Traipsing through Mayfair’s Berkeley Square during a late summer downpour, one just wishes to escape the dross and find sanctuary in warm and inviting comfort. A wet hop down nearby Charles Street and a charmingly immaculate brass plate indicates I’ve found it. Marcus Lecky Oswald Hornby Birley, Old Etonian and King of London’s private clubbage…
Highland Park Single Malt Scotch Whisky, the ‘Orkney Single Malt with Viking Soul’, is teaming up with Lusso to offer readers the chance to win four tickets to their Midwinter Social on Thursday 24 November in London. On Thursday 24 and Friday 25 November Highland Park is taking over The Boiler House at The Old…
If like us, your BAFTA invitation got lost again in the post this year, then fear not as you can still fool your friends into thinking you were there. As the Official Champagne and Wine Partners to BAFTA, Champagne Taittinger and Villa Maria wines from New Zealand continue their love affair with film and are offering one…
Next time your beloved tells you to get on your bike and finally put up those box shelves for the nursery, you can indulge in the ultimate visual pun. Let’s face it, few moments are more emasculating than having to ask another man to assemble your wardrobe, but finally it’s OK to accept DIY…
‘Life Begins at 40’ said American psychologist Walter Pitkin in his 1932 self-help book of the same name. ‘This is the revolutionary outcome of our New Era. Today it is half a truth. Tomorrow it will be an axiom.’ Life expectancy in medieval England was around 25 years and only reached forty sometime around the…
Raphus cucullatus is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life he rests in peace. In fact, one of his kind, better known to you and me as the dodo, isn’t resting. He’s nailed to his perch at South London’s Horniman Museum, a quaintly bizarre tourist attraction that serves as a superannuated version…
On opening in 1927, L’Escargot became Britain’s first restaurant to serve snails. ‘Amusingly enough, the word oleaginous comes to mind when describing Tony, our snail man,’ purrs the Soho stack’s co-owner and reviver, Brian Clivaz, as we appraise salted morsels roasted over coals and bathed in butter. ‘He’s a wonderful fellow with two-to-three million Herefordshire…
‘It’s whisky without an e,” he says. “Single malt. Never served with ice but with a drop of cool water, preferably from the Highlands.’ This is not some orthorexic neurotic alcoholic who has to have things just so. This is a normal person who happens to really like single malt whisky and who drinks enough…
The pain comes on very quickly. A twinge that grows into a searing stomach ache that then dulls and settles in, moving round to the side, a deep-seated knife, at once specifically located and yet nebulous and evasive. Within minutes, you’re either in a blind panic because you have no idea why this visitation should…
There’s a reason certain aphorisms become tired-out clichés, and usually it’s through mere overuse or that they just don’t make any sense at all. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’? Well, actually, the friend indeed is me, if I choose to help the needy loser in question. Tsk. And please don’t get me…
