PROPERTY NEWS July 22, 2010 SAVILLS’ PROPERTY AUCTION NEXT TUESDAY Bargain-hunting property investors rejoice. Next Tuesday sees Savills hold one of its residential auctions. There’s a tenanted three-bedroom flat in a portered block on Great Cumberland Place next to Marble Arch is starting at £380,000 and a derelict semi-detached house on the Chiswick High Road is also up for grabs, [...]
BUYING July 22, 2010 MANAGING PARTNER AT BLACK BRICK Q.Dear Camilla, I am thinking of selling my property but I am concerned that it is summer and there are fewer buyers around. When is the optimum time to put my property on the market? A.Summer tends to be quieter in the sales market, especially in August when many people [...]
It pays to get your hands on the title deeds July 22, 2010 MORE London leaseholders than ever are taking advantage of their right to freehold enfranchisement – that is, the right to buy the freehold of their property – before the lease length drops below 80 years. “80 years is a magic number and not many people realise that,” says Katie Cohen of Jaffe Porter Crossick, a [...]
When experiments go wrong… July 22, 2010 Film SPLICE Cert: 15 Rhys Griffiths A CONTEMPORARY morality tale, this horror thriller pushes topical science controversies – stem cell tinkering, genetic cloning – to nightmarish extremes. Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are superstar genetic engineers. Endowed with great scientific talent but seriously lacking in common sense, the pair cross ethical boundaries like [...]
OUT THIS WEEKEND July 22, 2010 FILM CITY ISLAND Indie comedy about a disfunctional family with Andy Garcia and Emily Mortimer. IVUL French arthouse drama directed by the artist Andrew Kotting. MY NIGHT WITH MAUD Classic drama by the late French director Eric Rohmer, re-released. DVD ALICE IN WONDERLAND Tim Burton’s disappointing take on the Lewis Carroll tale. THE GIRL WITH [...]
Photo purists will adore this retro gem July 21, 2010 THE X1 is the first in Leica’s new compact digital camera series and arrives in a cabinet-like black box complete with two sliding drawers of accessories and manuals (the latter, with an English-language section of 50 pages, will no doubt soon join the recycling pile). The camera itself handles beautifully; it sits gracefully in your [...]
NICK BOOTH TECH TALK July 21, 2010 Nick Booth, editor of www.mobileb2b.co.uk, had builder trouble with his home – and his website. If only he’d used these translation services… TOO tired to text? All thumbed out? Are you one of life’s great dictators? There are all kinds of gizmos that claim to translate your words into prose. But how “egg curate” are [...]
Brett Easton Ellis is back with a chilling seventh novel July 21, 2010 IMPERIAL BEDROOMS BY BRETT EASTON ELLIS PICADOR, £16.99 BY ZOE STRIMPEL ONCE part of the American literary brat pack of the 1980s that included Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz, Ellis is in many ways the most intriguing and – thanks to his famed use of violence in 1991’s American Psycho, about Manhattan yuppie serial killer [...]
LIFE COACH July 21, 2010 WITH Boris Johnson’s Paris-style bicycle hire scheme launching on 30 July, Londoners who have hitherto been put off by the hassle of owning a bike will see a brave new world of green, healthy travel opening up before them. But for the commuter – particularly the female one – cycling to work isn’t always sartorially [...]
Show the world you’ve made it July 20, 2010 IT doesn’t seem so long ago that you’d go round to someone’s house and know they had a few quid because they’d have a telly with doors on it. Since then, TVs have got thinner and the cathode ray tubes which used to make them approximately the width of a sofa have shrunk so much [...]