Gourmet. Lifestyle. Culture. Travel. With a dash of wit.
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In which Larry heads to the Netherlands, family in tow, for a rollercoaster older than Disneyland, a hotel that outclasses most five-star city stays, and a fountain show that puts Vegas to shame… I’m suspended in mid-air, 100ft up, facing the ground, braced against the safety restraint. A flashing thought, “oh no, it’s stuck”, barely has Read More
Gin, Demis Roussos and simmering marital despair; Mike Leigh’s seminal suburban satire gets a magnetic West End revival, led by a superb Tamzin Outhwaite as its hostess from hell… The curtain rises and the stage is an explosion of retro, orange, 70s energy, the music is blaring, the disco ball is shining and Beverly has Read More
In a quiet Oxfordshire village ten minutes from Oxford, The Bat & Ball pairs a beautifully restored 16th-century inn with Le Manoir pedigree in the kitchen. Rob Rees checks in for dinner, a bed for the night, and finds a village pub that hasn’t forgotten what it is… Hidden away in one of Oxfordshire’s sleepiest Read More
Litigious, self-mythologising and never knowingly underdressed, James Abbott McNeill Whistler cuts a singular figure among the Victorian greats. Rosalind Ormiston visits Tate Britain’s blockbuster retrospective — and the film that accompanies it… Tate Britain’s hugely successful exhibition James McNeill Whistler introduces a twenty-first-century audience to a mid-nineteenth-century American dandy…
When I first visited Mayfair’s Silva restaurant for the Arbuturian last year, I found it a pleasant but ever so slightly underwhelming experience. It certainly had the bones of greatness in its stylishly decorated room, top-notch service and slinkily exclusive feel – a members’ club that was open to anyone – but there was something Read More
A meticulously researched biography cuts through decades of controversy to ask what Gauguin’s paintings actually show us about the Polynesia he lived in — and the people he lived among… Gauguin more than almost any other artist provides a battleground on which modern sensibilities collide with the enduring popularity of the artist’s work. Despite his Read More
Three years on from a six-month stint living in Lisbon, Estella Shardlow returns to find the city blooming — with new hotels, restaurants and wine bars to add to her well-thumbed little black book… Surely one of life’s greatest joys is returning to a foreign city that you know intimately. There’s still that frisson of novelty; Read More
From the carnivorous theatre of Flesh and Buns to the bargain elegance of Inko Nito and the rooftop refinement of Sachi, Alex Larman finds that London’s Japanese scene has never looked so varied — or so good… Flesh and Buns Flesh and Buns, situated right in the heart of Covent Garden, might usefully be called Read More
Solo, sceptical, and still nursing a grudge against blue steak, Nathalie Bonney gives Paris one more chance — and finds that a table for one, a Kir royale and the freedom to wander at her own pace might just be the most romantic booking she’s ever made… Name me a more romantic city than Paris, Read More
The only Lowood I had previously come across was the terrible school the young Jane Eyre attends as a kind of punishment. I’m glad to say, though, that Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa bears no resemblance to this! Instead, it’s a historic house with a huge new spa that tumbles down the hillside overlooking Read More
The Oxford Collection has spent four decades building hotels and restaurants which could belong nowhere else. Douglas Blyde checks into 36 St. Giles and dines at the newly reworked Gees Market… Hospitality increasingly resembles forestry by spreadsheet. Old businesses are felled, parcelled into portfolios and replanted beneath whichever investment house won the auction. Restaurants become Read…
As National Afternoon Tea Week gets underway, Rebecca Buchanan pulls up a chair at The Kensington Hotel’s Town House to sample ‘Fashion Becomes Tea’ — a surrealist-inspired spread dreamt up in homage to the V&A’s sold-out Schiaparelli blockbuster… “Eating is not merely a material pleasure,”said fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, “Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life Read More