Hotels
Are you a hotel buffet bandit?
Last week, on a Swedish train somewhere between Linkoping and Mjolby, as I struggled to open a bag of cheesy…
High on the hog: The Pig at Bridge Place reviewed
The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…
An utterly convincing dreamworld: The Ritz reviewed
The Ritz is still here, and still gaudy. No grand hotel in London feels quite so complete, if pink; as…
Feasting on memories of Venice
Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe:…
The weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
Criminally good food: The Yard at Great Scotland Yard reviewed
The Yard is a defiantly themed restaurant in Hyatt’s new Great Scotland Yard Hotel, an Edwardian red-brick block which once…
Letters: Slimming down the monarchy will only hasten its decline
Royal travails Sir: The travails of the royal family outlined by Penny Junor (‘In check’, 18 January) may be public…
Vampire squids are killing Britain’s B&Bs
More and more of us are staying home for our holidays — but even so, our small hotels and B&Bs…
Celebrities, cars and chickens: Inside the Connaught hotel
You may have noticed the Connaught a little more since 2011, when ‘Silence’, the steamy fountain by Japanese ‘architect philosopher’ Tadao…
Cabbages and kings
The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…
The monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
Prue Leith: British hotels still serve filthy food
Why do we assume all doctors are good? We don’t think there are no bad cooks or bad plumbers. But…
The horrors of Soho House’s country outpost
It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a…
Warning: the FTSE100 isn’t out of the woods just yet
When the FTSE100 fell close to 5,500 in February, we all said ‘Mr Bear is back’. On Tuesday the index…
Why Britain (and Europe) depends on migrants
It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture
A president in the family
This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in…
The pitfalls of picnics (and how to avoid them)
Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something…
A fantasy world with its own perfumed air: the Colony Grill Room
The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek…
The swankier the hotel, the sulkier the tourists
Unusually, I didn’t leave the British Isles until I was 35, when I went to the Maldives for a fortnight.…
Is the Dorchester the designated grand hotel for fat people? The portions at its new grill say so
The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which…
The hotels trying to turn Cornwall into Kensington
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
A miracle: French hotels actually like dogs
The first time I checked in to a French hotel with a golden retriever — his name was Gregory, predecessor…
A buffet in an Egyptian tomb
Atlantico is a vast buffet inside the Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort Spa and Casino in Gran Canaria. The Lopesan Costa…
Rhubarb has the loveliest, craziest dining room I have ever seen
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
Lanes of London is dining for Martians
Lanes of London serves street food to people who hate streets; that is, it exists to soothe the still-curious mouths…
