London
‘Beloved by Chinese tourists – and the Labour party’: Phoenix Palace reviewed
The exterior of the Phoenix Palace is cream with golden letters like the napkin and the Laffer curve, and it…
How to drink like you’re at the Savoy – from your sofa
There are two great American bars in London. One is perfect to escape the winter chill, the other to embrace…
Hell is a dog café
The dog café had a pretty pink sign describing its many services and I stood outside it mesmerised as I…
A restaurant so perfect I hesitated to review it
Sometimes you find it, H.G. Wells’s door in the wall, but to tapas: a restaurant so perfect you hesitate to…
Scott’s vs Mayfair
Kingsley Amis was obsessed with Scott’s on Mount Street, Mayfair, and he knew a lot about food. He ate himself…
Heroes have faults too
The chief function of the prime minister is to take the blame, and Sir Keir Starmer can no more escape…
LA lacks London’s Christmas spirit
‘Never again!’ I sigh every 6 January, as I pack away the abundance of Christmas decorations and baubles lovingly collected…
A right royal travesty: Lilibet’s reviewed
Elizabeth II was a god and a commodity: now she is gone it is time for posthumous exploitation. Lilibet’s is…
‘The food is not the point here’: Carbone reviewed
People say that Carbone is Jay Gatsby’s restaurant – Gatsby being the metaphor for moneyed doomed youth – but it…
Britain’s cities are descending into a San Francisco-style nightmare
One morning a few months ago I was walking past St James’s Park station when a dishevelled man with his…
Bagels that even New York can’t beat: Panzer’s Delicatessen reviewed
That Panzer’s Delicatessen in St John’s Wood is called Panzer’s – for the instrument of Blitzkrieg – is mad, until…
We have to stop looking away
I learnt not to intervene on a late summer’s afternoon nine years ago. My son was still a baby and…
Almost too interesting for Notting Hill: Speedboat Bar reviewed
When you are old enough, you can measure your life in restaurants. I remember, for instance, when the Electric Diner…
The bliss of un-fame
In July, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System discovered an interstellar object racing through the solar system at…
So long, G-A-Y
The G-A-Y Bar in Soho’s Old Compton Street is to close for good this weekend. It opened in the mid-1990s,…
Inside London’s embassy parties
Like the new school year, ambassadors to Britain usually change each September. Among those leaving this summer are the German,…
Crime and no punishment in Khan’s London
Those of us trapped in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s low traffic neighbourhood scheme are now obedient, resigned. We expect a car…
A Mayfair brasserie for people who work, or at least pretend to: 74 Duke reviewed
There is an immaculate brasserie called 74 Duke at 74 Duke Street, Mayfair: this is postcode etymology. Duke Street runs…
I doubt there’s a better ravioli in London: The Lavery reviewed
The Lavery in South Kensington is named for Sir John Lavery, official artist of the Great War and designer of…
A fictional Edwardian waif’s hungry fantasy: Fortnum & Mason’s food hall reviewed
I like a picnic weighted with history and class terror, which means Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly, which is historical…
In defence of Notting Hill Carnival
This isn’t going to be a piece celebrating the rich cultural tapestry of London’s Afro-Caribbean community, sombrely expressing the importance…
‘Italian that just works’: Broadwick Soho reviewed
This column sometimes shrieks the death of central London, and this is unfair. (I think this because others are now…
Wormwood Scrubs, my deserted little bit of paradise
On the face of it, Wormwood Scrubs is not particularly appealing. I don’t mean the prison, but the common in…
‘I’ve taken to sleeping in my teeth’ – the wartime admissions of T.S. Eliot
‘I’m getting to be a wambling old codger’…‘I haven’t got enough phlegm to undress’, writes the poet, exhausted by readings and broadcasts, in letters spanning 1942-44
The chef does not understand sandwiches: Raffles London at the OWO reviewed
I am mesmerised by the restaurants of Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) because war approaches and the…
