The best post-lockdown services

Country & Town House | 1 Jul 2020

Expect everything from a deluge of divorces (those already unhappy couples who were holed up during the pandemic) through to a mass exodus to live in the countryside, far from the madding, (masked) crowd. Anticipate dealing with your tubby Coronatummy – and body hair (that’s you, ladies) – and possibly finding a new career too.

Here’s our guide to the top dozen services and practitioners for the next steps.  Whether you’re after the world’s best off-Zoom yoga, the ultimate post-lockdown facial or mouth-watering new foodie experiences, read on.

• Current Affairs

Health Heroes

Country & Town House | 16 Apr 2020

Meet the people who will get you shipshape in mind, body and soul.

Deep under Regent Street, you’ll find yourself immersed in the Hotel Café Royal’s specialist Watsu pool with small floats attached to your shins. Here, Steve Karle guides you in an hour- long underwater dance of stretching, shiatsu, joint mobilisation and craniosacral work. You’ll feel weightless, and will leave the pool deliciously spaced out, your aches eased. Then you’ll bliss out again with the other parts of this Four Elements treatment: a body massage, hot stones and scalp massage.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Hyderabad – The Weekender

Country & Town House | 4 Mar 2020

From high tech to a high fort. This is what you get in Hyderabad and Secunderabad the joint capital of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India. It’s located between the Deccan Plateau and the Western Ghats. Hyderabad, the historic city, has Muslim monuments aplenty, thronging bazaars, and museums. Meanwhile, dear reader, Secunderabad – the modern admin city founded by the Brits – is of almost zilch interest.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Theatre Review: The Welkin

Country & Town House | 3 Feb 2020

The opening scene of The Welkin, a world premiere by Lucy Kirkwood, is visually compelling. The audience is presented with what could almost be a bank of enormous television screens inside a broadcasting studio. But inside each frame, a live woman is doing housework: changing nappies, beating carpets. It’s not the only thing that makes this such an aesthetically pleasing play (with design by Bunny Christie). The sober and muted palette — of olive, fawns, creams – gives the feeling of walking into a Vermeer or 18^th century Dutch painting, although the play takes place in East Anglia.

• Culture

Elbows at the ready

Country & Town House | 1 Feb 2020

You can buy a new Jimmy Choo handbag for £130, a Belstaff parka for £150-£600 less than the RRP, or a Roland Mouret coat reduced by 85 per cent to £250. But this bargain world is accessible solely to those in the know. Luxury brands tell only a select few about the dedicated sample sale venues that aren’t in designer outlets and that typically discount by 50 to 75 per cent.

• Shopping & Fashion

Break for the Border

Country & Town House | 13 Jan 2020

I can’t keep away from Scotland. Yes, yes, I know it rains a lot. And if you go to the wrong place in summer there may be battalions of midges. And, OK, it’s true that far outside the cities a few still think that a vegetarian is someone who’s happy to eat oatmeal picked from the sheep’s liver and lungs of a haggis. But ah dinnae ken of many places I love more than Scotland.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

The Weekender: 48 Hours in Cape Town

Country & Town House | 30 Dec 2019

The joys of Cape Town are legion: from its jaw-dropping setting below Table Mountain — one of the world’s natural wonders — to the Atlantic crashing beside it. With its virtually untouched coast that goes on forever (visitors are spoilt for beaches), thriving art and foodie scenes, winelands and buzzy energy, who cares, says Caroline Phillips, that it’s famously windy and grittily edgy, a dangerous city with a brash attitude?

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

Review: My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre

Country & Town House | 9 Dec 2019

There are few more satisfying ways to spend five plus hours than in watching parts one and two of My Brilliant Friend, the stage version of Elena Ferrante’s publishing sensation, the Neapolitan Novels. April De Angelis has deftly condensed over 1500 pages into this two-part play (one book, one intermission, another book…twice) spanning nearly 50 years. Melly Still’s production combines a study of a close and complex female friendship with the backdrop of post-war Italy.

• Culture

The Weekender: 48 hours in South Africa’s Winelands

Country & Town House | 10 Oct 2019

The mountainous territory inland of Cape Town — known as the ‘Boland’ or ‘Uplands’ — boasts sandstone peaks, verdant rolling hills and beautiful valleys. It’s dotted with over 200 vineyards, producing globally renowned bottles. The Winelands area and its historic towns – Stellenbosch, Paarl, Tulbagh and Franschhoek, the self-styled culinary capital of South Africa – are known for a high concentration of stunning accommodation, from historical Cape Dutch through to sleek and contemporary. Its restaurants are among the world’s best, stellar eateries serving inventive farm and forage-to-fork cuisine.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

A Guide to 48 Hours in Delhi

Country & Town House | 18 Jun 2019

D for ‘daring’, E for ‘exciting’, L for ‘lovely’, H for ‘habit-forming’ and I for ‘immense.’ That’s D-E-L-H-I. Where else can you walk through history, visit one of 100-odd gardens, listen to performances by the greatest Indian classical musicians, go to museums, then bag some silk, bells, sequins and handmade lace in a market —after having your hands painted with mehendi (henna)? Delhi boasts the ruins of many cities: forts, majestic residences, churches, towers and ancient tombs. It’s where you’ll hear the sounds of the muezzin alongside temple and church bells and honking horns. And you’ll rub shoulders with Hindus and Buddhists to Islamists, Jains, Christians and Baha’i folk. It’s a city that’s buzzing with people, traffic and throngs doing politics, charity (lots of NGO’s), business and shopping.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Review: The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2019

Country & Town House | 5 Jun 2019

“And on the left there’s a fake customs booth. It’s got ‘Customs Arrivals from the EU’ and ‘Keep Ou…’ written on it, with the ‘T’ missing,” says a guide, leading a man with a white stick around the galleries. We’re at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The sightless man, it turns out later, is blind artist David Johnson. And the customs booth is a Banksy, about which more later.

• Culture

Review: Theatre Royal Stratford East Presents King Hedley II

Country & Town House | 5 Jun 2019

The allure of travelling to Stratford in London’s East End for a play that’s three and a half hours long isn’t instant. But King Hedley II —written by Pulitzer-prize winner, August Wilson and starring Lenny Henry —is more than well worth the journey.

• Culture