Rise and fall of Empires through the food

Norwegian writer and chef Andreas Viestad can tell the history of the entire humanity by the titular meal you eat. He potted the history of the globe from the development of its population, via the rise and fall of its empires, to the improvement of its economies.  Viestad’s regular Italian meal, focusing on staples like…

New York’s most expensive hotel

. Aman Resort’s Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York has huge rooms, kilos of gold leaf, and is the epitome of luxury. A couple of blocks south of Central Park, the Fifth Avenue hotel opened on August 11, occupying floors seven to 14 of the 30-storey Crown Building, a 1921 landmark at 730 Fifth Avenue.…

Powerful Memoir of homelessness in the UK

Daniel Lavelle’s Down and Out, reveals his own experiences as well as those of witty and complex, hopeful individuals he has encountered who have been shunned or forgotten by the state that is supposed to provide for them- in order to shine a powerful light on this dire situation. Daniel Lavelle,  a freelance feature writer,…

Restaurant with a ludicrous profit margin

  Salt Bae’s London restaurant which started as a myth, serving embalmed steaks in gold leaf at £700 each portion, then had to take off the menu at the dining room at the foot of the Park Tower Hotel in Knightsbridge. Nusret UK’s financial statements for 2021, just after three months of opening in the…

Limits of reasoning and power of groupthink

  Britain voted to leave the EU, in 2016, according to a YouGov poll last month 54 per cent of UK adults think Brexit has gone badly, and only 16 per cent think it is going well. David McRaney, a science journalist, self-delusion expert, psychology nerd, and one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, used…

League of London’s billionaires

Caroline Knowles delves into London’s plutocrat’s paradise with more resident billionaires than New York, Hong Kong, or Moscow. Far from trickling down, their wealth is burning up the environment and swallowing up the city. Knowles walks the streets of London from the City to suburban Surrey Via Kensington, Notting Hill, Mayfair, and elsewhere. Her walks…

Stolen Recipes book

Alice Urbach was an Austrian Jewish cookery writer and teacher who had her own cooking school in Vienna, although she was forced to flee to England in 1938. Her younger son was imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, having emigrated to the United States, became an intelligence officer in the struggle against the Nazis.…

Calls for boycott of Russia grows

McDonald’s and Coca Cola are very complicated multinational businesses, that have been criticised on social media for failing to speak out about the attacks and invasion of Ukraine, and continuing to operate in the country. Coca-Cola even has bottling plants in Russia and is not easy to pull out of Russia. Netflix and Levi’s have…

New Outbreak in the UK from Lassa fever, one dead

Health officials confirmed the first death from Lassa fever, an animal-borne, or zoonotic, acute viral illness in the UK,  as three cases have been reported this week in the UK. Experts have said the Lassa virus is not transmitted via airborne infection but through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person. Lassa Haemorrhagic fever…