Raise a pint to City Beerfest 2016, the Square Mile’s very own summer festival with live music, booze and vintage cars July 6, 2016 Set in the heart of the City in the elegant and historic Guildhall Yard, City Beerfest returns to the Square Mile for its fourth outing today. The Worshipful Company of Brewers has attracted an impressive range of breweries, while the City Music Foundation (CMF) has arranged a varied line up of music, from jazz to [...]
Foley’s in Fitzrovia review: Food that’s from everywhere and nowhere, but still impresses with its sense of fun July 5, 2016 The spice trail, if your GCSE history is a little cloudy, is the network of shipping routes linking Japan to Europe, via China, Indonesia, India and the Middle East. It formed the primitive tentacles of globalisation that began to inch around the planet from around 2000BC, giving man the first opportunity to screw over his [...]
Eight of the best cheese boards in London: Post-Brexit, are you wondering where your next brie is coming from? July 5, 2016 1. Fenchurch at Sky Garden, 20 Fenchurch Street, EC3M If you like to scoff cheese and wine while looking down at the great thronging crowds of London town, then there are few places that can compete with the glass magnificence of the Walkie Talkie. Its cheese platter comes from Covent Garden-based Neal’s Yard Dairy and it’s accompanied [...]
Audi S5 Quattro review: Efforts to improve on this masterpiece deserve our respect but not our necessarily our love July 4, 2016 How do you improve upon a masterpiece? Would Van Gogh’s sunflowers look better if they were brightened up in Photoshop? Perhaps Exile on Main Street needs some AutoTune tweakery to smooth out Mick Jagger’s trademark drawl? Such was the task facing Audi in replacing the A5, the car that designer Walter de Silva called his [...]
Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre review: An unsettling production with some top notch witches July 1, 2016 If you’re uncertain about whether a production of Macbeth is any good, just ask yourself – are the weird sisters sufficiently weird? While magical realism is present in lots of Shakepeare’s plays, it’s intrinsic to Macbeth, driving much of the action. If it’s poorly executed, tragedy quickly slides into farce. In the Globe’s production, the [...]
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie review: A party of pissed up PRs and celebrity cameos June 30, 2016 Given the media obsessed culture we live in, it’s remarkable that cinema audiences haven’t already been introduced to Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone. The drunken duo (played by Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley) amassed a cult following during their 90s small screen run, which has seen several one-off returns over the years. Following the critical [...]
David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life review – The Royal Academy hosts the artist’s first exhibition since returning to Los Angeles June 30, 2016 David Hockney believes there are just three genres of painting: landscapes, portraits and still life. Having successfully packed a wing of the Royal Academy in 2012 with varied (sometimes iPad created) drawings of hawthorn-pocked East Yorkshire hills, he returns now to tick the art world’s two remaining boxes. The Royal Academy’s 82 Portraits and 1 [...]
Opinion: A real estate legal specialist explains why using Brexit to get out of a property deal is a very bad idea June 30, 2016 Several days on from the result of the EU Referendum and, inevitably, many are wondering how leaving the EU will affect the London residential property market. First, it’s important to take a step back and look at what was happening before the referendum. The 15 per cent stamp duty and annual taxes for properties worth [...]
Interiors: How to tastefully use the floral trend in your home by creating a botanical wall June 30, 2016 Who remembers when House of Hackney arrived on Shoreditch High Street three years ago? The first standalone shop for the brand, it’s been a huge hit, bursting with imaginative prints. At the time its signature design was Palmeral (“an explosion of palm leaves reminiscent of 1930s Palm Springs”) a print covering everything from lampshades on [...]
Property of the Week: Morpeth Terrace, the historic antiques-stuffed home of a Sotheby’s auction house boss in Victoria June 30, 2016 Price: £1.495m When Heinrich von Spreti, executive board member at Sotheby’s auction house, was looking for somewhere to live in London, he stuck to the old adage “location, location, location.” And, boy, did he find one. His Grade II listed apartment on Morpeth Terrace, a sought-after mansion block, afforded von Spreti an extraordinary morning commute. [...]