Incomparable Art & Interiors: Delaire Graff Estate, South Africa

Country & Town House | 26 Dec 2022

African aesthetics are having a moment – from the spectacular William Kentridge exhibition at the Royal Academy to the V&A’s blockbuster Africa Fashion. And there’s no better place to experience African art in all its forms (from sculpture to scent and gemstones) than at the Delaire Graff Estate. Set in a glorious 106-acre estate bursting with vineyards near Stellenbosch, it’s the hotel of Laurence Graff, jeweller, diamantaire, billionaire businessman and art collector. You can even rent his art-filled private house, the Owner’s Villa, if your pockets are deep.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Natural or not – The Scoop

Country & Town House | 4 Nov 2022

Natural or not, the choice is yours, says Caroline Phillips

• Health, Beauty & Spa

All The Home Services You Could Ever Need

Country & Town House | 18 Oct 2022

From the tip-top family business whose people digitise your photo albums professionally chez vous, through to the whizz who turns your home office paperless, and the must-have illustration of your house. From the leading Look Doctor to edit your wardrobe and style you in the privacy of your own bedroom (clue, she’s a fashion icon), to someone (used by folk in Kensington Palace) to collect your leatherwork and refurbish it. While you’re trying all the recommendations, grab the app offering a recently-launched service delivering Fortnum & Mason’s artisan foods and drinks to your home within minutes. And let the latest and best robots (reviewed below) clean your home while you’re enjoying all of these home services. You need never leave your house again. But this time you won’t feel as if you’re in lockdown.

• Homes, Interiors & Property

Going Off-Grid In Scotland: Lovely Destinations to Visit

Country & Town House | 12 Oct 2022

Here’s a guide to six of the best off-the-beaten track places to stay in Scotland, from a secret historical hideaway in Edinburgh to a private Highlands estate where you can stalk and pan for gold, to a stylish, off-grid property on a remote island. Most of these discoveries are so off-grid, they have never been written about before.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Review: Jews. In Their Own Words, at the Royal Court Theatre

Country & Town House | 10 Oct 2022

Jews make up less than one per cent of the UK population. Yet a quarter of all hate crimes in the country are antisemitic. In the week that the Jewish Chronicle reported on this harrowing statistic, I went to the Royal Court to see journalist Jonathan Freedland’s ‘Jews. In their Own Words,’(JITOW). I have a Church of  England mother but grew up with antisemitism: the curious sort from my Jewish father (the son of observant parents) who directed it against his own kind — arguably a manifestation in part of self-hatred and a perverse desire for assimilation. (‘Jews can be the worst antisemites,’ a Jewish friend explained.)

• Culture

Review: The Crucible, National Theatre

Country & Town House | 7 Oct 2022

When girls started yelping and convulsing and then went limp or rigid, witchcraft was diagnosed. This was Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The Crucible —which was first staged in New York in 1953 —was, as is well known, Arthur Miller’s partly-fictionalised story of the Salem witch trials: a quasi-allegorical play based on the story of the pre-adolescents’ denunciations that gripped Salem and which saw hundreds of townsfolk accused of witchcraft and sent to their deaths. The play was Miller’s response to the paranoia and hysteria of post-war US politics, when Communists and suspected Commies were treated as devils in need of exorcism by senator Joe McCarthy and his like; something Miller witnessed personally.

• Culture

Everything You Need To Know About Cheese With Paxton & Whitfield

Country & Town House | 6 Oct 2022

Cheese making was a gift of the gods, according to Greek mythology. And this course has been created by the Paxton & Whitfield gods of Piccadilly. If you’ve ever wondered how cheese is made, how to taste it like a pro, how to describe its character, when to eat it, how to serve it and with what, this is the class for you. It’s masterminded by the super knowledgeable folk from that shop that’s had the Buckingham Palace patent since Queen Victoria. And after closing the physical classroom door for the pandemic lockdowns, in-person meetings have just started again.

• Food

Val McDermid, queen of crime, on the perfect murder

Country & Town House | 11 Sep 2022

Val McDermid, international bestselling crime writer, is talking for the first time about when she was suspected of having killed someone – and it could have been the perfect murder. The author, 67, also reveals her feelings about transitioning to become a man, and about her lesbianism. And about the medical condition that could potentially stop her from writing.

• Culture,
• Interviews

Meet me in Monaco – then Eze: the C&TH Travel Guide

Country & Town House | 16 Aug 2022

Who could fail to fall in love with this hilltop village’s narrow, terracotta-and-rough-hewn-stone alleys, steep streets that set your espadrilles at right angles, roofs of handmade red clay tiles, and bougainvillea cascading down medieval walls: one of the most beautiful villages in the Côte d’Azur, and all built among the rocks.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

The Weekender – 48 Hours in Copenhagen

Country & Town House | 14 Jun 2022

Spring seems like the perfect time of year to explore Copenhagen, best seen on foot or by bike, leaving the newish City Circle Line loop of the metro, a decade in the making, for residents who see the city’s beauty all the time. Although, as Ingrid, who had recently moved there told me, ‘I still feel like I am seeing Copenhagen properly for the first time, as high green walls covering the construction cloaked so many of its finest squares and palaces for so long.’

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Spear’s 500 Top recommended photography and creative services

Spear’s | 12 Jan 2022

• Culture

The best treatments to kick-start the new year

Country & Town House | 5 Jan 2022

Here’s to new beginnings. Some people go on a diet after Christmas. Others cut down on their spending after the festive splurge. Still more take to the gym. Whatever your resolutions, these are a few of our favourite things — treatments that you won’t want to do without as you start the new year. The best of both new and long-loved approaches.

• Health, Beauty & Spa