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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Dishonored 2: This first-person assassin game by Arkane is a glorious steampunk wonderland

November 23, 2016

Dishonored 2 feels reassuringly familiar. The action may have shifted from plague-ridden, Dickensian squalor to sun-baked, equatorial squalor, but the constituent parts remain: it looks the same, it plays the same, it almost smells the same. Thank goodness, because Dishonored is at the very apex of video-game design, dense and textured, beautiful despite the muck [...]
Focus On Stoke Newington: Why leafy north London enclave Stoke Newington went from zero to hero on the housing market

November 21, 2016

Stoke Newington, a leafy north London borough untroubled by a connection to the London Underground network, has become a byword for the kind of middle-class urban elite that drives UKIP voters round the bend. Once dismissed as a undesirable destination, the gentrification of Hackney has seen Stokey’s fortunes turn full-circle, and while it doesn’t yet [...]
King Lear at the Barbican review: Antony Sher shows a very different Lear to Glenda Jackson

November 17, 2016

The benefit of seeing two top-tier productions of King Lear in the space of a week – first the Old Vic’s version with Glenda Jackson, the second at the Barbican starring Antony Sher – is that all of its myriad quirks, masterstrokes and flaws come into sharp focus. Perhaps the flaws most of all. While [...]
The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography at the Tate Modern review: Elton John’s personal photography collection is astonishing

November 11, 2016

In a moment of irony at this exhibition of Elton John’s personal photography collection, a security guard berated a woman for taking a picture on her iPhone. It was a neat reminder of how saturated and disposable this medium has become in the 21st century, clogging up social media feeds, propped up by technology that [...]
King Lear at the Old Vic review: Glenda Jackson’s return to the stage is a triumph

November 11, 2016

Glenda Jackson has spent the last 25 years researching the intricacies of political life especially for this role (she’s been the MP for Hampstead and Highgate). It was worth it – and what a loss to the stage the last quarter of a century has been. Her gender-switched Lear is by turns viperous, bawdy and [...]
Lord Stuart Rose: Centralised Stronger In campaign was marginalised by politicians devoted to Project Fear

November 9, 2016

Lord Stewart Rose, the former M&S boss who acted as chair of the ill-fated Stronger In campaign, says he was “marginalised” by pro-Remain politicians who were determined to stick to Project Fear. In an exclusive interview in City A.M.’s Bespoke magazine Rose opens up for the first time about the failed campaign to remain in the [...]
Gordon Ramsay interview: Michelin stars, overtaking the French and why his new restaurant, Le Pressoir d’Argent, is something special

November 9, 2016

“If I’d tried to open this restaurant 15 years ago, I’d have been shot, hung upside-down and had my bollocks put in that thing over there, the pressoir d’testicle.” Finally, I thought. So measured – serene even – was the Gordon Ramsay sitting opposite me, I’d started to wonder if his famously filthy lyricism had [...]
Christmas sandwiches tested: which have been naughty and which are nice

November 8, 2016

We filled a basket with the first crop of Christmas sandwiches – find out which ones we thought worthy of your lunch money and which to avoid like the Grinch. Pret Christmas lunch ★★★★☆ Too much going on here – piles of slightly-too-dry stuffing and a clumping of fillings in the middle. But saved by [...]
Nobu interview: the sushi tycoon talks about family, Robert De Niro, and how his new Shoreditch hotel will be a game-changer

November 8, 2016

According to Madonna, you can tell if a city is going to be fun by whether there’s a Nobu in it. The brainchild of Nobuyuki Matsuhisa and Robert De Niro – or just plain “Bob” – the brand has an uncanny knack of courting the beau monde. Even after 22 years, in which time more [...]
The Accountant review: Ben Affleck stars in silly but fun throwback to 90s straight to video thrillers

November 4, 2016

David Fincher’s Gone Girl has done for straight-to-video thrillers what Wes Craven’s Scream did for the slasher movie. All of a sudden there’s a lucrative niche for acceptably trashy, middle-class mind-candy, paving the way for the likes of The Girl on the Train and now Ben Affleck vehicle The Accountant. It follows the apparently mild-mannered Christian Wolff, a [...]

UK economy falters as deeper damage to growth to come

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One year after Brian Wilson’s death: Beach Boys founder a genius like no other

By: Steve Dinneen

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