Life

Yesterday

Melissa Kite

Americans think they want the ‘real Ireland’. They don’t

As the first Americans of the season got out of their car I scrunched up my face and groaned. “They’re all like that, remember?” said the builder boyfriend. “What if the bed gives way?” I demanded. “How will they even fit in the bed?” The BB shrugged. “Who cares?” he said, with his usual sunny attitude. I don’t mean to suggest these people were overweight. I mean they were giants. I’m sure their depth was right for their height. There was just an awful lot of them, and we are not the Premier Inn, with super-king beds that sleep two medium-sized horses. She was in sportif wear. He was tousle-haired

ireland

Friday

Ivo Dawnay

Gone fishing: In the Andean foothills of Northern Patagonia, the wild trout are biting

The casa grande could be an ancient chalet in the Austrian Tyrol. A steeply gabled roof to slough off the winter snow, dandelion-yellow paintwork, and inside a treasure trove of all an outdoorsman loves. Antlers jostle for space on every wall. There is a tack room thick with the leathery tang of saddles, a bathroom with 1950s rifle magazines for idle reading, and everywhere photos of family, ancient and modern, often with a trophy – deer, vast mountain goat, or even puma. But it is the array of polo cups that gives away the location. This is the deep Argentina of the early European pioneers, and Mamuil Malal lodge is

Amy Raphael

Colm Tóibín explores the art of short story writing

When I was 20 and tentatively trying to write, every single person I knew read Ian McEwan’s First Love, Last Rites (1975). It not only gave the short story a good name, but it also gave writing a good name. It was like a punk moment converted into fiction. People used the word “macabre,” but there was a sort of excitement about the characters, the strangeness of the stories, the shortness of some of the stories and just how much contemporary urban life was in them. Often people suggest I investigate a writer. I was in Toronto about 20 years ago when someone told me about the extraordinary Canadian writer

Bridget Arsenault

A new vintage

Washington, DC might not seem the obvious choice for Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant to establish its first US outpost, eschewing more likely suspects such as, say, Manhattan. But that’s exactly what Berry Bros. & Rudd, founded in 1698 opposite St. James’s Palace in London, has done. “We’ve quickly earned recognition across all of DC, as well as Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and more,” says Jamie Ritchie, the company’s longtime managing director. “The news that we’re here spread quickly because it’s a smaller population, a smaller competitive set. People are aware we’ve arrived.” ‘If you spend too much time looking backwards you tend to bump into the future. The US

Eric Walker

What lies beneath

Every J Craft’s retro-style hull conceals ultramodern comforts and a setup fit for a tech-savvy Viking If you are familiar with the Ship of Theseus paradox, you’ll know that dating back to the Greeks, the famous philosophical question is this: if a boat has all its components replaced, is it at the end still the same boat? Every J Craft’s retro-style hull conceals ultramodern comforts and a setup fit for a tech-savvy Viking In Sweden there is a near modern-day version of this taking place every year at the J Craft shipyard on the island of Gotland. It is not so much that the parts of boats are being systematically

Joanne Glasbey

How luxury pen company Yard-O-Led is setting today’s digital and disposable world to writes

One day during my first job as an aspiring journalist at a serious newspaper, the editor told me how much he liked my writing. Flushing with pride, I asked which particular piece I’d penned. “No!” he interrupted abruptly, before I’d even finished my question. “I mean your handwriting.” It was the note I’d scrawled rather than any article I’d labored over that had caught his eye. Curiously, ever since I was calligraphy-shamed by a teacher for blotty, illegible cursive writing at a young age and attempted to recreate the italic script a friend had learned, handwriting has played a significant role in my life. There was the person I’d sent

Zack Christenson

Exploring the world’s oceans with the world’s most interesting man

“You can just do things.” It’s a popular phrase on X, usually in response to someone accomplishing something remarkable, taken to mean that there’s nothing stopping you from doing something out of the ordinary. SpaceX might post video of a rocket landing – “you can just do things.” Victor Vescovo might be the living embodiment of the phrase. My first introduction to Vescovo was an email from him, extending an invitation to be a guest at his table for the Explorers Club Annual Dinner. The name was vaguely familiar to me but didn’t immediately register. Who was this mysterious correspondent? ‘I found it personally offensive that it was the year

Simon de Burton

Get your paddles ready for spring hammer time

As the high-end auction year gets underway in earnest, interesting lots are coming under the hammer over the next few months, ranging from wines forming the second-largest collection in Europe to American muscle cars, and from images created by one of the world’s most celebrated photographers to the multi-million­-dollar paintings collected by a former US ambassador. Here are some select lots. Sebastião Salgado: A Life’s Voyage; Phillips, New York April 2-10 (online) The death of Sebastião Salgado last year deprived the world of one of its most influential photographers. The Brazilian lensman was renowned for his brilliantly framed shots of manual laborers working under harsh conditions in under-developed countries. This

Rachel Johnson

An Englishwoman’s home is her castle

An imposing castle that has been in the same family for 200 years, and was featured as the location for Shiv and Tom’s wedding in Succession, is well worth a visit. And now you can hire this very big house in the country for your own discerning yet hedonistic fun “What is luxury now,” asks Imogen Hervey-Bathurst, scraping her raven hair from her pale face and ruby-red lips. “It’s authenticity, it’s soul, it’s comfort, combined with bacchanalian, opulent drama in a historic family home,” she continues, with a naughty flash. “Eastnor is, glamorous, it’s grand, it’s relaxed. We want people to have fun here whatever they are doing…” She notes

Thursday

Peter Howarth

Giorgio Armani: Coming to America

After being put on the “worst dressed” list for the 1989 Oscars at which she won Best Actress for The Accused, Jodie Foster decided that she needed professional fashion help. Giorgio Armani answered the call. “For the next Oscars, I wore a beautiful and striking cream-colored tuxedo chosen for me by Mr. Armani, and guess what… I was on the ‘best dressed’ list!” recalled the actor. “From then, Armani has been my go-to designer, and he has done many of my costumes on screen as well. In 1991, I finally met him – I had the honor of having Mr. Armani personally fit me for the Oscars. We spoke in

Simon Mills

Max Cooper: the billion-dollar man

Maximillion Cooper is the ringmaster of a 21st-century Wacky Races for a high-powered bunch of people who come together in a spirit of adventure On June 4 this year the annual Gumball 3000 rally will rumble out of Miami, beginning a 3,000-mile route from Miami to Mexico City, taking in Florida’s Amelia Island, New Orleans, Austin, and Monterrey. Running concurrent to the FIFA World Cup, the high-revving, tire-squealing, and donutting motorcade, part automotive concours, part luxe endurance, but mostly grand-flex event, will comprise multi-millions of dollars’ worth of vehicular exotica, piloted by superwealthy petrolheads, celebrity participants, professional drivers, and a whole lot of V12 cylinder hedonists. The rally will finish

James Gurney

The dram is in the details

Away from the hard-luxury world of Lalique bottles (sorry, “decanters”) art labels, and rare-wood boxes, the whiskey world has evolved a niche that focuses on data and details and speaks more directly to a younger audience. Independent bottling favors discovery and knowledge over branding or partnerships, and typically these whiskeys are from casks that the distillers use to adjust larger batches – achieving consistency across large volumes doesn’t happen by accident. The casks will be the same age and have the same water and malt but will have been matured in different conditions. These can then be used to create something new, bottled as is or finished more creatively: a

James Gurney

Hitting the bricks: Click by click, Lego has built its way to the apex of mechanical culture

Once upon a time, Lego was just a toy that we grew out of. Except that it never really was just a toy, and the generations that grew up with the clever building system never forgot the lessons it taught in mechanical thinking, or lost the fascination with structure, motion, and cause-and-effect that it engendered. More powerfully, Lego taps into the desire to create order and pattern (who doesn’t remember the frustration of right brick, wrong color?) that also drives the collecting impulse. Given all that, it was only a matter of time before Lego grew up, too. And grow up it has, with luxury car makers from Ferrari and

Mark Hooper

License to twill: Redesigned for 007, the Riviera Polo gets even smoother for its big 20

In a small town south-west of Nottingham in England’s East Midlands, lies one of the world’s true textile pioneers. Founded in 1860, Sunspel has been quietly revolutionizing the industry by developing ever-better quality fabrics. As a specialist in luxury underwear for men, having introduced the boxer short to Britain in 1947, it was ideally placed when the T-shirt evolved from under- to outerwear (thanks to its adoption by American G.I.s and Hollywood antiheroes such as Marlon Brando and James Dean). Sunspel’s trademark crew-neck style T-shirt, in its smoother finish, has since become the staple by which all others are measured. In 1955 it introduced another iconic design, the Riviera Polo

Tracey Llewellyn

Oh buoy: Luxury watch brands and the emotionally loaded arena of sailing

There is something faintly absurd about a modern sailor checking the tide on a mechanical wristwatch before leaving the dock. It’s a defiant act of Luddism. Whether it is TAG Heuer’s new Seafarer – a revival of a sun-bleached Abercrombie & Fitch regatta chronograph – or IWC’s technical Portugieser Yacht Club Moon & Tide, the implication is that the information cannot be found on the GPS already blinking somewhere on the boat. The comedy sharpens when you remember that sailing, at the top end, has long since escaped the romance of canvas and teak. Today’s elite yachts are machines for people who find the wind a nuisance best managed by

Mark Hooper

A shoe in: The handmade British footwear that’s keeping pace with the times

An icon of British craftsmanship, Edward Green has been handmaking shoes in Northampton, the home of the UK’s shoemaking industry, for 136 years. The original Edward Green’s vision – to attract the best craftsmen, united under the slogan “excellence without compromise” – still holds true today, with 60 skilled artisans using techniques that have been passed down and honed through the generations. Supply is strictly limited to 350 pairs of shoes a week – the maximum it can create without compromising on the excellence that is ingrained in the brand’s DNA. Its illustrious list of clients includes Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Edward, Duke of Windsor. Visiting the factory, I

Kara Newman

Go Long: Why “long” martinis are the sessionable way to drink right now

Martinis remain one of the most popular cocktails of the moment – pristine and dry or filthy-dirty-hazy, vodka or gin, olive or twist, there’s one on every menu. But the iconic drink sure does pack a punch. In a moment where many – particularly younger consumers – are drinking less, even the classic martini is seeing some changes. Enter the “long” martini, which lengthens the basic martini build with soda water, tonic, etc., and serves it over ice. The end result: a less-strong, less austere version of the drink. “I don’t think the martini is going anywhere,” says Kevin Denton Rex, director of The Spirits Authority, a research organization that

Joanne Glasbey

A murder-free cruise down the Nile on the 1920s steam ship that inspired an Agatha Christie classic

The actor David Suchet, who starred as Hercule Poirot in TV films and on the big screen, has recounted trying to perfect the Belgian detective’s fussy walk, as described by his creator Agatha Christie. In the end, Suchet placed a penny between his butt cheeks and shuffled like a penguin to keep it in place, thus recreating Poirot’s distinctive gait – a testament to his resourcefulness and acting chops. Well, fire up your little gray cells and oil your mustaches: here’s the opportunity to enjoy the inspiration for one of Christie’s best-loved books. With a legacy of more than 70 crime novels, 150 short stories and 25 plays, this year

Kitty Tucker

Richard Mille watches cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So why do athletes try so hard to break them?

Ester Ledecká, Tomoka Takeuchi, and Arthur de Villaucourt were all part of the Richard Mille “family” at Milano Cortina 2026, and while the first two competed in the Women’s Parallel Giant Slalom for snowboard, the latter attacked the Men’s Moguls and Men’s Dual Moguls. For athletes to have associations with watch brands might not be unusual, however there is one crucial difference here – where Richard Mille is concerned, those it invites to become part of its network are required to wear their watches while competing. Ledecká went into this Olympics chasing a fourth gold medal, having remarkably won the top gong at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in both

Jackson Ford

For under-the-radar, innovative watches that retail for under $1,000, turn to Time+Tide

As the saying goes, “Time and tide wait for no man.” Perhaps this is why Australian Andrew McUtchen is in such a hurry to spread the word about what he calls watch “microbrands.” These are the product of young watchmakers who have developed small runs of interesting and innovative watches and are challenging the hegemony of the traditional Swiss horology titans. Typical is Studio Underd0g, a British outfit founded in 2020 with the aim of making quirky, colorful timepieces. Its Watermel0n chronograph is a striking creation, with a dial that replicates the look of the fruit. Then there was the Time+Tide x Studio Underd0g collaboration, a now-discontinued limited-edition Pizza Watch