London
Sadiq Khan is a lousy London Mayor. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?
According to people at City Hall, Sadiq Khan writes some of his own press releases. I can believe it: they’ve…
How to be a tourist in Europe
Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the…
Southend-on-Sea has long been a running joke – until now
Standing at the end of Britain’s longest pier, on a cold and misty morning, looking out across the Thames Estuary,…
How Soho became so-so: Kettner’s Townhouse reviewed
Sometimes I fret that Soho House & Co is doing to this column what it does to London. It places…
It’s survived universal suffrage and two world wars: restaurant Rules reviewed
Rules looks as if it voted for Brexit, and now finds itself inside an eternal Christmas Eve, where it is…
Henrietta: a casual restaurant with formal food for people wearing hats
Henrietta is a restaurant in a boutique hotel on Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, around the corner from the actors’ church…
Security overkill is terror’s real triumph
The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…
Goodbye London, Reykjavik here I come
I have a message for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan: you and your policies stink! While the fuzz are busy…
The queen of hotels
Jean-Georges at the Connaught — formerly the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, but it was renamed during the first world war,…
London calling
Madame Monet was bored. Wouldn’t you have been? Exiled to London in the bad, cold winter of 1870–71. In rented…
Lost in the metropolis
Richard Rogers is to architecture what Jamie Oliver is to cookery. It is not enough for either of them just…
Northern rock
A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…
A perfect feast with Roger Allam
J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in…
Tapas but no phantom
I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was…
A choice of first novels
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
… trailing strands in all directions
Letters of Intent — letters of the intense. Keen readers of Cynthia Ozick (are there any other kind?) will of…
Something nasty in the woodshed
I’ve diagnosed myself with early onset cottage-itis. It’s not supposed to happen for another decade, but at 29 I dream…
Warning: there’s a plague of fake blue plaques
One of the great distinctions and pleasures of British life has been devalued by cheap imitations
Manchester isn’t oppressed, Andy Burnham – it’s wildly overrated
Manchester isn’t downtrodden, whatever Andy Burnham says. Quite the opposite, in fact
The lifts are lovely: Tate Modern’s extension reviewed
Tate Modern, badly overcrowded, has built itself a £260 million extension to spread everyone about the place more. This means…
The RA’s new restaurant prioritises its art over its customers
The Keeper’s House sits in the basement of Burlington House, a restaurant in disguise. It is quite different from the…
On immigration, are we doing as the Romans did?
Last week it was suggested that the questions asked of London mayor Sadiq Khan had nothing to do with racism,…
The first world war comes home to a Kensington bus
From ‘The softening of street manners’, The Spectator, 20 May 1916: Generally the public opinion of the ’bus entirely upholds…
Don’t believe the Tory grumbling: HS2 is on the way
There’s a lot of negativity around HS2, and I sniff a Brexit connection. You might think Leave campaigners whose aim…
Jonathan Meades on the postmodernist buildings that we must protect
Best of postmodernism: is that an oxymoron? Jonathan Meades thinks not
