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Kia recently asked her mother if she has any regrets about her life. In this personal piece, she reflects on the answer
There’s a tree I sometimes notice on my way to my boxing gym. It stands on an unsightly corner near the junction of Barking Road – which has the dubious honour of the eighth unhealthiest street in London – and one of the grubby arteries that feed into it.
After a year and a half at home, Kia finds travel a little more challenging than it used to be
There’s a certain level of hubris that comes with a travel lifestyle. I’m not talking about the curated selfies of Instagram or endless filtered sunsets but travel that predates it: the hardened journo grabbing his go-bag en route to a conflict zone, the high-powered CEO taking another red eye, or the ‘third culture kid’ who frequently flies between three cities.
After three decades in London, would a move to the country prove horribly wrong? We share the ups and downs of our time in the Dales
We’ve finally settled down. After four years on the road interspersed by stretches in a tiny French village, we’re back in Britain permanently – well, kind of. We have trips to Namibia, South Africa and possibly Costa Rica planned for Nov-Dec and more next year, but we also have a permanent home.
As we head to London in the wake of the Grenfell Tower inferno, the class divide is heavy on our minds
In Greek mythology, Chimera was a fire-breathing creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. Today, her name has come to denote anything composed of very different parts: a collection of things that don’t belong together.
In London, you can walk past something significant every day and never notice. We list 10 hidden sites that illustrate the extraordinary history of London
London lacks many things: picnic weather in July, a resilience to winter snow, an effective solution to the hipster invasion. What it does have in abundance – more so than almost any other city in the world – is an inexhaustible well of intriguing history. It spills forth from domes and spires, flows amid the currents of the River Thames, and rushes through the veins of our subterranean network.
Seventeen countries, four continents, one international date line, and a complete circumnavigation later, we’re home
We’re home.
We bid farewell in August last year. Seventeen countries, four continents, one international date line, and a complete circumnavigation later, we’re home.
Things are different. Boris bikes are red now. The Tories have a majority. And Robert Peston grew hair.
I’ve spoken before of my part-time love of architecture. I openly admire Gothic and Art Noveau but secretly I’ve always loved Brutalist.
I say ‘secretly’ because Brutalist buildings are ugly – seriously ugly – but there’s also a bleak and haunting beauty amid the ugliness. Here are my favourite Brutalist structures (sometimes known as ugly buildings) from around the world.
