I don’t particularly like this slow cooking beef stew but so many people do that I thought I would give you the list of best restaurants for pot-au-feu published by Figaroscope last week.
Long live Robert Carsen
The casino ladies are hilarious
The double bill of William Christie and Robert Carsen was just too tempting to miss. But impossible to get tickets, even two months ahead. Thank God for a good friend, a culture vulture like me, who thought of inviting me for my birthday to « Les Fêtes Vénitiennes », a baroque opera composed by André Campra in 1710.
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A La Réserve, a very special home
The swimming pool is 52 foot long and built in pierre de Bourgogne
I wonder if Lady Antonia Fraser will decide to leave Hotel Meurice to stay in this elegant new hotel, La Réserve, which has without question, the prettiest swimming pool in the Champs Elysées gardens. As she tells us in her new autobiography « My History » (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), she has always been a keen swimmer and cannot survive without her holidays in Cornwall and the weekly exercise !Read More
Paula Rego in Paris at last
“Get out of here you and your filth” a dark pastel by Paula Rego
I fell in love with Dame Paula Rego’s paintings in 1988 when I saw her first retrospective at the Serpentine gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Everything about her art was perfect : the dark Portuguese characters, the firmness of her hand, the colourful backgrounds, the tragic fairy tales…Read More
A goddaughter’s tribute
One of Lesley Blanch’s drawings
Georgia de Chamberet has been an editor and a translator in London for many years. Since her godmother, the romantic writer and adventuress Lesley Blanch, died in 2007, Chamberet has never stopped looking for unpublished manuscripts and drawings in the numerous cases of documents she inherited from her. The result is this new book published by Virago in London « On the Wilder shores of love, A bohemian life ».Read More
Are we shocked by “King Charles III”?
Remarkable Lydia Wilson with Tim Piggot-Smith as Kate and Charles
I was lucky enough to be attending this London long running play by Mike Bartlett between two British historians, Rebecca Fraser, who is completing her new History book on characters from the Mayflower and Munro Price, author of the recent « Napoleon, The end of Glory ». After a lovely Dover sole and white wine at J Sheekey’s around the corner, we were in perfect form to watch this almost Shakespearian drama.Read More
Wandering in the Marais
Chronochrome exhibition. Courtesy: Galerie Perrotin ; © Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP, Paris, 2015
Going to an art gallery at 11 am is like going to a movie at lunch time : the faint guilt that you feel doubles the pleasure. This time, I went to see the Venezuelan Jesus Rafael Soto «Chronochrome » (kinetic exploration of the monochrome) show curated by Matthieu Poirier at Galerie Perrotin. I went to the Paris one but it also shows in New York until Feb 21 st.
Michel Houellebecq, the bird of ill omen
« Soumission », the latest novel by Michel Houellebecq, was the object of somber rumors since mid December. It finally came out on ….Wednesday January 7 th, 2015, the same day that Charlie Hebdo caricatured the writer on the cover. And you know the rest of the story….
The next day, his face was on all the newspaper stands (the Kiosks à journaux) around Paris promoting l’Obs, the new magazine born from le Nouvel Observateur. That day, he decided to leave the media scene and go skiing.Read More