Wine is the perfect liquid asset: You can always drink your portfolio June 9, 2015 Building a wine collection, whether for investment or consumption – or a blend of both – can seem a daunting task to those just beginning to appreciate and drink fine wines. However, if approached the same way one would structure a portfolio of assets, it becomes a very familiar exercise to those in the financial [...]
Mix it up: Breathe new life into your G&T with these artisan gins June 9, 2015 Familiarity can breed contempt. Prior to the recent resurgence, such was the state of Britain’s relationship with the gin and tonic. The fire had gone out: it had become a cocktail of convenience. It wasn’t always thus. Like all good love stories, British affection for the G&T was born in battle. It was a [...]
Working lunch in the City: Darwin Brasserie, Walkie-Talkie Sky Garden June 9, 2015 Our guide to the best places to eat during office hours in the City. WHAT? In the Sky Garden at the top of the Walkie-Talkie there’s a café, a fine-dining restaurant and this: a mid-to-high end eatery selling all the things we’ve come to expect from places with the word “brasserie” in the name: [...]
Car review: The Mini John Cooper Works is a new classic of the hot hatch genre June 8, 2015 The daddy of all hot hatchbacks is the Volkswagen Golf GTI. Introduced in 1976, Volkswagen shoehorned a 1.6-litre engine into its popular family hatch and boasted of its 110mph top speed. It’s a shame, then, that today the Volkswagen Golf GTI is such a lardy number. Sure, it’s fast – and you can buy [...]
Rome: The Eternal City that Hollywood can’t leave alone June 7, 2015 The Eternal City has managed what the Russians never could: knock out 007. Daniel Craig was shaken and stirred as he was carried unconscious by a wailing ambulance to hospital when the Aston Martin DB 10 he was driving in a high speed chase around the Tiber river hit pot holes while filming Spectre, the [...]
48 hours in… Munich June 7, 2015 WHAT TO DO Make the most of your time at the airport by seeking out Airbrau, a typical Bavarian beer garden handily located between Terminals 1 and 2. Enjoy a pint of home-brewed beer or if you’re running low on cash “the Hangman’s Lunch”, which is a glass of tap water, a bread roll and [...]
Theatre review: Kafka on the Shore June 5, 2015 Barbican | ★★★★★ Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore is an ever-shifting mirage where dream and reality, past and future, here and there all twist and collide. It’s a book about ideas, encompassing western philosophy, Greek tragedy, psychoanalysis and science fiction. It should translate horribly to the stage, but legendary Japanese theatre director [...]
Theatre review: Bradley Cooper’s physical performance is a little too good in The Elephant Man June 5, 2015 Theatre Royal Haymarket | ★★☆☆☆ Bradley Cooper’s performance in The Elephant Man is an impressive feat of physical acting that’s a little too good for a largely uninspired play. In one of the few genuinely innovative scenes, we first see Cooper as a near-naked, barrel-chested vision of human perfection. As Joseph Merrick’s many [...]
Film review: Melissa McCarthy is hampered by her co-stars in Spy June 5, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★☆☆☆ Bounteous as Melissa McCarthy’s comedic gifts no doubt are, do they justify a resuscitation of the spy-spoof genre? In a word: no. In Spy she plays a desk-bound CIA operative working in partnership with field agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) with whom she is not-so-secretly in love. Despite finishing top [...]
Art review: Agnes Martin brings peace and quiet to Tate Modern June 4, 2015 Tate Modern | ★★★★★ When we think of 20th century abstraction we tend to think of great male painters who divided the canvas into blocks (Mondrian, Rothko) or set colours against each other in explosions of warring pigment (Pollock). Agnes Martin’s approach was different. She ruptured the chains of figuration only to find another [...]
