Drink
How to drown your sorrows
Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I…
The key to dealing with this election? Wine
An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually…
A lunch good enough to lift Tory spirits
Things could have been worse. My host was determined to lunch al fresco, and after all it was late June.…
The joy of Portuguese wines
There was a wonderful old boy called John – Sir John – Wordie, who was a quintessential member of the…
The best bottle to come from the Gigondas
One needs wine more than ever, yet when imbibing, it can be hard to concentrate. So much is going on.…
How to become an old soak
Drink and longevity: there seems to have been a successful counter-attack against the puritans, prohibitionists and other health faddists. Indeed,…
The case for Churchillian drinking
Churchill. No disrespect to Andrew Roberts’s more recent work, but I set out to look up a point about drink…
The glory of German wines
I have had three recent conversations, all lively if unrelated – and all well lubricated. The first concerned Anglo-Saxon England…
‘The food is as good as you will find in London’: Saison at Raffles London, reviewed
The Old War Office (bad acronym OWO) on Whitehall is now a Raffles hotel: you can stay in Winston Churchill’s…
The world is a mess. Why not find escapism through wine?
In most children’s stories, the good characters live happily ever after. Works suitable for older readers tend to greater realism.…
‘They do better spaghetti bolognese in Hampstead for a tenner’: The Lobby at The Peninsula, reviewed
The Peninsula is a new hotel at Hyde Park Corner. It is part of the trend for absurd expense: rooms…
It’s time to take Italian wine seriously
Tuscany: earth has not anything to show more fair. The landscape is charming. The gentle hills seem to smile down…
‘Well-priced and skilful’: Masala Zone, reviewed
There are cursed restaurants and cursed women, and this makes them no less interesting. One is Maxim’s in Paris, which…
Tories know how to find themselves a good drink
I feel old, and feelings are not always wrong, This eheu fugaces mood came on me at the Conservative party…
Fine food in a fine restaurant: Origin City reviewed
Origin City is a good name for this restaurant, whether it knows it or not. It is at West Smithfield,…
You have to be truly incompetent to eat badly in Paris
Paris has enough great restaurants to maintain its claim to be the world capital of gastronomy. That said, Parisian residents…
