London
Ideal for winter: The Dover reviewed
For British people, America is an idea brought by cinema, and The Dover, the New York Italian bar and restaurant…
A light in the darkness: Home Kitchen reviewed
Home Kitchen is in Primrose Hill, another piece of fantasy London, home to the late Martin Amis and Paddington Bear.…
The appalling truth about London’s ambulance service
‘An old lady’s fallen down – quick! She’s bleeding. Come help.’ An elderly woman lay on the entrance steps of…
Gen Z love ecstatic dance. Would I?
Two months ago I moved to London and found it a disorientating experience. Most of my friends were already settled…
You’re spoiling us: The Ambassadors Clubhouse reviewed
The Ambassadors Clubhouse is on Heddon Street, close to Savile Row and the fictional HQ of Kingsman, which was a…
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
The stark, frugal world of Piet Mondrian
In September 1940 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian arrived in New York, a refugee from war and the London…
Fog, tea and full English breakfasts: Monet and London, at the Courtauld, reviewed
For the maids on the top floors of the Savoy, everything was in turmoil. The 6th had been commandeered by…
Familiar scenarios: Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst, reviewed
There’s a certain pattern to an Alan Hollinghurst novel. A young gay man goes to Oxford. He’s middle class and…
Are you Beatles or Stones?
You find me in the south of France, holed up in that inn of near perfection called La Colombe d’Or…
An inedible catastrophe: Julie’s Restaurant reviewed
At Julie’s at the fag end of Saturday lunchtime, Notting Hill beauties are defiantly not eating, and the table is…
As good as Noble Rot: Cloth reviewed
Cloth is opposite St Bartholomew the Great on Cloth Fair. People call this place Farringdon, but it isn’t really: it…
The SAS explode from the shadows in six days that shook Britain
The siege of the Iranian embassy in London in the spring of 1980 achieved nothing for the terrorists. But the previously reclusive elite army unit soon became the stuff of legend
The deep sorrow of losing a sibling
My sister died last summer, before her time, at 58. Her death has left me shaken with sorrow and remorse:…
I was wrong about staycations
I hadn’t intended to go on a ‘staycation’ this summer. Quite the contrary, I’d booked a family holiday to Norway.…
A slice of Paris in Crouch End: Bistro Aix reviewed
There is a wonderful cognitive dissonance to Bistro Aix. It thinks it is in Paris but it is really in…
A French restaurant Glastonbury would be proud to host: Café Lapérouse reviewed
I am working my way around the restaurants of the Old War Office (OWO), now an acronym and Raffles hotel…
Jeremy King has done it again: The Park, reviewed
The Park is the new restaurant from Jeremy King, and it sits in a golden building to the north of…
How Margaret Thatcher could have saved London’s skyline
If, like Prince Albert, the then Prince Charles had been appointed head of the Royal Fine Art Commission, we might have been spared many architectural outrages
More Mr Pooter than Joe Orton: George Lucas’s gay life in London
Beginning in 1948, Lucas kept a diary chronicling 60 highly promiscuous years – though ‘my great desideratum has always been sympathy and affection’
Women don’t want women-only clubs
In my experience, men offer this infuriating comeback when challenged about the continuing exclusion of women from clubs such as…
The new status symbol of the super rich: headlice
To help out friends, I sometimes collect a boy from his primary school near Sloane Square. This part of London…
