Page 118 – A Little Bird

31st January 201727th October 2021

Giffords Circus summer 2017

Tickets have gone on sale for the wonderful Giffords Circus and their tour of southern England this summer. If you’ve never been, we urge you to hurry and book tickets quick. It’s circus as you’ve never seen it before – heartfelt, delightful, surprising and absolutely great for kids (with no scary clowns). The theme this year is Any Port in a Storm, a Baroque inspired show including a Cuban troupe, a Hungarian Csikos rider and a Ukrainian flyer and if you want to catch them whilst they are in London, book for their arrival at Chiswick House from 30th June to 18th July. Don’t forget also to book for the delicious Circus Sauce restaurant serving 3-course meals that travels alongside the main circus ground.

19th January 201728th October 2021

Duke & Dexter Slippers

We are just a tiny bit obsessed with slippers – not the indoor ones (although we are pretty partial to those too) but the comfortable, supremely practical and orthopedically sensible crop of chic slipper brands that have emerged over the past few years. We recently discovered another label to add to our list, Duke & Dexter, which was founded by Archie Hewlett three years ago when he was just 18 years old. Inspired by traditional velvet slippers Hewlett’s start up now has collections for men and women and has notched up fans including Eddie Redmayne (who collected his Oscar at last year’s Academy Awards in Duke & Dexter slippers), Justin Timberlake, Tinie Tempah, Poppy Delevingne and many more. We love the quilted velvet and the fabulous embroidered black and silver star slip-ons but first on our shopping list, once the weather starts to warm up, are the classic camouflage linen pumps. Not only are the slippers affordable but they come in so many different variations that they can be easily dressed up or down too.

4th January 20175th January 2017

Sidestory – experience a new side of London

Even if you’ve lived in London your whole life, there’s always something new to discover. This is especially true with the company Sidestory, who have organised a series of tours of secret, insider parts of London that are guided by an expert. So you’ll find a veggie tour of Peckham, a tour of Brutalist architecture, off-the-beaten-track art galleries, a guide to the best Turkish food as well as more mainstream subjects such as wine tasting and clothes shopping. At the end of last year we went on a tour of Mayfair with interior designer, Arabella Bassadone and we were thoroughly impressed by her knowledge and guided tour which included stops at a top art gallery, access to a high end, private interior designer studio and a visit to a beautiful perfume shop to talk about how to make olfactory layers. If you’re after a new or different view of London, this is just your ticket.

26th October 201628th October 2021

Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces

We have been avid readers of Gardenista and sister site Remodelista since they both launched and, in the interest of full disclosure, we are occasional contributors to the former too. So we were very excited to hear that Gardenista was publishing its debut book conceived and compiled by the site’s editor Michelle Slatalla. For anyone about to embark on a garden project this book is a must-have. For a start it’s a very readable guide to making the most of outdoor spaces that’s lightly woven with brilliant take-away advice, design tips and landscaping inspiration whether you have a tiny urban courtyard or a sizeable country plot and anything in between. But there are heaps of covetable spaces that have been beautifully photographed too, including Rose Uniacke’s sublime London conservatory (with elegant, stately planting from Tom Stuart Smith), and Michelle Slatalla’s Californian garden which is just as stylish as you would imagine – even her tool cupboard is a marvel of chic organisation. There are plenty of handy hacks to transform the mundane into marvellous as well as advice on where to splurge and where to save. Put it on your Christmas list now.

Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces by Michelle Slatalla (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2016. Photographs by Matthew Williams

16th October 201628th October 2021

Rocket Gardens

Creating a proper kitchen garden is always hovering in the middle of our to do list – it’s not only organising a space, building beds and making a plan, it’s the inevitable extra work that comes with creating a year round veg plot. Although it’s straightforward, nurturing plants from seed is nonetheless time-consuming. So Rocket Gardens is a bit of a godsend. The Cornwall based nursery grows vegetables and herbs and then ships young plants out in boxes. The nursery’s location on the UK’s most southerly point means that plants can be grown naturally without artificial heat, making them far greener than many large nurseries. But we also love the simplicity of the site too – Instant Gardens are just that – a box full of young plants that can be plonked straight into your beds or borders – or even containers if you are tight on space. There are different boxes for big gardens, small spaces, allotments and fruit gardens as well as individual plants to buy. Or you can sign up for a constant garden which will give you three deliveries throughout the year and a constant supply of fresh produce. It might not be as economical as growing from seed but for the time-pressed it’s a blissfully easy, hassle-free way to grow fruit and veg. One word of warning – as Rocket Gardens suggest do make sure that you have your ground prepared for when the box of goodies arrives. Because plants might be able to travel but they definitely won’t be happy sitting in a dark box for long.

12th October 201628th October 2021

Top new places to have breakfast

We were excited when the brilliant team behind Moro opened a second branch of their smaller, more relaxed and cheaper offshoot Morito on Hackney Road. And now Morito Hackney Road has started serving rather fabulous breakfasts too on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The breakfast menu runs the gamut from what Nigella Lawson would call “temple food”: granola, yoghurt and fruit salads to the indulgent: enormous Moroccan crumpets served with apricot and plum compote, Turkish scrambled eggs cooked with tomatoes and spices and our favourite, Huevos Rotos, which is eggs cooked with fried potatoes, paprika and chorizo. If you’re feeling under the weather, it’s also worth asking about their range of freshly squeezed juices which surely must be good for you, given how beautiful they look.

And if you, like us, enjoy eating breakfast all day, then you’ll want to head to Over Easy which is just opposite Selfridges. Breakfast staples such as a Full English are cooked from fresh with utmost care. There are also some pleasing variants on classics, notably a crab benedict that is a more soothing dish than you might imagine one containing such strong flavours as crab and hollandaise sauce could be. As everything is cooked from scratch, this is not somewhere to rush breakfast but why would you want to, anyway?

12th October 2016

Landscape of Dreams by Isabel and Julian Bannerman

Anyone with a passing interest in garden design will be familiar with the work of Julian and Isabel Bannerman. Over the past three decades the husband and wife duo have created dreamy landscapes at estates including Highgrove, Houghton Hall, Astall Manor and Waddesdon Manor as well as at their own homes at Hanham Court (pictured) and Tremanton Castle. And now they’ve published a collection of some of their exuberant projects; Landscape of Dreams traces their lives as designers from childhood to their meeting in Edinburgh (when Mr Bannerman was a wine bar proprietor) to now when the couple are rightly renowned as exceptionally talented landscape designers and architects. The book is packed with sumptuous images of their quirky, stately and inventive British gardens which although largely grand are nonetheless really inspiring. It will make you yearn for your own folly/gothic arch festooned with rambling roses or the sort of magical lost garden that have fuelled the Bannermans throughout their stellar careers.

21st September 201611th October 2016

Sali Hughes and India Knight’s Radio Show

We pretty much inhale anything the journalists Sali Hughes and India Knight write about (and as it happens, they both have books out this autumn: India’s, about the joy of dogs, is published this week and Sali’s, about iconic beauty products, is to come). But now there is a whole new treat as the pair, who are great friends, have a monthly radio show on Soho Radio. They have excellent guests: David Nicholls, Caitlin Moran, Lucy Mangan, Hugo Rifkind, Janice Turner, Cathy Rentzenbrink and Bryony Gordon to name but a few.

The thing we like best about it, however, is how inclusive it is: we were apprehensive as to how their friendship would play out on radio and that we might feel left out, frankly. There’s no such fear and they’ve covered divorce, mental health, abortion, Brexit and even underwear. All of this is alongside a brilliant playlist: the possibly not very politically correct songs they came up with to accompany their discussion about mental health were particularly inspired. And in fact, the whole of that show where the journalist Bryony Gordon talked eloquently about her own mental health and the group she has set up to help others, was one of our favourites.

In the most recent episode, when India Knight was away, the four journalists taking part realised they had all had abortions – something one of them had not even told her own family. This is chat of the highest order and although we’ve been glued to The Archers – like everyone else – recently, it doesn’t make good background listening. This is different: it lasts two hours, often features songs by En Vogue and whilst we never catch the live broadcast, we’re always delighted when we realise there’s a new episode to catch up on. Highly recommended.

21st September 201628th October 2021

The Bread Station

We love bread as much as ever but even we have to acknowledge that after eating a lot of it, we don’t feel great. It’s boring but true. We’re yet to find a gluten-free bread that we really love but we were intrigued to hear that the Michelin-starred Danish chef Christoffer Hruskova has set up a bakery in London Fields called The Bread Station, selling bread that is made without yeast. We were not sure how this would work (it turns out that the method is similar to that for making sourdough) but we can report that the resulting wholemeal rolls and dark rye loaves are completely delicious. You can also gorge on them without feeling bloated and lethargic afterwards, which is frankly a bonus. What’s more, Hruskova is offering a range of rather wonderful pastries: we ate a light, sweet poppy seeded roll and a superlative almond swirl for breakfast without feeling slightly speedy and ravenous by mid-morning, which is what usually happens when we have something sweet first thing. These pastries truly are a world away from the glazed, bland items passed off as “Danish” pastries in plenty of British supermarkets. We couldn’t be more pleased.

14th September 201628th October 2021

The Palomar Cookbook

Regular readers will know of our avid obsession with The Palomar. The restaurant, which opened in 2014 on the “wrong side” of Shaftsbury Avenue, is one of our favourite places to eat – and we are not alone – it’s been endlessly feted by numerous publications, celebs and foodies. It’s the kind of cooking over which life-long friendships are forged – the sharing dishes, which are set upon as soon as they hit the table, are so unctuous and generous and clearly made with love and passion – it really is food for the soul. So when we heard that there was going to be a cookbook we were drooling with anticipation. All of our favourites are here – the polenta Jerusalem style (this alone could be your last supper), the Fattoush salad (a classic but elevated) and the signature deconstructed kebab Shakshukit. We’ve been cooking from it since it arrived a couple of weeks ago and have loved everything we’ve made – not everything is simple or straight-forward (the squishy Kubaneh bread for example) and we haven’t yet started on pastry chef Yael Vardi’s to die for puddings but the book has already become a staple of our cookbook shelf. It’s brilliant sharing food – if you can bear to that is.

14th September 2016

How to get priority booking for Hamilton the musical

If you have any theatre-going friends in NY, they have most likely raved about the musical Hamilton. A sell-out success on Broadway, the show – about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton – won 11 Tony Awards earlier this year including Best Musical. We were delighted to hear, then, that the musical is transferring over to London and will open in October 2017 at the revamped Victoria Palace Theatre. Even better news is that you can get ahead of the crowds and sign up for priority booking here (it’s free and you won’t get any spam mail either).

6th July 201628th October 2021

Tips and Trends at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show

1 The Japanese Summer Garden, designed by Saori Imoto, was a great lesson in the power of restraint; beautiful blue hydrangeas, bamboo, acers and ferns were arranged in a spare but impactful asymmetric design with a heavenly result.

2. Who wouldn’t want a field of delicious lavender to smell each day of summer? But somehow The Lavender Garden by a trio of female garden designers – Sarah Warren Donna King and Paula Napper – made the monoculture feel very adaptable to a small space. From the shabby wooden fold up chairs and gravel paths to the cleft chesnut post and rail fence and simply constructed hut, it made us want to plant a mini garden packed with this aromatic English garden favourite.

3. The winner of the best city garden was first timer Steve Dimmock whose pretty Drought Garden was inspired by the anniversary of the baking hot heatwave summer of 1976 and Beth Chatto’s amazing gravel garden in Essex. We loved his planting with lots of grasses (stipa gigantea and pennisetum) mingling with hebes, white verbascums and spiky blue eryngiums.

4 And if you are planning a gravel garden then these stunning echeveria secunda var glauca that are on display in the floral marquee would be a great addition.

5 We loved everything about Amanda Waring and Laura Arison’s romantic, peaceful garden, A Summer Retreat, not least the calming Arts & Crafts planting which included blue delphiniums, agastache, verbena, alchemilla mollis and delicious, velvety dusty pink foxgloves.

6 Martin Rayer also chose a low maintenance gravel garden for his for city garden and it was a great illustration of what you can pack into a small urban space. Verbascums, achillea, salvia, perovskia and echinacea added punchy colour while grasses added a soothing airiness and worked wonderfully with a multi-stem birch tree.

7 The planting scheme in the Inner City Grace by Gary Price was incredibly simple but effective and with its ferns, hostas, white astrantias and quaking grass and it could be deployed in any shady city space.

8 We are not generally fans of anything too coordinated but there was something enticing about the berry colour scheme of Catherine MacDonald’s The Squire’s Garden, where deep red penstemons, sanguisorba and cirsiums were blended beautifully with a painted pergola, upholstery and even the pipes of the garden water feature.