Convert offices into flats, not nightclubs
Jonathan Jones says: 'This is where celebrity artists get it wrong: they think art is fun but art is suffering and madness' (Ed Sheeran's Pollock homage has energy but no feeling or truth, 9 July). Is he not confusing 'art' with 'art criticism'?John WarburtonEdinburgh
The correspondence on beards (Letters, 13 July) reminds me of when I was in the civil service and, at a meeting, one of our managers warned us: 'Never trust a man with a beard.' This was in full hearing of one of the other managers who was bearded.Ian ArnottWerrington, Peterborough
A beard is not always a good travelling companion. In the 1970s, my husband was stopped at the Czechoslovakian border because he had a beard but his passport did not. The border guards made him shave it off before they would let him in.Christine CrawshawLondon
Somerset cows bunch nose to tail so that one cow's tail is another's fan and fly swat (Panting, gular fluttering and sploots: how Britain's animals try to keep cool, 11 July).Prof Terry GiffordWookey, Somerset
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Times
44 minutes ago
- Times
Inside London's secret wine cellars
The grand hotels of London stand like sentinels across the city, guarding a certain version of the good life. Here, doormen gesture us through a portal to high-ceilinged lobbies and corridors unfurl towards fine restaurants and plush bars. They have much in common, these places. All, for instance, have plenty of delicious options in their cellars, and the visitor who wants vintage Krug, La Tâche or Romanée-Conti knows they have come to the right place. But a guest who wants something unique won't be disappointed either — each also prides itself on having something subtly different to offer the thirsty visitor. I descended into their cellars to find the bottles that make each of these places unique. 'We have about ten vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti,' says the cellar master Aurel Istrate, 'and around 30 vintages of Pétrus' at prices ranging from £5,900 for the 1994 Pétrus to £45,000 for the DRC 1985 — some guests fly in specially for those. He and Lucas Reynaud-Paligot (the head of wine at Hélène Darroze at the Connaught) are giving me a tour, but they have lost me at the wine fridges guarding the cellar entrance. I'm peering longingly through the glass doors at Jean-Louis Chave's 1990 Hermitage (£25,000) and Château Mouton-Rothschild from 1945, L'Année de la Victoire (as it says on the bottle) and a great vintage for wine, as well (they sell this at £45,000). They buy everything ex-cellar (that is, from the château or winery where it was bottled), for all five of the hotel's restaurants, and have expanded to suit changing tastes. While they were once asked only for Champagne and top Burgundy or Bordeaux, now people are more adventurous. 'We used to have 250 labels, now it's 3,000,' Istrate says. 'During lockdown, everyone experimented. Now, for instance, we get asked for grower Champagnes [those made only from the makers' own grapes].' Between those wine fridges and the main temperature-controlled cellar, there's a small room with a round wooden table. This is where bespoke gatherings and the smaller private wine dinners, catered by the three Michelin-star Hélène Darroze team, happen. 'We discuss the wines with the winemaker, then match the food to them,' Reynaud-Paligot says. Upstairs, when a diner wants something unexpected, Reynaud-Paligot might suggest a wine from Sancerre, Savoie or the Jura — 'the grapes are getting riper, the wines richer, due to global warming' — and if they prefer classics, well, they've come to the right place. 'Our job is to curate our suggestions to make sure that the guest is happy,' Istrate says. 'It doesn't matter what we like, because we like everything that's good!' It isn't your average back of house that can boast two escalators, carrying staff and lucky guests down to the kitchen, then back up. The escalators are small but their destination isn't — the kitchens are the size of six tennis courts. Even though, of the hotel's four restaurants, China Tang has its own kitchen and the dishes for the three Michelin-star Alain Ducasse restaurant are only prepped here — they also have their own kitchen next to the restaurant. Just off this vast, bustling space, is a glass door: the wine vault. In cooled air, the hotel's most glamorous bottles — the Grand Cru Burgundy (the Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne 2016 is £15,000), magnums of vintage Champagne (£4,500 for the Cristal 2000) — glow alluringly across the long table. Beyond, through another door, is the chef's table. It works very well to have drinks in here before a dinner in there, says the head of wine Matteo Furlan. 'Some diners with a big budget just come in here and pick the bottles they want.' They also hold tastings, masterclasses and bespoke events for up to 12 people. One couple recently came in to learn how to pour their own Champagne tower at their wedding. Furlan is particularly proud of their selection by the glass: 30 Champagne and sparkling wines, 40 each of white and red. And of course, if you want a glass of La Tâche, the great Grand Cru Burgundy, then you can have it — although if you want more than one glass (on request, at £1,700), it probably makes more financial, and social, sense to buy the bottle (£10,000). But mark-ups are reasonable: 'We don't take a huge mark-up, or inflate prices over time' — even though older bottles will be worth a lot more now than when the team bought them. Until recently, the Dorchester held the record for Pétrus sales in the UK, and they have 1,200 labels, most stored in a larger, less fabulous cellar. 'We have 20,000-25,000 bottles, spread across the restaurants,' Furlan says. 'So if you don't see what you want on one list, we can just look elsewhere.' Once the War Office where Winston Churchill directed operations for the Second World War, this beautiful Whitehall building is now a 120-room hotel with a bewildering number of restaurants and bars. But the director of wine Vincenzo Arnese — assisted by six sommeliers — has everything under control. A quarter of the list is French, he tells me, but that leaves a lot of room to play. The flagship restaurant, plus a chef's table and Saison, an all-day Mediterranean restaurant, are by Mauro Colagreco, who has three Michelin stars at Mirazur restaurant on the Riviera and, now, one here. As anyone who has seen his magnificent French gardens knows, he is very keen on sustainability, so 'we like to have local wine,' Arnese says. Although what precisely that means depends on the outlet — they all have some English sparkling, but Saison focuses on a few Mediterranean wines, which change monthly. Meanwhile the Spy Bar downstairs celebrates James Bond with, among other treats, Château Angélus 007 (£145 by the glass or £870 by the bottle). Arnese enjoys a challenge, which is good, because Colagreco's tasting menus are magnificent — led by vegetables or sometimes, by flowers, with beautiful drawings of the star product presented with each course — but can't be easy to pair. 'I'm lucky, Mauro is open-minded. So many chefs just say, 'This is what I produce and it's your job to find a match'.' And Arnese likes daring matches: 'lobster with Masseto [the great single-vineyard Tuscan merlot] — 'sometimes you have to be bold!' That includes the rarities on the cellar's acacia-wood shelves, where guests can arrange to have drinks and canapés while admiring, for instance, a barnacle-encrusted bottle of Champagne Drappier that has spent time ageing underwater in Brittany's Lannion Bay (the different pressure levels and oxygen-free environment are supposed to change the way the liquid matures — for the better). Drink it for £595, or try a comparative tasting with a bottle aged normally, at the estate, for £ The stately red-and-white building on the edge of Hyde Park is home to Heston Blumenthal's two Michelin-starred Dinner and to the Aubrey, a sultry Japanese restaurant, so it's no surprise that the cellars are full of sakés as well as wines, or that Maxim Kassir's title is director of wine and saké. 'We have 60 sakés, including 27 by the glass,' says Kassir, who has also worked with a saké brewery in Japan to produce an own-label saké, tailored to fit their cuisine, for the restaurant. Fruity yet delicate, it has been a big success, and he'll be heading east to collaborate on a second batch soon. But fermented rice is not his only preoccupation. 'We want to be sustainable and leave the planet in a better state than we found it,' he says. They support small growers and those practising organic and biodynamic viticulture, 'and if we can find an alternative to an Australian or New Zealand wine we do'. He keeps a lookout for labels that are unusual yet interesting: recently, the Perrin family (makers of both the renowned Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Brad Pitt's Miraval rosés) approached him about a grenache they grow from pre-phylloxera vines. The phylloxera louse destroyed Europe's vineyards in the late 19th century, so these are old. 'The wine is not crazy expensive [£285 a bottle] but quantities are diminishing, we don't know how long the vines will last.' He is also proud of his Champagne range, with Krug by the glass as well as prestigious smaller houses including Bruno Paillard, Billecart-Salmon and Eric Rodez. By the bottle, there are several rarities including Largillier (£600), a non-vintage made by Guillaume Selosse, the youngest generation of the most famous grower label, Jacques Selosse. Max likes Champagnes that don't necessarily seek consistency but reflect the idiosyncrasies of the vintage: 'They can surprise you every time.' Champagne is their biggest seller; then Burgundy, then … saké. Here, too, there are interesting options, such as a super-premium (Junmai daiginjo) saké from Yamagata prefecture made with rice polished down to just 1 per cent — which means exceptionally small quantities, and a price tag of £2,450 a bottle. Kassir is proud to have an allocation, as London receives just six bottles a year. But then, he knows that the ability to offer delights that a guest can't find elsewhere is precisely what makes a hotel great.
Times
44 minutes ago
- Times
You'll never guess what I really like about going on holiday
Mid-July, and we are in the middle of Peak Holiday Season — the six weeks in which everyone at some point will either ask or be asked, 'Do we have any of those aqua-shoe thingies? You know — for rock pools? Look like verruca shame slippers? Smell, inexplicably, like old turnips?' Obviously, no one needs to be reminded of the classic aspects of Holiday Season: no work! Having a lie-in! Consuming up to five pub lunches! And, of course, the big family argument — which always happens on the Tuesday. However, as you age, you start getting into the smaller, more niche aspects of holidaying. Because, by and large, all beach days, pleasant walks and visits to National Trust tearooms are the same. But the Secondary Holidaying Aspects? Well. They're for the Holiday Connoisseur alone. For instance: other people's Netflix habits. If you're hiring a cottage or Airbnb, there's a 50-50 chance the previous occupants forget to log out of their streaming account before leaving. Which allows you, as an ever curious observer of human behaviour, to work as an Algorithm Archaeologist — guessing who was here before you and how their holiday went. The most recurrent is kids' stuff: when you see that Frozen and Frozen 2 have both been watched back to back, you know that the last week saw unceasing, brutal rain. You know it contained multiple attempts to engage an obstreperous four-year-old with the cottage's Buckaroo — which has half the pieces missing — before some exasperated parent sighed, 'OK! I give in! Let's spend our summer holiday watching a sassy snowman! Fine!' Other times, it's more… unexpected. In one villa in Corfu, I discovered the previous occupants were obsessed with Japanese YouTubers. The kind who film, with serene minimalism, their daily routines: sweeping their floors with rustic brooms or slowly preparing enoki mushrooms. Here I sensed a neurodivergent teenager, on holiday under duress, firmly eschewing the horror of a boating day trip — probably to a rock covered in gannets, which are both raucous and unloveable — in favour of sitting at home with a Ribena, watching someone craft miso from scratch. And fair enough. I will skim over the Penrith cottage where Amazon Prime revealed a week containing every single movie made by Guy Ritchie — as it's embarrassing that 'men in their early thirties on a stag weekend' should be so predictable. Then there are the joys of the new area you have travelled to. Simpler people get excited about the mountains, moors or valleys. The more practised holidaymaker, on the other hand, is excited by a far more potent local joy: a small local supermarket. Our own local supermarkets are as familiar to us as our hands, or dogs. Which is why being in someone else's local supermarket feels so… transgressive. Almost like, after 30 years of marriage, sleeping with a new partner. The baskets are a different colour! They sell a vodka called 'Garry'! The washing-up liquid comes out of a mad giant dispenser! The first aisle doesn't have fruit and veg but something weird, like 'magazines and giant lollipops', or 'sunhats and charcoal briquettes'. In smaller, more isolated supermarkets, hardcore grocery nerds can get off on an aspect common to all small supermarkets: the laissez-faire attitude to the true sell-by date of grapes. Those guys are often pushing the envelope so hard, what they're selling is, technically, not 'grapes' but 'a bunch of sultanas'. To eat a deflating brown grape is to taste the true terroir of Bodmin. Finally: The Big Wash. I'm not sure where feminism stands on The Big Wash — it's been slightly distracted by both the trans issue and Sabrina Carpenter. But, without exception, every woman I know over the age of 40 confesses that one of their favourite moments of a holiday is getting home, kicking all the accumulated post out of the way, and putting all the holiday clothes onto a mixed load. 'There's something so satisfying about it!' 'It's like rolling the credits on your holiday: like, 'You having been watching… these shorts! And that T-shirt!' 'If the day's good enough to peg it out afterwards, I consider it the final holiday treat.' Is it unfeminist for a woman to consider laundry 'a final holiday treat'? I don't know any teenagers, or men, who are gagging to chuck a Surf 3-in-1 pod into a load of knickers on 30 degrees. All the not-women seem to spend their first hours home 'catching up on important emails' or ringing the cottage firm to see if the cleaners have found their iPhone charger. It's just the ladies who are ecstatically spot-treating a Piz Buin stain on a pair of pleated culottes. And yet, we are happy. Happy with our niche holiday joys.
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Poorest households spend a QUARTER of income on car ownership
Car ownership is eating up a quarter of the poorest UK households' income as inadequate and expensive public transport outside major cities leaves them with no viable alternative. A charity has warned ministers the nation's transport system is placing a 'serious strain' on hard-up families and is 'deepening poverty and social exclusion' that is leaving low-income households cut off from jobs, services and opportunity. As a result, the think tank believes transport costs are fueling the extension of the cost-of-living crisis. The Institute for Public Policy Research's (IPPR) analysis calculated the average household spends £87 a week on transport, though this rises to £108 if they own a car, but falls to £13 for non-car owners. Even though the poorest travel much less than the richest, they spend twice as much of their income on 'surface transport' – such as trains, buses, cars and bikes – compared to the richest. The poorest fifth of households are estimated to spend 18 per cent of their income on transport, compared to 11 per cent on average, and 9 per cent for the richest, the IPPR said. The report says the high cost of train tickets, poor bus provision and inadequate links to public transport make much of the population reliant on owning a car, even when it comes at a great cost. The poorest fifth of households spend an average of 25 per cent of their income on their vehicles, if they own one. Hiking the cost of car ownership is insurance, with premiums for those living in more deprived areas typically between 15 and 20 per cent higher than average. The IPPR recommends the Government provides additional funding to local authorities to retain local bus routes and set up transport concession schemes, such as travel passes for young people and jobseekers. It also wants to see the introduction of a social leasing scheme for electric vehicles - so people on low incomes in rural households can lease a car for a low monthly fee subsidised by the Government - and slash the VAT rate on public charging to 5 per cent down from 20 per cent. Becca Massey-Chase, principal research fellow at IPPR, said: 'Too many people are locked out of opportunity because the transport system simply doesn't work for them. 'Parents are out of work, kids are late to school, and medical appointments are missed — not because people are unwilling, but because the buses don't turn up or the cost of a journey is unaffordable. 'If the Government is serious about tackling poverty, it must fix local transport. That means cheaper, more reliable services — designed with and for the people who rely on them most.' Ruth Talbot, founder of Single Parent Rights, added: 'This report highlights what single parents have long known: reliable, affordable transport is a lifeline, not a luxury. 'When it works well it makes the challenges of family life with one income and one pair of hands manageable, without it, single parent families are excluded from communities, services and employment opportunities. Becca Lyon, head of England at Save the Children UK, also commented, saying: 'We fear transport is becoming increasingly inaccessible to families and is an under-explored outcome of the cost of living crisis. It comes up as a major issue time and time again.
