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Four Seasons
A Four Seasons Hotel that most Uber drivers can’t find isn’t a good omen. The Four Seasons Palo Alto is camouflaged at the end of a cul-de-sac of office blocks, all designed in that late 90s functional vernacular so familiar to anyone whose sat in slow moving traffic on the M4. Perhaps lacking the bespoke…
No, honestly, I mean it this time. Please, you have to believe me. Yes, I know I always say this is the ‘one’. But this time I’m for real. It was special. It was magical. Things happened to me I’ve never experienced before. I felt like a new man. Fuck, I felt like a new…
Seriously aggressive super-vehicles and the most sublime luxuries collide when two ultra-competitive men take to the road. Road Rivals will be ‘Go’ on your TV screens tonight, 9pm on the Travel Channel and there can only be one winner… Or can there? We think it only fair to open up the competition to our discerning readers – which…
On a blustery Sunday that looked almost mild enough to ditch the coat but windy enough to blow the change out of your pocket, I braved the in-between season to venture into the haven of the Four Seasons hotel, where a warm welcome was all that was needed to shake off the chill. Outside, the…
The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the LORD am your God. – Leviticus 19:34. It’s initially hard to see how a deep knowledge of the Jewish Torah would lead to major…
Here I am, a cynical Brit in Silicon Valley, surrounded by optimistic Americans who are seemingly pushing the boundaries of software and hardware engineering. All in the service of making the world a better place. Or at least, a better connected place. Meanwhile, over six thousand miles away in Italy, Ferrari are focussing on the…
I looked out of my room, down on to the turning circle in front of the hotel and witnessed an eternal moment of fatherhood. A man, a little bow-shouldered, stands waiting to go home, back to real life, while his two children run round and round him, going faster and faster, giggling louder and louder,…
Evolution is often invisible. Because of the dead-ends that are necessarily pursued in the quest for those next great steps forward, what feels like an advance could ultimately turn out to be just another dodo. A recent stay at the Palazzo Tornabuoni in Florence made me think that this particular innovation in the way the…
From art deco lidos in Miami to the futuristic bird’s nest of the Park Hyatt’s pool in Tokyo, I wanted my swimming – which I think of as an aesthetic, as much as an athletic, pursuit – to take place in suitably picturesque surroundings. I had seen a photograph of the swimming pool at the…