Hotels
R.S. Thomas – terrific poet, terrible husband
Love’s Moment is one of those quiet radio programmes you’re unlikely to have read about. It aired without fanfare at…
Hotel Oloffson is ruined – and so is Haiti
Earlier this month, in Haiti’s tatterdemalion capital of Port-au-Prince, armed gangs burned down the Hotel Oloffson. As news of the…
Are you a hotel buffet bandit?
Last week, on a Swedish train somewhere between Linkoping and Mjolby, as I struggled to open a bag of cheesy…
High on the hog
The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…
Ritz assessment
The Ritz is still here, and still gaudy. No grand hotel in London feels quite so complete, if pink; as…
Gritti drama
Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe:…
Floor show
Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Criminally good
The Yard is a defiantly themed restaurant in Hyatt’s new Great Scotland Yard Hotel, an Edwardian red-brick block which once…
Letters
Royal travails Sir: The travails of the royal family outlined by Penny Junor (‘In check’, 18 January) may be public…
Vampire squids are killing Britain’s B&Bs
More and more of us are staying home for our holidays — but even so, our small hotels and B&Bs…
Celebrities, cars and chickens: Inside the Connaught hotel
You may have noticed the Connaught a little more since 2011, when ‘Silence’, the steamy fountain by Japanese ‘architect philosopher’ Tadao…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
A monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
Diary
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
Soho in Somerset
It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a…
If you’re riding the FTSE rebound you might still want to sell in May
When the FTSE100 fell close to 5,500 in February, we all said ‘Mr Bear is back’. On Tuesday the index…
Why we need migrants
It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture
Notebook
This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in…
Picnics
Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something…
Grills just want to have fun
The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek…
Barbados
Unusually, I didn’t leave the British Isles until I was 35, when I went to the Maldives for a fortnight.…
Going large on Park Lane
The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which…
Cornish and pasty
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
Hotels for dogs
The first time I checked in to a French hotel with a golden retriever — his name was Gregory, predecessor…
Station to station
Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…
