By: Steve Dinneen

Life&Style Editor I'm the editor of City A.M. The Magazine, and editor of the daily newspaper's Life&Style section. We cover food, wine, going out, culture, technology and travel. I'm also the head judge of our Toast the City awards that celebrates hospitality in the Square Mile. Find me on X @steve_dinneen

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Evening at the Talk House at National Theatre review

December 18, 2015

National Theatre | ★★☆☆☆ Premiering this week at the National Theatre, Evening at the Talk House is a dissatisfying affair. Perhaps there was a warning in the title, which implies static, self-important blathering, but the opening monologue – twenty-minutes of a playwright-turned-screenwriter reflecting on the trajectory of his life – really sets the tone. Written by [...]
Rose English at Camden Arts Centre brings together the north east and the far east

December 18, 2015

Camden Arts Centre | ★★☆☆☆ Camden Arts Centre takes Rose English’s neat exploration of movement and fragility and spreads it incredibly thinly over two and a half rooms, resulting in a jumbled and at times baffling collection of sounds and objects. You enter into a blacked-out room to the sound of a grand 10-voice chamber [...]
Wonder.land at the National Theatre is a visual delight… but where are all the songs?

December 18, 2015

National Theatre | ★★★☆☆ Wonder.land takes as its starting point that the world inside our smartphones, with its cat memes and its gaudy virtual worlds, is as mad as a hatter. Mad as the Hatter, in fact. The Alice in this production doesn’t tumble into a literal rabbit-hole: she falls into the world of chatrooms and [...]
The Lorax at the Old Vic is a brilliant take on the Dr Seuss classic

December 18, 2015

During the interval of The Lorax, Dr Seuss’s cautionary tale about the dangers of environmental destruction, I received a notification on my phone: “UK government approves fracking in national parks”, and I thought “I really hope all the kids in the audience are paying attention, because my generation seems to have forgotten the Lorax’s wise [...]
Piquet restaurant in Fitzrovia is a former car-park that now serves snails to die for

December 15, 2015

92-94 Newman Street, W1, piquet-restaurant.co.uk FOOD ★★★★☆ | VALUE ★★★★ | ATMOSPHERE ★★★☆☆ Cost for two with booze: £140 The part of Fitzrovia surrounding Piquet isn’t what you’d call atmospheric. At least not in a good way. To the north block after block of faceless office buildings recede into the distance; to the south lies the grubbier [...]
The No.1 Fitness 12-week challenge: How to train to be a trainer

December 14, 2015

“In 10 weeks I’ve completely turned my fitness around,” says Sam Pridham, our guinea-pig for No.1 Fitness’ Total Body Transformation. “I had no idea how quickly I’d get into shape – now the end of the 12-weeks is in sight I can’t wait to get into the gym every morning.” But training isn’t the only [...]
Victor Frankenstein movie review: Paul McGuigan’s film is every bit as dead-eyed as the monster it portrays

December 3, 2015

Cert 12A | ★☆☆☆☆ Paul McGuigan’s Victor Frankenstein is so desperate to avoid comparisons with other, better, retellings of Mary Shelley’s tale that it jettisons almost everything that’s interesting about the mythos, setting out to answer a series of questions nobody has ever asked about the protagonist’s butler. The result is a lumbering comedy-horror that’s every bit as [...]
The ENO’s Mikado is a glorious reinvention of a classic

November 27, 2015

The ENO’s production of The Mikado, first directed by Jonathan Miller in 1986 and now in its 14th revival, is beloved of fans of light opera. And rightly so; it’s Gilbert and Sullivan at its ridiculous, ebullient best. Famously stripped of the visual trappings of late 19th century Japan, The Mikado looks like a Cole [...]
Microsoft Band 2 review: An improved but still flawed technology

November 27, 2015

Even Microsoft (very quietly) admits that the previous iteration of its flagship fitness band was a clunky old thing, about as comfortable as wearing a Twix around your wrist. The Band 2 is Microsoft’s second attempt at designing an everyday wearable you might actually want to keep strapped to your arm, with this version featuring [...]
On safari in Zimbabwe and Botswana

November 27, 2015

It took me a long time to feel like I was in Zimbabwe. I had braced myself for a very different experience than the one I was having. If I’m honest, I was expecting to have to deal with nasty officials, hawkers, and dodgy taxi drivers. But instead I was standing next to Victoria Falls [...]

Starmer urged to press ahead with under-16 social media ban as decision nears

London Broncos raid Super League club ahead of hopeful top flight return

Inside City’s latest Irish pub: London’s poshest Guinness served here

By: Steve Dinneen

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