‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ observed Amanda, a character in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. It’s also extraordinary how a piece of music you haven’t thought about for decades suddenly chirrups back into… Read more »
When the first dedicated Indian restaurant – the Hindoostanee – was opened in London in 1809 by an enterprising immigrant called Dean Mahomed, it boasted of “Indian dishes, in the highest… Read more »
I can’t really understand the appeal of ‘binge-watching’ – viewing a complete tv series (or box-set) in one sitting. This is clearly an example of the modern desire for instant… Read more »
So far the only saint with any Battersea connections seems to be Saint Ethelburga, who was probably just visiting her brother Saint Erkenwald, Bishop of London who may have… Read more »
There may not be life on Mars but it’s just been confirmed that there is water – a whole underground lake of it around 12 miles across. But it’s probably… Read more »
“I go – I come back” was one of the phrases born out of the whimsically surreal and satirical radio series It’s That Man Again (ITMA) which entertained wartime and… Read more »
The famous headline apparently was never used in quite quite that form which is a bit of a blow, but it’s certainly been quoted as such ever since. And (as… Read more »
The other day we found a traditional sandwich in a London pub. Not in some far corner of the east end but at a pub in Mayfair. There it was… Read more »
Tim Dowling in his Weekend world column in the Guardian recently wrote about his wife’s tortoise: In the 23 years we lived at our old house the tortoise was… Read more »
David Mitchell commented in the Observer on 1 April 2018: ‘I liked the old passports too, though not primarily because of their colour, but because they were bigger and had a… Read more »