May 31st, 2010
Keep your door locked at the Hotel Rosslyn…
I suppose if you wait long enough, you’ll live to see the seemingly improbable happen as buildings get renovated and reused. For example, there’s the case of the former Café Royal at 68 Regent Street in London, the once-fashionable late-supper haunt of both Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill. The place was steeped in legend, intrigue [...]
May 25th, 2010
Canada’s surprising anti-witchcraft and anti-sorcery law
At times, Canada can be properly regarded as a bastion of leftish, “progressive” political correctness. However, at other times, it remains stubbornly traditional and even “Tory”. For example, these days there is a campaign led by alternative religious groups to repeal the country’s anti-witchcraft law, one of the few left on the books in any [...]
May 16th, 2010
Name your poison – from wormwood to banana gin
Have you noticed the revival of absinthe, and other ‘wormwood-based spirits’? They are legal again in many places, and attract the sort of drinker who hopes the bottle might rub off a bit of seemingly dark and dangerous mystique (while imparting nothing more risky than a slight hangover). Much more ghoulishly horrifying are the cocktails [...]
May 11th, 2010
Searching for Dr. P.J. Lobo, enigmatic ‘Gold King of the Orient’
I recently picked up a copy of Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities, the James Bond creator’s early 1960s world travel guide “focused on the bizarre and perhaps the shadier side of life.” It’s an amusing period piece. The Sunday Times of London sent Fleming on an all-expense-paid, round-the-world jaunt, in first-class on BOAC. His fuel, as [...]
May 7th, 2010
Dan Brown and the art of letter-writing
I suppose that the art of letter-writing hasn’t completely died out yet, given the example shown above (and, enlarged for easier viewing, below). My thoughts? You can guess. I must say I did find the first two pages of Dan Brown’s latest novel to be most interesting ones of all, given that the following introductory [...]
May 3rd, 2010
Opium dens for King and Country?
I was last in Singapore in 2005, that wonderfully well-run city-state, having flown on what was then (and might still be) the world’s longest non-stop flight: Singapore Airlines’ 18 1/2 hour Newark to Changi hop. As always, after having enjoyed the superb service and hand-mixed S’pore Slings, I was struck by the bold lettering on [...]