TRAVEL NOTES: BUDGET-FRIENDLY STAYCATIONS June 27, 2010 Mid Week Food Lovers Boutique hotel Fishmore Hall, on the edge of the foodie hotspot of Ludlow, is ideal for a foodie staycation. Go midweek (Sunday to Thursday) and you’ll receive a 50 per cent discount on room rates, plus dinner for two from the a la carte menu. When you’re not eating all the [...]
Let the travelling by boat take the stress out of commuting June 24, 2010 IN warm weather those living near the river in London have a big advantage. It’s not just the views or access to riverside beer gardens – it’s the fact that they don’t have to jam themselves into sweat-drenched Tube carriages and buses when they can drift merrily to work by boat instead. When commuting comes [...]
Q&A CURRENCY June 24, 2010 CAMILLA DELL MANAGING PARTNER AT BLACK BRICK Q.Dear Camilla, I am a London property developer and in light of this week’s Budget, what will the week’s announcements mean for the capital’s housing market? A.Well, the rise in capital gains tax (CGT) was far, far less than everybody expected, which is a great relief for those [...]
How Osborne’s budget affects the housing market June 24, 2010 THERE are not many ways to make a 10 per cent tax hike look business-friendly, but Chancellor George Osborne pulled off a neat trick this week by doing just that. Expectations of a massive capital gains tax (CGT) rise had been building since the Liberal Democrats, who had promised to raise CGT to close to [...]
There’s nothing that says well done me quite like a bodacious one-man palace June 24, 2010 YOU’VE given your life to work – and you’ve made a mint in return. It’s high time you rewarded yourself with a show-stopper of a home.?Don’t beat around the property bush – buy yourself a bachelor pad with all the bells and whistles, a home you love so much you’d be happy to live in [...]
Brand keeps living the rock star dream in Hollywood June 24, 2010 Film Get Him To The Greek Cert: 15 As recent comedies have gone, 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a neatly plotted break-up movie that managed to produce a fair amount of laughs, most of them care of Russell Brand. The comedian’s turn as rock star Aldous Snow made him a star in America, with the [...]
SIX OF THE BEST June 24, 2010 THEATRE The Bridge Project Sam Mendes brings his cross-Atlantic, touring Shakespeare project back to the Old Vic with rotating performances of As You Like It and The Tempest. FILM Breathless Godard’s legendary 1960 film that invented the idea of French cool, with Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg on the run from the gendarmes. ART [...]
ALSO OUT THIS WEEKEND ENTERTAINMENT June 24, 2010 FILM TETRO After years in the wilderness, a return to form for Francis Ford Coppola with this family drama. THE COLLECTOR Yet more tedious “torture porn” in this dull-as-ditchwater chiller set in a scary house. WHEN IN ROME Conveyor-belt romantic comedy with Kristen Bell. Absolutely terrible. DVD THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG Disney’s really rather [...]
How to look sharp in shorts… June 24, 2010 FOR men, wearing shorts is potentially even more of a minefield than it is for women. In the 70s and 80s they were too short, in the 90s they became vast and billowing, and in the Noughties they begat the crime against taste and rationality that is the three quarter-length trouser (which in America they [...]
WEAR YOUR LEGS TO WORK, BUT CAREFULLY June 24, 2010 WEARING shorts to work in the hot weather seems like the perfect solution. Obviously you wouldn’t wear “short” shorts, but the “City” style shorts that are tailored with a cuff and come to just above the knee are as comfy and relaxed as long trousers, yet cool in the summer, and only show as much [...]