sea that gave the hotel, one of the last true greats in the world, its name. The three jagged islets form an archipelago, which is said by the Greeks to have been
It was the sort of elaborate birthday surprise that Andrew — practical joker and fond of a fart gag — might have arranged to prank a friend. Six unmarked police cars roaring up to the farmhouse where he had been living on the Sandringham estate at the unseemly hour of 8 a.m yesterday. Only these rozzers were
Elena Velez’s F/W 2026-27 New York Fashion Week show centered on “looksmaxxing”: the internet-inspired pursuit of physical perfection at any cost. The runway presentation examined a generation raised under fluorescent ring lights and the judgment of the social-media algorithm. And she capped the night off with a feature from Clavicular, one of the X algorithm’s
In recent months, much has been made of ‘Fafo parenting’. Touted as the backlash to ‘gentle parenting’, the philosophy of ‘Fuck Around & Find Out’ seems to be that children should learn the natural consequences of poor decision-making. While gentle parenting advocates empathy and respect, reasoning and explanation, Fafo parenting dictates that rather than going nine rounds with your small person to
Did Mariah Carey mime or not when she headlined the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan? That was the main takeaway from last Friday’s jamboree. Organisers have since suggested that the US singer did indeed lip-sync to Domenico Modugno’s ‘Nel Blu, dipinto di Blu’ and the song that followed, her very own, ‘Nothing is Impossible’. ‘The technical, logistical and organisational complexities of an Olympic ceremony
Horrible injuries are commonplace in boxing but none, surely, has been quite so devastating as that sustained by the heavyweight Jarrell Miller. In the moment it took for an uppercut to land, the Brooklyn boxer’s life changed forever. Miller went from professional athlete to, well, ‘the man who got his wig punched off’. I have
As a general rule, once a city erects turnstiles to tourist attractions which were once free to visit, it is time to go elsewhere. Never more so than in the case of Rome. Last week the Italian capital introduced a €2 charge to visit the Trevi Fountain. Tight-fisted tourists like me will still be able to
Now that the Stranger Things disappointment has died down – slightly – George R.R. Martin and his merry band of Game of Thrones cohorts have recaptured attention in what we must call the Thrones universe. After the warily positive but underwhelming reception that the major spin-off House of the Dragon received, A Knight of the
I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin; I’ve been pretty and I’ve been plain – ugly, even. Throughout this, my self-esteem has stayed generally constant, as if you’re going to base it on something as ephemeral as physical beauty, you’re going to run out of road very quickly indeed. This objective attitude to my own
I have been having a John le Carré holiday. Five years after the great master of the spy thriller went to his final safe house in the sky, I spent chunks of the festive season watching two of his series on TV, and reading a slim volume called The Secret Life of John le Carré
It’s strange the things that can trigger amity or affection. At the beginning of the capsule/pod coffee-maker craze, when George Clooney, with his come-to-bed eyes, was seducing the world with Nespresso machines, I bonded with my eldest daughter’s Italian boyfriend over the Bialetti Moka pot. Notwithstanding the expense and waste of the capsule coffee-makers, I
Bonjour and bienvenue to the Clooneys. Gorgeous George, his wife Amal and their eight-year-old twins have been granted French citizenship. The Hollywood actor has long had a deep streak of Europhilia, owning luxury properties in Berkshire and Lake Como, Italy, as well as his pad in Provence. Located near the village of Brignoles, the Clooneys’
To walk out of a public performance before the end – be it the theatre, a concert or a lecture – is not the done thing. It’s considered an antisocial act that disrupts the performance and thus other people’s pleasure. To walk out provokes tuts of disapproval and scowls of indignation. And yet while it’s
I can remember when I first realised that something strange was happening to white men in Hollywood. It was around 2014, and my younger colleagues in LA – often British writers, directors and actors who had moved to California to ‘make it’ – began reporting, anecdotally, that their work was disappearing. By that I don’t
I had only been to Fortnum & Mason once before. The first time I went, I wasn’t sure what I was getting in to. I remember that the distinct, pale eau-de-nil (mint green) exterior – its signature color – was framed by cream trim and Georgian sash windows stacked neatly across several stories. It was
Like all men, my dear friend Chris Black is an absolutely terrible person to shop with. He behaves only marginally better than a boy toddler. As we stood on the street outside Fortnum’s, this New Yorker’s greeting to me was, “I’m not really a Christmassy kind of person.” How anyone could say this when they
Teams from two Islamic countries playing in one of America’s wokest cities on the anniversary of Stonewall – what could go wrong?
Inside Roger Goodell’s bid for global power
The pièce de résistance was roast goose with gravy and potatoes in goose fat
Summer is absolutely the wrong time to get out the smoker
The distillers and distributors must be Kentucky-based and preferably family owned and operated
But what would you do if there was no risk of being caught? Some people want to kill
He’s been labeled a ‘villain’ for doing what any reasonable person would do
Exploring the charms of Chucktown