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March 2015 From time to time, the charitable foundation, the Bulldog Trust, opens the charming Two Temple Place for excellent exhibitions. This one is no exception. ‘Cotton to Gold’ brings together some of the extraordinary collections of wealthy philanthropists who made their fortunes in the Industrial North West. The collections were generously loaned by the […]
A neo-classical architect married an heiress, bought a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, then another, and another. He knocked them all through and filled every inch of space with his extensive collection of architectural fragments, sculptures and paintings. He lost three of his sons, fell out with the last one, and left the lot to […]
East London Federation of Suffragettes Didn’t know that it’s 100 years since the start of the First World War? Unlikely. You can’t move for TV and radio programmes dedicated to it, local talks, ceremonies, commemorations, exhibitions… No, this centenary is something that we are all very much aware of. But what of the anti-war movement? […]
Cinecittà & a cinephile’s introduction to Rome A lifetime spent in the Rome wouldn’t be enough to explore its art, architecture and cultural history. In a weekend, all you can hope for is to get a flavour of what this rich city has to offer. You’ll want to return again, and again… Even for those […]
The exquisite UNESCO World Heritage site, once home to the d’Este family, is easy to walk/cycle around, and is rich with Renaissance art and architecture. But there’s plenty more to capture the imagination: ‘In Italy in the 16th century, food was considered as much an art form as music or theatre, and in 1529 a […]
Passersby might be intrigued by the gilded weather vane of Columbus’s caravel, the Santa Maria, that sits atop this beautiful building – I was one of them – but opportunities to discover more about it are limited as, for most of the year, Two Temple Place is closed to the public. So it’s worth keeping […]
The German army marched into Kraków on 6 September 1939. By November, all Jews over the age of 12 were commanded to wear armbands. This was the beginning of the occupier’s segregation of the population. Synagogues were closed and non-Jews were discouraged from using Jewish shops. By May 1940 more than 40,000 had been forcibly […]
The Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War exhibition is on at London’s Imperial War Museum until 1 January 2013. Once it finishes, the entire museum closes for six months while it is redeveloped. In the summer of 2014 – 90 years after the beginning of the First World War – the museum will reveal a new […]
I’ve written about this unique archaeological site for Travel Weekly and Time Out magazine, as well as for the Time Out Naples guide (that I also edited). ‘Ash was already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by flames;: then suddenly they were […]
Unlike Pompeii, which was buried in volcanic ash, Herculaneum was submerged under pyroclastic flows of molten rock, mud and gas, and it was this intense heat that carbonised so much organic material, offering incredible insight into the lives of the town’s citizens. The British Museum’s spectacular exhibition Life and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum brought over […]
