London
Could Derbyshire survive on its own?
Since at least the beginning of this century there has been a mood abroad – cultural as well as political…
The root of the problem
The novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo is attracted by the freedom a New York job promises, but misses the young daughter she has left behind in London
Alice in gastroland
The Alice lives in a ground-floor room of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, which venerates the fantastical and the savage,…
Fine diner
Electric Diner is from the Soho House group, which has done terrible things to private clubs, luckless farmhouses, domestic interior…
London’s number is up
Some years ago, an Australian neurologist was in the habit of walking barefoot across his lawn. This being Australia, the…
Hot cakes
Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in…
A personal best
In 2014, Nuno Mendes, a chef from Lisbon by way of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchens and his own Viajante in Bethnal…
My lunch with Liz
Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the…
Civilisation in a sausage
When the Tory party set itself on fire last week a restaurateur told me: ‘Don’t worry, Tanya, we’ll still be…
Road to hell
The blight of the 20mph speed limit
Why the Met Police keeps failing
Much has been made of the decision to place the Metropolitan Police in what is often referred to as special…
Gorgeous George
The George, Fitzrovia, was Saki’s local, and a pub for men talking about cars when Great Portland Street was called…
The day I got heckled at Speakers’ Corner
Monday was the 150th anniversary of Speakers’ Corner and, in the hope of drumming up some publicity for the Free…
Et in Arcade ego
I should know better than to visit restaurants assembled as if from disparate bricks, like thrift-shop Duplo: but the ever-credulous…
Into the labyrinth
I am never bored with Harrods, only disgusted, and it is disgust of the most animated and exciting kind. It…
Maine offender
Last week Chris Corbin and Jeremy King lost controlof the restaurant group they founded: Corbin & King, which made theWolseley,…
Social capital
Covid has changed London for the better
For the chop
Blacklock is the fourth restaurant of that name – there are others in Soho, Shoreditch and the City of London.…
A crooks’ paradise
The war in Ukraine has turned a lot of people’s attention to oligarchs in the UK. How did these guys…
The waste land
I was going to be jolly this week, for variety and denial, but I changed my mind. Instead, I wonder…
A little Eden
I’m not one of life’s early risers but an exception had to be made on Wednesday last week. In an…
A victim of its own mythology
Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell…
The hunt for breakfast
The centre could not hold, at least for Piggy’s. The drama of being the only greasy spoon in the West…
Mirror of distortion
Vesna Goldsworthy’s finely wrought third novel explodes into life early on with a shocking scene in which Misha — the…
A slice above
It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…
