The closer we get to the Turner Contemporary, the smaller it seems. From across the bay its modernist, factory-like form stands like a monument to industriousness next to Margate’s grungy-chic...
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Forks In The Road
For Ulysses, Dorothy Gale and Neil Armstrong there was no place like home. Dorothy left the Emerald City yearning for Kansas. After walking on the moon, Neil Armstrong wanted nothing more...
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To Each According To Their Salary?
So here we are. Fine wine index Liv-ex is reaching its highest levels at the moment, meaning the world’s greatest wines are inexorably getting claimed by your boss. Or your...
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Cutting Through The Babble
It struck me, watching Katya Kabanova at Glyndebourne this last summer, that opera has terroir. It also has directors, who fulfil the same role as winemakers, either expressing the terroir...
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The Great British Restaurant Review
The biggest difference between the two sides of the pond isn’t a few redundant ues or a disagreement on the geometry of a football. It is that Americans are, well,...
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On The Road Again
After 18 months of Zoom calls, Instagram Lives and home tastings, of Coravin capsules, small samples and endless recycling bags, I finally got to visit a wine region two weeks...
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Humanising The New Normal
There are places in Europe where crowds gather to watch cows being let out of their barns after a winter shut up eating hay. It’s a gladdening sight: the beasts...
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The Great Exchange
The poet and sommelier Amanda Smeltz once wrote about how geography – whether you’re based in a small town or in a teeming metropolis – determines which wines you can...
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The Human Factor
Do you have any bottles of South African wine in your cellar? Go and have a look at the certification seal (usually attached to the neck of the bottle). It’s...
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White Stone and Sun
Brač is the largest island in the Croatian archipelago on the Dalmatian coast, and just eight kilometres (around an hour by catamaran) from the easily accessible and beautiful city of...
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Down The Rabbit Hole
I have a recurring nightmare in which I am walking through my house and discover a room or a suite of rooms I hadn’t noticed before. It is unpleasant and...
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Can We Taste Colour?
It is probably safe, at this distance in time, to confess. The PR who organised it is dead; those at Rémy Martin will have moved onwards, upwards, outwards. It was,...
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