Focus on Primrose Hill: This prime enclave offers Victorian homes and a village vibe October 4, 2019 The term ‘London village’ is thrown around a lot these days, not least by those trying to sell you a property. By some standards, anywhere with an independent bakery and a few planters on the high street seems to qualify. But Primrose Hill, nestled between Regent’s Park and Camden, is one of the originals – [...]
New RIBA exhibition reveals Britain’s Bauhaus heyday October 4, 2019 As schools of architecture go, the Bauhaus is surely one of the most famous. Founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany and operational until political unrest forced it to close its doors in 1933, the school aligned itself closely with modernism and espoused a whole ideology based around unfussy, functional design with a social purpose. A [...]
New builds: Homes on the market in London this week, from a former Bermondsey pub to a Deptford tower with City views October 4, 2019 196 Southwark Park Road, Bermondsey From £450,000 for a one-bed Bermondsey is often ranked as one of London’s best places to live thanks to its food, drink and culture scenes, transport connections and relative affordability. If you want a piece of the action, Orchard Homes Group has just launched eight apartments and two houses at [...]
Fitness advice: Why it’s great to be selfish October 3, 2019 Forget everything Barney the Dinosaur taught you: it’s good to be selfish. We spend so much time living our lives for other people when the one person you should be focusing on is yourself, and by turning your attention inwards you’ll actually start to benefit those around you. We can start with your health. The [...]
Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max review: The biggest leap in camera Apple has ever made October 3, 2019 For many years the most important words in a phonemaker’s lexicon were “thinner”, “lighter”, and “faster”. The race to achieve the thinnest, lightest, fastest phone resulted in the dainty little rectangles we all know and love and hate. Any variation on the theme, such as the ill-fated modular phone, was swept aside, never to be [...]
Two Ladies at Bridge Theatre review: A gripping but unremarkable political drama October 3, 2019 Two Ladies begins with a powerful image: FLOTUS Sophia enters with her cream two-piece covered with deep red blood. It’s a clear nod to Jackie Kennedy, and a neat introduction to the theme of Nancy Harris’s new play – the psychology of women who exist a manicured fingernail’s breadth from the most powerful jobs in [...]
Joker review: Joaquin Phoenix carries this supervillain’s dark origin story through its own dopey social commentary October 3, 2019 On social media site Reddit there is a section called “Am I the asshole?”, where concerned users submit situations in which they feel they may have been in the wrong, to seek a kind of masturbatory catharsis from a jury of their peers. There are arguments with strangers, disputes with family members, feuds in the [...]
Nintendo Switch Lite review: The quirky hybrid has become a conventional handheld October 2, 2019 Nintendo has a reputation for updating its consoles mid-generation, not long after launching them, to the extent that it’s become a little risky to be an early adopter. Why spend a few hundred pounds on a device that will be refined into something neater in 12 months, as the Nintendo DS was with the DSi, [...]
The story of the world’s best beef: How Kobe conquered the globe October 2, 2019 Wedged between the Rokko mountain range and Osaka Bay, Kobe is the sixth largest city in Japan with more than a million and a half people. Its namesake beef doesn’t come from the city itself but from the surrounding farmland of Hyogo Prefecture where Kobe is the capital and the key port. As the story [...]
Why did the US Navy sink its own vessel off the coast of the Cayman Islands? September 27, 2019 The sound of whirring rotor blades carries across the bay. I’m staring at a framed photo of Tom Selleck inside the office of Cayman Island Helicopters, while its proprietor, Jerome Begot, readies the chopper. Jerome is a Frenchman who, inexplicably, flew in the US Air Force decades ago, and Magnum PI is his hero. After [...]