Notes on…
How easy is it to break into the Bank of England?
‘Safe as the Bank of England.’ So goes the old phrase. And yes, with walls 8ft thick, the Old Lady…
Alpacas – the latest must-have wedding accessory
Of all the window displays in Amsterdam this spring there was just one that stopped me in my tracks. I…
Tip the staff – and don’t bitch by the pool: how to be the perfect house guest
Come to our house in France, say generous friends, come to Italy, come fishing. ‘How wonderful, what shall we bring?’…
Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?
A friend of mine who commissions book reviews has added a sub-category to the list of titles coming up: ‘femtrend’,…
Big cities are all alike – it’s in New Jersey’s small towns that you feel like you’re really travelling
When my American friends invited us to stay with them in New Jersey, my 13-year-old daughter was thrilled. She’d never…
No wi-fi, no TV and no neighbours – staying with the Landmark Trust is bliss
About halfway across Lundy, if you’re trudging from the landing bay towards the north lighthouse, there’s a tiny holiday cottage…
Notes on… Nucleus, the shiny new slightly secret nuclear archive
Doubtless Spectator readers based in Caithness will scoff when I say that the old fishing port of Wick (top right…
Only the south of France could silence Henry James
‘Saint-Tropez?’ said the French mother of a friend. ‘C’est un peu… “tacky”.’ She was distressed to think of our taking…
Asterix and the sheer brilliance of his creators
A sterix, te amamus! For those not lucky enough to learn their Latin from the dazzling René Goscinny and Albert…
Nothing quite beats a British beach
‘May I take a picture of your snake?’ I asked the tattooed man with a python around his neck, regretting…
Shirtmaker Simone Abbarchi
The Premio Rezzori literary prize — held every May in Florence — is named after the Austrian writer Gregor von…
Welcome to Matlock Bath, the ‘Switzerland of Derbyshire’
Revisiting cherished childhood memories can be dispiriting; everything appears diminished and one leaves questioning the nature of perception. Were we…
In praise of Chelsea Green, a London oasis
Splats of calves’ liver in a puddle of blood; rabbits, headless, stretched and stripped of fur; and plucked poussins, nestling…
University Challenge
One programme that still shines out as a beacon of intellectual rigour among the sea of dross on television is…
The highs – and occasional lows – of long-distance walking
Long-distance walking is all the rage these days. There are all-nighters staged by charities, for instance the annual MoonWalk in…
Southend-on-Sea has long been a running joke – until now
Standing at the end of Britain’s longest pier, on a cold and misty morning, looking out across the Thames Estuary,…
Monet painted London not brick-by-brick, but light-by-shade
The Savoy was too sumptuous, complained Claude Monet, returning to the hotel in 1904. His rooms — one for sleeping,…
The joy of evensong
When Palestrina wrote his Mass settings and motets, or J.S. Bach his cantatas and passions, they could not have imagined…
Notes on… Lord Byron in Venice
‘I want to see Venice, and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses.’ So wrote Lord Byron in 1814, some two years…
The Katherine Mansfield House
One of the more surprising attractions of Wellington, New Zealand’s small but perfectly formed capital city, is what might be…
Why Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll and the Romans loved Otmoor
‘Don’t sit down too long my duck, you might be doing nothing,’ reads the inscription memorialising Barbara Joan Austin (4…
Majestic Vienna makes a point of selling the right kind of celebrity
Two things always strike me when I visit Vienna. The first is how easterly the city lies. This was more…
Marx in Trier
‘Trier hates you,’ reads the graffiti outside the Karl-Marx-Wohnhaus in Trier. Actually, that’s a bit unfair. Trier doesn’t hate Marx,…
Abbaye Saint-Michel, a little corner of England that’s forever France
‘A little corner of England which is for ever France, irreclaimably French.’ That is how the Catholic priest Monsignor Ronald…
Playful, adorable – and with a real nose for trouble: In praise of the beagle
Harvey’s finest moment, he would tell you, was the chicken kiev. I’d just made the garlic butter and inserted it…
