Toby Guise

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.

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.