Lawrence Osborne

1 month ago | thespectator.com | James Walton |cocaineBy James Delingpole |Lawrence Osborne |Matt Purple

The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for elegant people. Most obviously, this is because its plots revolve around murders in an idyllic location — only with a far bigger budget, a much starrier cast and several episodes per story. But there’s also the fact that it follows the same pattern every time.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Amy Everett |Dave Seminara |Lawrence Osborne |Estella Shardlow

“You just missed Chris Hoy. He was here leading cycle rides over the summer,” the Peligoni Club’s receptionist informed me breezily as he lugged my suitcase down the gravel path to my villa. Lively Greek music drifted on the (non-existent) breeze, thick air seeming to press down on us despite the late hour. I’d come to Zakynthos seeking some solo restoration — and sure, even self-improvement.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Amy Everett |Dave Seminara |Andrew Kenny |Lawrence Osborne

“No lions?”“No lions. It’s fast-flowing water, so there shouldn’t be any leeches. We do have slender-snouted crocodiles, but they’re quite shy.” “Hippos?”“One we see every now and again.”Swamp-walking hadn’t been on the year’s bingo bingo card, but I’d found myself wading through clusters of floating dung and algae in the largest tropical rainforest on the African continent. Rubber slip-ons heavy with silt, sulfurous foam collecting in my shirt pockets, I felt strangely calm.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Dave Seminara |Amy Everett |Lawrence Osborne |Estella Shardlow

Give me a golf cart on an obscure small island and I am ecstatic. That’s how I felt on Christmas Eve rumbling around North Bimini, one of thirty inhabited islands in the Bahamas, with my wife and teenage sons on a balmy day full of benign clouds and serendipitous discoveries. I’m a traveler who is blessed and cursed with hyper-curiosity. Places with too much to see frustrate me because no matter how long I stay, I’m inevitably nagged by a sense that I missed something.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Nicholas Farrell |Theo Hobson |Lawrence Osborne |Catriona Olding

Dante’s Beach, RavennaThe closest I get to a social life these days is when I sneak out into town for an hour or so to buy red wine, trying not to get caught by my wife and six children. I have found a place that sells a fantastic Sangiovese at €2.60 a liter which is dispensed like gasoline from a cask behind the counter into one-and-a-half liter plastic bottles that once contained mineral water. I buy four bottles each time I go.