One Fine Dine brings haute cuisine to your living room March 31, 2020 It’s okay to grieve the small stuff. Just because there are bigger struggles, more tragic tragedies, doesn’t mean you can’t feel sad about the thousand little ways your life has changed over the last month. You can miss the days when you didn’t have to cut your own hair and still support front-line healthcare professionals. [...]
Hunters series review: Al Pacino hunting Nazis makes for gripping lockdown fodder March 27, 2020 If you’re looking for a nice, cuddly box set that you can watch half-comatose under your anxiety blanket as the world unravels around you, Amazon Prime’s latest big-budget series Hunters probably isn’t for you. It’s about Nazis, for one thing, and someone gets shot in the head approximately once every three minutes. Set predominantly in [...]
Cupboard Love: Our new daily column on isolation cooking – today, braised butter beans March 27, 2020 I remember being a kid, when my grandmother’s neighbour would give me M&S butter beans in a creamy sauce straight out of the can. It seemed like the height of sophistication to a young me, and I’d look forward to it all week. So here’s a quick recipe for you, which you can rustle up [...]
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants film review: Sex dungeon therapy in kinky indie flick March 27, 2020 Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is an excellent way of forgetting about the woes of self isolation, presenting you with a man whose life flies so spectacularly off the rails that a global pandemic and the meltdown of the world economy seem relatively manageable by comparison. It’s the story of a suicidal widower who falls down [...]
My Dark Vanessa book review: Lolita for the #MeToo generation is a brave debut March 27, 2020 Kate Elizabeth Russell’s much-hyped debut novel, hailed as Lolita for the #MeToo generation, is narrated entirely by the titular Vanessa and captivatingly crafted in two parallel timelines. In 2000, Vanessa is a 15-year-old student at a Maine boarding school, when she begins a relationship with her English literature teacher, Jacob Strane, thirty years her senior. [...]
Cupboard Love: Our new daily column on isolation cooking – today, chickpea curry March 26, 2020 Chickpeas are a mystery to science. At some indeterminate point in modern history, every household in the UK was issued with between one and six cans of chickpeas, which were arbitrarily distributed at the back of their cupboards. Nobody knows how they got there, and most people don’t even know they exist, but search your [...]
Acclaimed chef Virgilio Martinez and Explora Peru come together to showcase the unique culinary identity of the Sacred Valley March 25, 2020 When most people think of Peru, it’s the ancient citadel Machu Picchu that comes to mind. And when you mention the Sacred Valley, it’ll likely conjure up similar images of hiking through misty mountains to equally mystical Incan ruins. This is, in fact, exactly what I’m doing. But I’m not only here for the archaeology; [...]
Batteries included: The Bentley Bentayga Hybrid offers zero-emissions city driving March 25, 2020 A few months ago, this page featured the Bentley Bentayga Speed, a 635 horsepower SUV with the thrust of a supercar and thirst of a supertanker. The Bentayga Hybrid is the yin to that yang, trading a 6.0-litre W12 for a 3.0 V6: the smallest engine ever fitted to a Bentley. It forgoes the title [...]
Cupboard Love: Clever cooking for an isolated population March 25, 2020 In the first part of a new series on economical home cooking, top chef Mark Hix demolishes a whole duck. I’ve written a few times about people buying too much food, not looking after it in the fridge, and it consequently ending up in the bin. I’ve also written many times about getting the most [...]
Doom Eternal review: Ultra, ultra violence has never been so much fun March 20, 2020 A 2014 study by scientists at Stetson University in Florida suggested that, rather than act as a predictor of violence in real life, violent video games may actually have the opposite effect, making people less likely to carry out acts of aggression. If that’s the case then the law won’t ever have to worry about [...]