Not convinced? March 23, 2015 CHECK OUT THESE ALTERNATIVES… BMW X5 XDRIVE 25D SE PRICE: £45,250 0-62MPH: 8.2 secs TOP SPEED: 137mph CO2 G/KM: 154g/km MPG COMBINED: 48.7mpg THE VERDICT: DESIGN Three Stars PERFORMANCE Four Stars PRACTICALITY Three Stars VALUE FOR MONEY Three Stars LAND ROVER DISCOVERY 3.0 SDV6 HSE LUXURY PRICE: £38,810 0-62MPH: 5.8 secs TOP SPEED: 164mph CO2 G/KM: 192g/km MPG COMBINED: [...]
Return of the photo maestro: Elliott Erwitt comes back to London March 23, 2015 Elliott Erwitt bore witness to some of the 20th century’s most important events. He photographed Marylin Monroe, Jack Kerouac and Che Guevera. He was present at President Kennedy’s funeral and on the set of numerous classic movies during the 50s and 60s. But he’s equally well known for his photographs of ordinary people. Some of [...]
Why Namibia has the best safari in Africa March 22, 2015 When it comes to seeing game in the wild, Namibia beats South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe Everyone has their ultimate fantasy destination. Ever since I peered out of an aeroplane window on a flight to Cape Town and saw the endless terracotta sand of the Namib Desert, Namibia has been mine. Now I was actually [...]
48 hours in… Antwerp March 22, 2015 WHERE TO GO Don’t miss out on the Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts. It contains the world’s largest collection of Rubens in the world, which is worth the admission fee alone, and it also has a great collection of modern painters including Magritte. kmska.be WHERE TO STAY Boulevard Leopold is the grandest B&B you’ll [...]
Easter snow: A comprehensive guide to the best places to bag a late skiing holiday March 22, 2015 FAMILY FRIENDLY Watching Franz Klammer skiing on the edge of disaster at the 1976 Winter Olympics is not for the faint-hearted. His gold medal-winning run at Innsbruck looked sure to end in catastrophe on several turns. How do you learn to ski like that? According to Klammer – who insists he was perfectly in control [...]
Theatre review: The Broken Heart ensnares gut and mind March 20, 2015 Sam Wanamaker Playhouse | ★★★☆☆ What a piece of work the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is. In little over a year, it has become a priceless gem in London’s theatre crown. While the Globe deftly cycles through crowd-pleasing Shakespeare, the Playhouse breathes life into his relatively neglected contemporaries and successors, writers who often vocalise present day concerns [...]
Art review: Borderlands March 20, 2015 Gallery for Russian Arts and Design | ★★★★☆ Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian artists come together to reflect on the military conflict in eastern Ukraine and what it might mean for the future of the region. Artists from Kiev and Moscow have used video, photography and sculpture – including a brick rendering of the recently redrawn border of [...]
Film review: Mommy March 20, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Consider this sequence in Mommy. Steve, a hyperactive teen fresh out of a correctional facility, walks sulkily down a corridor behind his mother Diane. Cut to a point-of-view shot – presumably Steve’s – of Diane’s bum wiggling as she sashays along. In one neat edit we learn many things about this [...]
Theatre review: Stevie is too bloated, too stiff and too long March 20, 2015 Hampstead Theatre | ★★☆☆☆ At the end of the Piccadilly Line, in a spindly fortress made of words, sat Stevie Smith; poet, secretary, inscrutable figure on the peripheries of the literary establishment. Smith lived her entire life within the confines of a padded melancholy. She was comfortable there, and productive, producing over twenty volumes of [...]
Film review: Time for Sean to Penn an apology after The Gunman March 19, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ There is a sad country called Africa where people live in misery because of evil Western mining companies and military contractors that care only about money. That’s The Gunman’s message, and it’s not shy about hitting you about the head with it. Sean Penn plays a mercenary-turned-aid worker, who discovers he [...]