Sun, sea, sand and a spell of humanitarian intervention

The Sunday Times | 7 Sep 2014

As we stepped off the Dodekanisos Pride ferry onto the Greek island of Symi for our late August beach holiday, our thoughts were on sunbathing and sailing. But our first sight was of 48 dispossessed Syrians carrying backpacks containing their worldly possessions. Within a week their numbers had grown to more than 200 and we could ignore their misery no longer.

Spending our last four days among them, we came across a septuagenarian with facial gashes who sat bleeding in 30C heat waiting for a doctor, as he had for 10 hours. He had hit his face against rocks when the Greek port police fired a shot in the air.

• Current Affairs

Pizza and piazzas: Palermo street food tour

High50 | 3 Sep 2014

It’s hard to explain how enticing Sicilian street food is. Grilled cow’s bowel appetisers don’t sound too, well, appetising. How about spicy spleen sandwiches or griddled horsemeat? They don’t immediately appeal. So, on a trip to Il Vignale, a rural villa near S. Stefano di Camastra on the north coast of Sicily, I don’t go straight to these hardcore culinary experiences. Maria, the chef, breaks me in slowly.

• Food,
• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Sizzling in Sicily

Lusso | 28 Aug 2014

If you want a laid-back week, search no further. Alternatively if you’re keen to go with a group of friends to party and chill somewhere rural, simple and charming, this is it. Or if you simply hanker after a beach-and-countryside holiday, book this now. Welcome to Il Vignale, a traditional 1860s villa near S. Stefano di Camastra on the north coast of Sicily. It sleeps 15 in seven bedrooms, big enough to get lost in happily for days – and is one of many fantastic villas offered by soloSicily.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Spa Guide 2014 – Uma Punakha, Bhutan

Country & Town House | 24 Aug 2014

This is the spa with the best and most healing view in the world. No treatment or activity – anywhere – could beat the ‘om’ effect of just gazing through its floor-to-ceiling windows at the snow-peaked Himalayas and glacial river.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

The Potting Shed

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Aug 2014

The Royal Triangle is like a sort of reverse Bermuda Triangle – so instead of aircraft and ships disappearing under suspicious circumstances, tasteful Highgrove daisy grubbers, maple-handled planting trowels, traditional Sussex trugs in which to collect your earthy organic carrots and wooden apple crates simply appear. Just like that. And everything is painted that sautéed sage colour. It’s like living in the brain of Lady Bamford of Daylesford fame, the high priestess of this sort of aesthetic.

• Food

Therapist watch: movement therapist Ivana Daniell on Wimpole Street

Queen of Retreats | 14 Aug 2014

Ivana offers Life In Movement therapy, a brilliant combo of postural movement analysis, aerobics, Pilates, Alexander Technique, Ayurveda, Feldenkrais Method and Gyrontonics. Perfect for those who have injuries or sedentary lifestyles, it features bespoke exercises – mostly on pilates machines – tailored to your postural misalignments, muscular needs, lifestyle and ayurvedic body type. The aim is to help you attain a fully functioning body that operates at its optimum. As well as working out of her own clinic at 61 Wimpole Street, she is much sought after by private clients globally and works for retreats run by Aman Resorts on a consultancy basis.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Medicine man

Condé Nast Traveller | 19 Jul 2014

A rarity: an amazing man who looks like a gap-year student, used to be a zookeeper (he loves gorillas) and is now a healer. Paul Lennard has an uncanny ability to read people’s energy and highlight any issues. Then he addresses them through an eclectic mix of sports massage, Chi Nei Tsang (Chinese tummy massage) and craniosacral therapy.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

The Restaurant at Cowley Manor

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Jul 2014

The Elder Daughter and I arrive an hour late – after driving into several hedges. The satnav doesn’t like the idea of going there and keeps ordering us imperiously to “perform a U-turn when possible” on roads the size of my little finger. When we get mobile reception – which isn’t often – we call to say we’re running late. Which might be as good a way as any to alert the staff to our table reservation. Wrong.

• Food

The Experts… Advice

Condé Nast Traveller | 1 Jul 2014

I’d like to go on a fitness holiday, but I’m not really into gyms and I find boot camps terrifying. I’d also like some pampering spa treatments. Do you have any ideas?

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Spice of Life

Country & Town House | 24 Jun 2014

The fashion for top-notch food continues apace, so Caroline Phillips learns her goosegrass from her ganache with the help of some culinary superstars on the UK’s best cookery courses

• Food

Dial H for Healers

Tatler | 18 Jun 2014

Mornings were worst. I would wake with lead in my veins, a jackboot pressing on my chest and my body rigid, as if set in formaldehyde. I’d be beset by a terrible inner loneliness and desolation, paralysed with foreboding. I became destructive, self-sabotaging and impulsive, forgetting that I’m a successful, loved woman with a good life and an exciting future.

This is depression. A crippling depression that has been with me all my life. So who would have thought that the best help would come in the form of a spa therapist?

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Every picture tells a colourful story

Evening Standard | 11 Jun 2014

You get a good idea about freelance stylist Mary Fellowes just by looking at her walls. There’s a frmed obituary of her uncle – Hugh van Cutsem, erstwhile confidant of the Prince of Wales – and, nearby, there is another about her grandmother, Lady Margaret Fortescue, who inherited one of Britain’s largest land-holdings. There is also a Polaroid selfie of Fellowes with Paris Hilton – signed by the hotels heiress.

• Homes, Interiors & Property