Focus On Bloomsbury: House prices are blooming marvellous in this intellectual corner of central London June 16, 2016 Bloomsbury conjures up images of fusty intellectuals like former residents Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and John Maynard Keynes. Home to austere, prestigious institutions like the British Museum, the Royal Portrait Gallery and University College London, it isn’t necessarily somewhere you’d think of moving to. But the recent clamour for central London property has [...]
The Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead is the savvy way to buy original art without breaking the bank – and we can get you in for less June 16, 2016 If you, like me, didn’t quite make it to Art Basel in Switzerland or Design Miami in the States this weekend, then a day out at the Affordable Art Fair (AAF) in Hampstead is a great , wallet-friendly alternative. Each year AAF happens all over the world, from Milan to New York, Singapore to Seoul, [...]
Opinion: Why canny investors need only look for co-working spaces to find London’s housing hotspots June 16, 2016 London’s biggest employment story during the last decade is Tech City, surrounding Old Street Roundabout. In recent years Tech City has undergone significant redevelopment, with investment from companies such as Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel and McKinsey & Co. Now the third largest tech cluster in the world, it generates 27 per cent of London job [...]
Aladdin at the Prince Edward Theatre review: A gloriously magical and hilarious production that hits all the right nostalgic notes June 16, 2016 Prince Edward Theatre | ★★★★☆ Musicals inspired by Disney films have a chequered track record. Luckily, Aladdin joins The Lion King and Mary Poppins in the halls of success, leaving Tarzan and The Little Mermaid in the doldrums where they belong. While there were some children in the audience, most appeared to have been dragged along [...]
The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Haunting film review: An overlong, but well-crafted horror with a genuinely unpleasant demon June 16, 2016 Dir: James Wan | ★★★☆☆ The world’s creepiest couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, return to investigate another paranormal case. This time, they’ve been asked by the Catholic church to visit somewhere more diabolical than their supernatural adventures have ever taken them: Enfield, north London. Described as “England’s Amityville”, they find a poverty-stricken single-parent family who are [...]
Guess which screen hero’s house this is: This company recreates famous apartments in 3D computer models June 15, 2016 Recognise the layout of this apartment? The sunken, cream-carpeted “conversation-pit” living room? The bizarre patterned wallpaper surrounding the doorway from the kitchen to the corridor, from which the downstairs neighbour has made a few rapid exits following secret trysts? It is, of course, the trendy Manhattan apartment occupied by Mad Men’s anti-hero Don Draper, and [...]
Review: Tom Sellers, the man behind Story, strikes gold again with Restaurant Ours June 15, 2016 Tom Sellers seemed to come out of nowhere. Sure, he’s worked for a bunch of great chefs, but aged 26 he opened Story, which made a big enough splash in the London restaurant scene that the ripples are still going. Try getting a table there at the weekend and you’ll see what I mean. The gimmick [...]
The Tate Modern extension will help transform the gallery into the world’s most cutting edge art space June 14, 2016 It’s been 14 years in the planning, it’s four years overdue, and it cost £260m. But the extension to the Tate Modern will finally throw it’s doors open to the public on Friday. So has the project, the recipient of the largest cultural fundraising effort ever seen in the UK, been worth the wait? Has [...]
Working Lunch review: Absurd Bird in Spitalfields brings the unfussy grub of the Southern States to the East End June 14, 2016 Absurd Bird 54 Commercial Street, E1 What? A gourmet fried chicken restaurant bringing the taste of the Southern States to the East End. As you’d expect, the menu is packed with poultry in all its forms – grilled, fried, even a whole smoked chicken – and there’s a “wing shack” out front for takeaway. A [...]
Our columnist Mark Hix on how his good friend Mark Botwright is changing the way we use garlic in cooking June 14, 2016 What the hell are these?” I wondered when I was first offered garlic scapes by Mark “The Garlic Farmer” Botwright. He’s been secretly experimenting with garlic growing just outside of Charmouth, where I live, for years. He has a unique thing going on down there and he’s unlocked an awful lot of products from this [...]