Chichester in Chilly June

It’s almost exactly a year since I last went to Chichester. I know it’s a very English thing to do, but I couldn’t help but compare the weather: the bright, warm sunny days a year ago, and the cold, very windy and wet days on this trip. I thought I’d gone prepared, taking rain gear, […]

Read More

A Day on the South Bank & Bankside, London

It started with Ben (6) coming back from school a couple of weeks’ ago and wanting to tell me they’d been learning about Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney in school that day. As he started a drawing, reproducing for me the Lichtenstein painting they’d be studying, he recognised ‘The Splash’ on the front of a […]

Read More

A Day in London: Art, Ballet & Food

As a child, I was taken to The Nutcracker ballet at Christmas every year. I began ballet lessons at the tender age of three and carried on until I was 15. Of course, as I watched Tchaikovsky’s magical ballet, I wanted, like many other little girls, to be a ballerina … but I was also […]

Read More

48 Hours in Chichester, West Sussex

There’s been a plan in my head to go to Chichester since June last year. So the trip has been a year in the making, and I finally made it there this week for a two nights’ stay. It’s not so far away from me – merely an hour and half’s drive (if traffic is good) – […]

Read More

Art & Pasta

My lovely friend Lucia emailed to say she and her husband David had booked entry to the National Gallery – which is open late on Fridays – to see The Ugly Duchess exhibition and were then eating at Bancone after. Did I want to join them? I most certainly did! We were meeting at 7pm […]

Read More

Supper at Bob’s Cafe, then an evening with The Trouble Club

Well how could I resist an invitation to join The Trouble Club? One look at their exciting schedule of events and I was hooked – before I’d even stepped through their doors. The Trouble Club arranges talks and dinners ‘where you can hear some of the finest voices talking on everything from politics to fiction’. […]

Read More

Art & Food: Edvard Munch at The Courtauld & Lunch at Joe Allen

An email from The Courtauld alerted me that the Edvard Munch exhibition I wanted to see was ending at the weekend. I knew very little of Munch apart from his famous and iconic painting The Scream, which has so often been used as a symbol of the anxiety of the human condition. After reading the […]

Read More

Art & Food: Tapas at Brindisa and V&A talk

Before covid, I used to go to art history talks often and have been to some wonderful talks at the National Gallery, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) over the years, and heard some great speakers, like Simon Schama and Alastair Sooke; artists like Antony Gormley, […]

Read More

Art & Food: Whistler and Jose Pizarro at the Royal Academy of Arts

It’s been a while since I’ve had one of my Art & Food excursions into London. I’ve been to the Victoria & Albert Museum a couple of times, and recently to The Courtauld Gallery to see Van Gogh’s Portraits with my friend Annette, who was over from Italy for a long weekend. After seeing the […]

Read More

Manicomio Cafe, Chelsea

I booked to go to the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery today. I missed the last one in 1972! And it’s said this is the final chance to see the treasures outside Egypt as a new museum is being built to house them permanently there. Of course, for Travel Gourmet, a day out always […]

Read More