travel and food writer
The Languedoc way of life is about locally produced food and wine, lush landscapes, sunshine and warmth, art and nature and community. All of these combine to make a deliciously languid and moreish lifestyle. I toured the region this summer courtesy of the CIVL to meet some of the wine growers and makers, and stayed in the elegant countryside Mas Neuf, home of Les Vignobles JeanJean.
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This week saw the launch of a new summer pop-up Champagne Terrace bar at Cliveden House. The Italianate mansion is the former home of Nancy Astor, wife of the 2nd Viscount Astor. In the 1920s and 1930s Cliveden was the meeting place of the Cliveden Set. In the early 1960s, it became the setting for the events of the notorious Profumo Affair.
Continue reading “Upstairs, downstairs at Cliveden House”
A satellite of the iconic Louvre in Paris, the Musée Louvre-Lens in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, is a jewel of a discovery. Once an important mining region, Lens is now home to an art gallery, a luxury hotel of the same name and a restaurant, L’Atelier Marc Meurin.
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Today sees the annual summer opening of Buckingham Palace. The palace doors will be thrown wide from today for just a few weeks. There is nothing I like more than taking a peek inside beautiful homes and this one also features a new exhibition every year. This year Queen Victoria’s Palace marks the bicentenary. It is 200 years since Victoria’s (and coincidentally Prince Albert’s) birth. The young Queen moved into the Palace within three weeks of her coronation and transformed it from a private house into a working royal residence, a family home and a space where the public could be invited. A tradition that continues to this day.
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Incredibly, it is 50 years since Apollo 1 and astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930 to 2012) took ‘one small step for man’ on the moon. By way of celebration a new exhibition called simply ‘The Moon’ will open tomorrow at The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London.
Human beings’ external romance with all things lunar dates way back and is nothing less than a love affair. The exhibition explores how throughout time civilisations have observed the moon and interpreted its many facets in some surprising and intriguing ways.
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As in all the arts, whether paintings, literature and theatre, one of the delights of fashion design is the historical references. A NEW exhibition An Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahnik at The Wallace Collection opened this week and explores the inspiration behind the genius in ‘art’ shoe design and production. Blahnik takes his love of art, interior design and fashion of the 17th and 18th centuries and creates the most exquisite footwear, literally works of art. This is an exhibition to make Sex and The City’s Carrie Bradshaw swoon. I certainly did.
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Hever Castle is the former home of Anne Boleyn, otherwise known as Anne of the Thousand Days for the short time she was married to Henry VIII as his Queen. Anne bore Henry one child, a daughter, Elizabeth I. Boleyn was famously later beheaded at the Tower of London. Many films have been made of her tragic story including the 1969 version, with Richard Burton in excellent form as Henry VIII and Geneviève Bujold as the luckless Queen, filmed in part at Hever Castle. A current exhibition Lights, Camera, Action Hever Castle on Stage and Screen includes two costumes, dresses worn by Geneviève in the film.
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