Buckingham Palace
The heyday of the gay guardsmen
In 1943 the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor placed an advertisement in Exchange & Mart offering a pair of trooper’s breeches…
The Georgian fashion revolution
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
The 17th century painter who hacked her way through Suriname in search of insects
Maria Sibylla Merian was a game old bird of entrepreneurial bent, with an overwhelming obsession with insects. Born in Frankfurt…
Living next door to someone rich, and beside a motorway, makes you fat and your blood pressure soar
I wrote last week about a swarm of bees that had attached itself to a wall of my house, as…
‘About time too!’: Joan Collins curtseys to Prince Charles
The day of my investiture at Buckingham Palace dawned bringing freezing rain and fierce winds, which lashed at the windows…
‘Dark pools’ are just another conspiracy of bankers against the public
It was at the Mansion House dinner last year that a City gent two seats away announced himself to be…
'Castiglione: Lost Genius' loses his genius in a sea of brown
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I…
