London
Our exile in NW1
Laikipia The sweetest sound to me now is the dawn chorus of birdsong at home on the farm. I lay…
Cyclists have become an easy police target
Most Britons assume at the outset that any misfortune involving a cyclist is the cyclist’s fault. After all, many a…
The food is almost too superb: Wild Honey reviewed
Wild Honey is a ludicrous name for this restaurant: there is nothing wild about it, and I do not think…
A river of lost souls: the extraordinary secrets of the Thames
If you spend enough time on the Thames, you will eventually come across human remains. It is a river of…
Sumptuous, remote – and forgettable: Locket’s reviewed
Locket’s is a new café from the owners of Wiltons in Jermyn Street. Wiltons is the restaurant that dukes visit…
Trump is saving Nato
It’s almost Nato as usual when Emmanuel Macron calls Nato ‘brain dead’. It’s Nato as usual, and Donald Trump as…
Joan Collins: why I love London taxi drivers
Percy and I have seen quite a few movies recently and enjoyed many of them, which is rare. But the…
I’ve had my fill of brasseries: Moncks reviewed
If you review restaurants professionally you would not think Britain wanted to leave the EU. You would think she wanted…
Why no one ever moves back to London
In last week’s Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer replied to a couple with a baby who had sought his advice on…
Like Twitter, but with food: Market Hall Victoria reviewed
The Market Hall Victoria is an international food shed opposite the station terminus. I have long hated Victoria, thinking it…
Like Team Boris, I’m staying in London this summer
Foolish me. I could have been writing this by the shore of Lake Trasimene, with only one problem: how to…
Worried about sky-high rents? Learn to love a bedsit
‘I’m not going to your place, it looks like a crack den.’ It’s not exactly a vote of confidence when…
Abandoning stop and search would be abandoning a generation of kids
It was somehow inevitable that shortly after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced a fall in violent crime, there would…
Who needs psychogeography? Plume, by Will Wiles, reviewed
With his first novel about looking after an engineered wood floor, and a second novel about what it is like…
Soho hasn’t deteriorated – you have: Kiln reviewed
Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when…
The ideal restaurant for the mythical Spectator reader: Bellamy’s reviewed
Bellamy’s is a Franco-Belgian brasserie in Bruton Place, a dim alley in the charismatic part of Mayfair; the part that…
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…
The joy of garlic and easy listening: Pucci in Mayfair reviewed
I grew up in south-west London in the 1970s when Italian restaurants had exposed brick walls and paper tablecloths in…
Can you really teach students to solve knife crime?
Next year the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) will offer one degree, in design, technology and the humanities, to teach students…
Pale pomp and £100 Beijing duck: Imperial Treasure reviewed
Imperial Treasure is a restaurant in the part of St James’s where Leopold von Hoesch, the German ambassador to George…
In defence of Fiona Bruce
Will I be allowed to take my dog to Europe after 29 March? A trivial question, you might think, in…
The scent of London has changed: all I can smell now is cannabis
Fewer people are smoking cannabis these days, down to 1.4 million from two million, they say. I say, if you…
If Jeremy Corbyn gets in, then I’m out
To London for much too brief a visit: a marriage, lunch with Commodore Tim Hoare, and a look-see for a…
Home at last – a celebration of 200 years of the Travellers Club
The Travellers Club was founded in 1819 to provide congenial surroundings for those who had ‘travelled outside the British Islands…
Silicon Valley’s weird ideas on how to improve human life
Which is more diverse: London or Devon? That’s not a trick question. London is much more diverse than Devon. But…
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