London
Dear Mary: new neighbours want me to provide a ready-made social scene
Q. Former colleagues, with whom I got on very well in the context of the office, are buying a house…
Sartoria: the home of Savile Row’s men who lunch
Sartoria is a pale grey restaurant on Savile Row. As evidence that this is London’s destination street — if menswear…
There’s one real way to stop gang crime: legalise drugs
Brutal, needless stabbings on our city streets will never cease until drugs are legalised
What's that thing? Britain's worst public art
Bad public art pollutes our townscapes. Stephen Bayley names and shames the worst offenders as he unveils the winner of The Spectator’s inaugural What’s That Thing? Award
Le Caprice is trying to bring back the 1980s (unsuccessfully)
Le Caprice is a monochrome patch of the 1980s behind the Ritz Hotel, in the part of St James’s that…
Are we at peak ‘peak’ yet?
Near Victoria Station in London they began to build a tower-block advertised as ‘The Peak’. I expected it to resemble…
Bring back the old Brass Rail, Selfridges!
The last time I reviewed a restaurant in Selfridges, a PR man rang up to ask what he could do…
Meet Feng Shang Princess, the (lousy) Chinese restaurant in a boat
The Feng Shang Princess is a floating Chinese restaurant on the Regent’s Canal in north London, which flows from Little…
Sadiq Khan: I will defeat Zac. The only question is how I do it
Sadiq Khan is fighting the mayoral battle his way, but he’s still very much on the left
Zac Goldsmith: the London race will be tough for me – and the Conservative Party
Zac Goldsmith explains how he will sell himself to a city that’s now solidly Labour
Why George Galloway’s luck may finally be running out
Is Galloway’s luck finally running out?
How to judge a charity: the five questions no one asked Kids Company
Five questions that no one dared to ask Kids Company
The plot to save Goldsmith’s Close Allotments
Since turning 50 I have become a gardening enthusiast. It started with tomatoes, then spread to raspberries and last year…
Only blockbusters can film in London now
I’ve spent much of the autumn and winter shooting my new TV series for BBC1. New Blood looks at the…
Center Parcs Longleat – a stealth socialist utopia on Lord Bath’s estate
Center Parcs Longleat is a holiday village in a forest in Wiltshire, on Lord Bath’s estate, so you can never…
What do you do when there’s drunken aggro after closing time? Send in the street pastors
Heroic volunteers are bringing down crime in cities across Britain
The pretend war: why bombing Isil won't solve the problem
Britain, France and America are in a protracted fight against Islamic radicalism. Pity our leaders have no idea how to win it
Sexy Fish: not so much a restaurant as a museum of London’s rich
Sexy Fish is a ludicrous restaurant with a ludicrous name in a ludicrous town. It is the latest venture from…
Harriet Harman’s diary: the joys of being a ‘former’
One of my constituents has been in an Indonesian prison since May. Journalist Rebecca Prosser was arrested with her colleague…
Redecorate the restaurant, but you can’t redecorate the clientele
Forty-five Jermyn St lives in the left-hand buttock of Fortnum & Mason (F&M), a shop whose acronym is slightly too…
The Old Vic’s Pit Bar has fallen to the hipsters – Penny reviewed
Penny is an all-day café in the former Pit Bar in the basement of the Old Vic, a famous and…
The clock towers bigger than Big Ben
Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the…
I offered Zac Goldsmith £50 to stay 20 feet away from me
I once tried to bribe Zac Goldsmith with a £50 note, but he didn’t bite even back then. He was…
Class War are fatuous idiots, but at least they hate some of the right people
I was unable to join the violent protests held by Class War at the Cereal Killer Café in London last…
Smith & Wollensky doesn’t even serve the best steaks in Covent Garden
Smith & Wollensky is a restaurant from The Shining: a terrifying American steak joint by the Thames, four months old,…
