When you liberate your employees, productivity and profit will follow January 27, 2010 FREEDOM INC BY BRIAN M CARNEY AND ISAAC GETZ Crown Business Publishing, New York, £18.99 **** WE LIVE in a society in which we’re always watched – not just by the state, but in the workplace, too. Keen to cut costs and direct workforce activities with precision, employers create ever more laborious internal rules and [...]
OUT OF OFFICE January 27, 2010 TURNER AT TATE BRITAIN There are just a few more days to catch Tate Britain’s superb exhibition Turner & the Masters, examining the influence Turner’s artistic forebears played on his career, and his attempts to surpass them. The extensive show includes many of Turner’s finest paintings, as well as works by other painters including Claude [...]
How London fell for American cuisine January 27, 2010 FIVE years ago, McDonalds was the best-known export of US cuisine in London. Yes, there have been other venues dedicated to that fine nation’s culinary tradition, such as Joe Allen and the Chicago Rib Shack, which have both been around since the 1970s. But mostly it’s been burgers and bad steaks, confined to slightly grotty [...]
A salt of the earth therapy for congested Londoners January 26, 2010 ENTERING the treatment room at South London’s Salt Cave clinic is a bit like stepping into Narnia. You may be going via an anteroom in a converted Earlsfield community centre rather than through the back of a wardrobe, but what greets you is an all-white environment, with powder spread in little ripples and dunes across [...]
LIFE COACH January 26, 2010 I’m a nervous public speaker and I suffer from confidence problems. What can I do to feel, appear and act less nervous and also deliver a good speech? John, 41, lawyer Confident public speaking begins in the head. “The first thing to work on is the inner game,” says Amanda Vickers, managing director of Speak [...]
OUT OF OFFICE January 26, 2010 ROPE AT THE ALMEIDA Based on a real murder case, and later turned into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, Patrick Hamilton’s darkly effective 1929 play is about undergraduates who murdered a colleague before inviting his friends and family round to tea. Roger Michelle (the film Notting Hill is among his previous successes) directs this [...]
Warm up this winter with a chic hip flask January 26, 2010 MAYBE it’s because of the rough year and a half we’ve just been through, or maybe it’s because fashion designers have a sixth sense and predicted this would be a particularly icy winter. Whatever it is, hip flasks have become such a must-have fashion accessory that Dunhill’s models sported them on the catwalk at last [...]
A rose by any other name… can be better January 26, 2010 WHEN you hand your lady flowers on Valentine’s Day this year, she’ll be swooningly happy. But if you have been insufficiently creative, a little part of her will roll her eyes – roses are nice, but perhaps just a little bit too clichéd. Frankly, you can do better. Therefore we got florist to the stars, [...]
French go back to the future January 26, 2010 REMEMBER the Citroen DS, the futuristic sensation born in 1955 and used endlessly in films of car chases in Paris in the 70s? It was all long and pointy, with a Pope mobile–like cabin, such was the rake of the windscreen and cabin glass. It’s back. Well, the name is, anyway. Citroen has relaunched the [...]
The right brew can help you beat the winter blues January 25, 2010 GREEN tea has been trendy in the West for a while now, along with black-skinned fruits and yoga. But in this case, trendiness does not indicate mere faddishness. There is ever-mounting evidence that green tea (along with yoga and black-skinned fruits) is seriously good for you. A new study published in the Journal of Clinical [...]