Over 60 years ago, Vue magazine called Soho “the world’s wickedest square mile”. It wasn’t because of its all-round badness; r...
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You couldn’t make it up, although you would think that someone had. A couple of weeks ago The Times ran a big piece about Ruja Ignatova, a Bulga...
Read MoreFINANCE: Dodgy dosh
Venice’s affectionate nickname, La Serenissima, means ‘most serene’. From outside it usually looks like an enviably calm and tranqui...
Read MoreFOREIGN: La Serenissima drowning in its sorrows
In an article in the recent issue of Luxx magazine, an offshoot of The Times which is aimed at people with substantially money than me, Janice Turner ...
Read MoreFLYING: A private matter of public concern
The makers of Official Secrets didn’t go out of their way to conjure up some fancy title for their film about this real-life story, one which i...
Read MoreFILM: Smoking Gun
This book may be the most inaptly named of the year. Serotonin is a chemical with a wide range of functions in the body; it is sometimes called the ha...
Read MoreFICTION: Very far from being a French idyll
The pagoda in the southeast section of Kew Gardens in southwest London stands 50 metres tall and it takes 253 steps to climb it from bottom to top. (T...
Read MoreFUN: The Kew Gardens Pagoda
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine remarked how ridiculous the comparative pricing of goods was. At a shop in central London he noted he would ha...
Read MoreFOOD: Actually, just coffee…and a sign of The Times
Weeks ago, before the Supreme Court declared that his prorogation of Parliament was unlawful, Boris Johnson weighed into the debate about the collapse...
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