Pop goes the easel: The World Goes Pop at the Tate Modern reviewed September 21, 2015 VISUAL ART THE WORLD GOES POP TATE MODERN RATING ★★★☆☆ The World Goes Pop could have as its unofficial tagline: “There’s More to Pop Art Than Tins of Soup.” It sets out to dispel the myth that pop art is a US-centric, male-centric, consumerist-centric art form. This, of course, is a rather easy thing to do, [...]
Gotta be in it to wine it: 26 miles, 20 wine tastings, 1 Medoc Marathon September 21, 2015 A burly man is trying to force me to eat an oyster. Beside me, a group of fancy dress Caesars are jostling with a herd of pantomime Norwegian cows (they have udders on their heads, for some reason). They are all drinking glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. I’ve just run 24 miles, I still have another [...]
Mix it up: There’s more to coffee cocktails than the Espresso Martini September 16, 2015 Today, as you sip your morning coffee, take a moment to ponder London’s great institutions built under the influence of caffeine. During one of this nation’s many peaks – from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s – our streets were awash with thousands of coffee shops. These replaced taverns as the place to meet and [...]
Working Lunch: Ceviche Old St September 16, 2015 WHAT? Ceviche Old Street specialises, unsurprisingly enough, in the South American dish of ceviche. Its diverse bar serves up freshly prepared seafood in the classic Peruvian style using tiger’s milk, a sparky and citric marinade that has absolutely nothing to do with tigers. WHERE? A minute’s stroll from Old Street Tube and tucked inside the [...]
Lessons in wine: Don’t be intimidated by fine wine, it’s a fun journey September 15, 2015 Recently in this column we have waxed didactic on popular wine regions for drinking and investment, detailing facts about Bordeaux, Champagne, and Tuscany. But for readers who are new to fine wine and perhaps overwhelmed by the plethora of information, how and where does one start? The easiest answer, of course, is via client dinners [...]
Lobos has bite but good tapas doesn’t come cheap September 15, 2015 14 Borough High Street, SE1 9QG 020 7407 5361 FOOD ★★★★☆ VALUE ★★☆☆☆ ATMOSPHERE ★★★☆☆ Cost for two with wine: £120 Somewhere under London Bridge station, tucked beneath the tracks, is a winding tunnel of a tapas bar. It is the kind of space that further down the line in Bermondsey or Peckham would be full of [...]
Motoring review: Superformance GT40 September 14, 2015 Supercar or historic racer? Or another one of those pastiches, built in a workshop by enthusiastic but ultimately misguided engineers who don’t know a business case from a briefcase? The Superformance GT40 is none of these, though it’s easy to see how it could have been. This is a road-going version of the famous GT40, [...]
Cruising through the Moroccan Atlas Mountains in a 4×4 September 11, 2015 The ancient Greeks believed that Atlas was the primordial Titan who held up the sky. The mountain range that takes his name separates the Sahara desert from the Atlantic Ocean; Marrakesh, the cultural and spiritual capital of Morocco, rests in its shadow. This would be my base before I set off in a 4×4 to [...]
Reviews: Irrational Man, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Song From Far Away, The Visit September 11, 2015 FILM Irrational Man By James Luxford RATING ★★★☆☆ A disaffected older man given a new lease of life by an affair with a young woman? A murder that eats away at the protagonist? If a Woody Allen exploration of the moralities of sex and death seems familiar, it’s because he’s been here many times before. Often [...]
Legend movie review: Tom Hardy triumphs as he plays both Kray twins September 10, 2015 Cert 18 | ★★★★☆ The Kray twins would have loved that there’s a film about them called Legend. Being wanted for a litany of crimes – extortion, robbery, intimidation – didn’t stop them courting the limelight at the height of London’s swinging sixties. Being well-connected may have made them untouchable, but it was [...]
