“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
If you can’t bear the trek to the homeopath acupuncturist or masseur, just put your feet up and ask them to deliver. Caroline Phillips samples the lazy route to feeling good.
He may stand on his head before starting work, but Nathan Brown was just the builder we were looking for when we embarked on a radical conversion of our Victorian terrace house. Nathan, of Brownstone Design, is one of a new breed of builder: married to a TV producer, he practises feng shui and yoga before rolling up his sleeves, and he knows the importance of finishing projects on time and within budget.
Online food delivery services are expanding into ‘gourmet’ ready-made meals, with mixed results, writes Caroline Phillips.
Mattia Bonetti and David Gillare are preparing to show a new collection of furniture in New York and London. Caroline Phillips takes a peek.
For Sarah Stitt, 36, work is therapy. She had a miscarriage in 1994 and coped with her bereavement by painting a series of pregnant women, some with angels above. A year later, she became pregnant. But just five days after the birth, she was back in her studio, “hormonally insane” and painting to prevent herself going mad.
She first “found salvation in art” when she was at St Martins , aged 19. “I drank and drugged excessively,” recalls Stitt. “My rebellious youth ended with a nervous breakdown and painting was the only thing that helped me.” In 1993, she suffered a second breakdown. “I was severely depressed, suicidal and confronting the demons of my past.” So she “paid with paintings” for inpatient treatment in a therapy clinic on the Greek island of Skiathos.
In 1982, the late Geoffrey Ward had a plumbing installation company. Camden Council insisted that he could not run his business from retail premises – without a window display, he could no longer be classified as a shop and would have to close.
Mr Ward had a zany designer radiator that he had imported for fun. He put it into the window of his Kilburn premises. People started asking to buy it – those were the days of the ubiquitous white panel radiator – so Mr. Ward decided to change jobs. He started to import sculptural radiators.
The former debt collector has some extraordinary kit in his kitchen. A rotavapor machine that distills natural essences, a water and oil bath, a canister containing liquid nitrogen and a gleaming machine that turns purees into edible shaving foam. There’s a desiccator and pump to suck moisture out of chips, test tubes, overhead stirrers, mini filtration units and magnetic mixers. And now he falls delightedly upon Fishers laboratory catalogue. “Heat pads! You put them in a beaker of water with magnets underneath and it keeps it stirred. Can you see the vortex it’s creating?” he asks ecstatically.
Niall MacArthur, the founder of Eat, tells Caroline Phillips about his ambitions to expand his 26-strong chain beyond its base in London.
The air is close with the smell of sweaty old feet and unwashed plates. He has stained bedsheets, pillows with red hearts, lopsided posters of Monet and Manet, screaming pink, yellow and red paint work and a cupboard full of blouses with flounces, frills, embroidery and twirls. It could be a bohemian student squat. But his doorbell on the Fifties block states simply “Bath”.
This is the home of the 7th Marquess of Bath, Alexander Thynn, 64, dubbed the Loins of Longleat in reference to his multifarious romantic interests and the safari lions at his £150 million, 10,000 acre Elizabethan stately home in Wiltshire.
A survey released last week by motor manufacturer Toyota found that the car has overtaken the breakfast table as a principal family meeting place. The evidence from the survey will be used in designing its Picnic “family fun” car.
Our family has known this for years. A long time ago, we started having family Christmases in the car. We don’t have to put up many decorations because we can, if the mood takes us, park beneath the festoons of light adorning Regent Street.
And we do our bit for the environment – the tree part of it, at least – because we speed to Trafalgar Square to admire the 65ft Norwegian Christmas tree rather than splashing out on our own somewhat smaller baubled conifer.
World-exclusive article, made front pages and sparked controversy globally, and shortlisted for “Scoop of the Year” in the 1997 British Press Awards.
Professor Phillip Bennett faces a dilemma. His patient, 16 weeks pregnant, is carrying healthy twins and cannot abide the prospect of having two children. She says she couldn’t cope.
She has told Mr Bennett, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at London’s Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, that if she were carrying just one baby, she would continue her pregnancy.
I am wearing a clothes peg on my nose while impersonating a paraplegic frog. Blowing underwater bubbles, with one leg up, the other bent. Now I’m grappling with the glamorous Travelling Ballet Leg sequence – but looking like a sinking lawnmower. Next I do the Tub Turn, rotating with my knees and feet on the water’s surface, like something that has gone wrong in the launderette. Meanwhile svelte women swim around me with precision, skill and co-ordination.
I am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed…
Barring a lottery win, a trip to The Ranch is out of my reach. So I’m having a bargain-basement bash at it by trying to…
Captivating wildlife, waterfalls, castles galore – you’ll be mighty impressed by deepest Perthshire