London
Put the water cannons on standby and your money on a swift Grexit
‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another…
Beyond the Wall’s
I think Rowley’s is the perfect restaurant; but I am really a gay man. Rowley’s is at 113 Jermyn Street…
Thatcher’s soap
How EastEnders became a positive reflection of Tory values
Addicted to trouble
Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…
The Tooting poisoner
In my London neighbourhood, an argument about urban foxes is turning very nasty indeed
Churchill’s charm offensive
In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans…
Poor little rich meals
Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper…
In Dracula’s local
Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It…
Between the floods
As the climate changes, will we? The story of the little ice age suggests that adaptation will take years of suffering
Litter is a class issue
David Sedaris is my new hero. Not because he’s such a funny writer, but because he’s obsessed with litter. He…
Diary
I was once bundled into a police car in Palm Springs to explain why I didn’t have snow-tyres on my…
Lost soul
The deep instinct that the immigration debate still ignores
Sugar rush
The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also…
The good old days when I had no idea what I was doing
What I miss most about being very young is the cluelessness. It’s enormously liberating, cluelessness. The boundaries of life are…
A London Christmas
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place…
Notes from the Catwalk
It seems as though I have just been on some grand tour of the absurd. It helps that I work…
Smock and awe
Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was…
Cornish and pasty
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
The bill that keeps on building
Giving London’s Olympic stadium a ‘legacy’ is proving to be a very costly business
The real French embassy
Semper eadem. There is some basement in a Mayfair street that is forever France. It is not far from the…
Devolution vs democracy
Imagine if, in one of her first acts as First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon announced that, in spite of…
Diary
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
Ukip is a party for people who hate London. That’s why Labour should be scared
It is interesting that neither Scotland nor Wales have been much bitten by the Ukip bug. The supposedly sensible view…
Italy takes the stress-test booby prize as the old Spanish fox emerges the winner
Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that…
Dining with death
Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke…
