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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Zoe Strimpel |Magdalene Taylor |Peter Watson |Sean Thomas
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by way of a few hours in Mexico City and Panama. Just five days ago, he was in London. “New York was just going to be a weekend trip for a conference, but then I thought while I’m in America, I might as well head south and here I am.” It’s a far cry from Wales, where his family lives. Yet this itinerary is barely a ripple in Oscar’s relentless travel schedule.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Amy Everett |Piers Morgan |Sean Thomas |Calla Jones Corner
“Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting exactly where you are,” the boot fitter said, as he handed me K2 Anthems at Aspen Collection, perhaps the world’s most sophisticated ski rental shop and café. “He was drinking Sancerre.” It’s an impossibly “Aspen” anecdote – where else would the Terminator sip French wine, but the resort equally famous for Champagne showers and champagne powder?
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Toby Guise |Sean Thomas |Calla Jones Corner |Toby Young
It’s an incongruous name for a wilderness, “the Karoo.” The nursery-like sound belies the harshness of a vast, arid hinterland separating South Africa’s littoral from its grassland interior. For South Africans, the name is synonymous with bone-dry air, scented heathers, great rock formations, vast skies and even vaster sunsets. The scrubland here is so inhospitable that for centuries it insulated the southern tip of Africa from the rest of the continent.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Calla Jones Corner |Sean Thomas |Toby Guise |Toby Young
Last January, one of the first things my son-in-law wanted to know was if I’d found a “boy toy” after spending a week at Lavey-les-Bains, following our Christmas holiday in Burgundy, where half of us now live. The other half lives in Australia. The renowned Swiss thermal waters lie under the Dents du Midi that rise above Lac Léman in the Swiss canton of Valais like four, glistening white, enamel incisors.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Sean Thomas |Steve Hsu |Joel Kotkin |Peter Watson
I’m on a high-speed train. Forty years ago, such a statement would have been notable and specific: essentially, it meant you were in Japan or France. Nowadays, being on a high-speed train is barely a geographical indicator at all. Most of Europe has them, from Spain to Italy to Poland. Morocco has high-speed trains. Uzbekistan has high-speed trains. Even Egypt, Vietnam, Turkey, Thailand and the USA either have high-speed railways, or will have them in the next year or two.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Sam Meadows |Svitlana Morenets |Derek VanBuskirk |Sean Thomas
When Javier Milei took power in Argentina there was one group whose ears pricked up with interest: the global crypto bros. After all, here was a president who seemed perfectly aligned with their values. A lover of economic freedom who harbors a deep hatred for state regulations and government spending. Surely this “anarcho-capitalist” was a fan of cryptocurrencies?
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | William Newton |Adrian Brune |Sean Thomas |Ian Sansom
Barcelona is one of the world’s great cities; happily, it seems to be waking up from a lengthy nightmare of its own conjuring. During the anti-everything leadership of its previous mayor, failed actress Ada Colau, empty storefronts, open-air drug markets and sidewalks reeking of urine proved unconducive to outside investment. A deal to establish a local branch of the Hermitage Museum fell through, thanks to political virtue-signaling by local officialdom.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Sean Thomas |Ameer Kotecha |Sam Meadows |Gavin Mortimer
I can still remember it: probably the worst seafood dinner of my life. A slice of fish that was simultaneously cold, hot, dry, crumbly and rubbery, surrounded by overcooked vegetables and accompanied by a mysterious whiff of cigarette smoke. It was so repellent that even though I was famished, I summoned the waiter, returned the dish and retired to my room, there to endure a dinner of Pringles from the minibar. What made it worse was that I was in a celebrated fishing port.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Olivia Potts |Timothy Clark Jacobson |Sean Thomas |Jane Stannus
Isn’t it awful that the older you get, the more you know yourself? It’s supposed to be a good thing, attributed to wisdom, experience and a deeper understanding of our place in the world around us. But good lord, self-awareness can be a cruel mistress. I have realized that my greatest culinary goal is simply unachievable. You see, I long to appear effortless. This is true throughout my life, but particularly so when it comes to cooking.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Olivia Potts |Ross Anderson |Sean Thomas |Charles Cornish-Dale
Pub food in Britain has had a mixed reputation over the years. For a long time, the most a pub would have to offer as food would be some pork scratchings or a pickled egg. There certainly wasn’t a brigade of chefs in white coats in a shiny chrome kitchen. This is midweek-teatime cooking, it’s sling-it-in-an-oven cooking, it’s cheer-me-up-quickly cookingPub grub started to appear in the 1970s, but it was simple, filling and predictable.
