Overnight at the Prime Minister’s Library & other Bookshop Hotels

If you’d rather camp outside than stay in a soulless hotel chain on holiday, join the club. But today, we’re taking our charming hotel search to another level. Bookworms and library lovers gather round, because we’ve got 5 overnight stays where you can eat, sleep and dream about books… (okay, maybe not eat books). Pack your…

Vintage Dude du Jour: James Bond’s Big Brother

Meet Captain Peter Fleming, English explorer and intelligence agent who wrote a spy novel before James Bond had even been created by his younger brother, Ian Fleming. When he was 25 years old, Peter replied to an advertisement in The Times recruiting volunteers for an expedition to the Amazon to ascertain the fate of the missing explorers who…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCXCIV)

1. Antique 18th Century Vanity Cases Found on Live Internet. 2. A 1920s vision of Versailles Fairytales from Versailles. Umberto Brunelleschi illustrations, for ‘La Lecon d’Amour Dans un Parc’ by Rene Bolesve. Published in Paris c.1920 Found here via This isn’t Happiness. 3. A 19th Century Pizza Seller Found in this article on the History of Pizza.…

A Secret Living Museum in Paris

This is the kind of place where you can find the original wall panels from Coco Chanel’s living room, rescued from a demolished Parisian mansion she once lived in. Down a corridor, the 200 year-old components of an entire room designed for Napoleon are casually stockpiled like pieces of an 18th century puzzle waiting to…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCXCIII)

1. The Scandalous Secret Diary found in the Floorboards of Chateau When the new owners of the chateau of Picomtal decided to renovate the parquet in some of their upstairs rooms, they made a remarkable discovery. On the underside of the floorboards – invisible until the boards were taken up to be replaced – were…

Mission Martini

My week was starting out just like any other when I received a mysterious email in my inbox. I was invited to Italy to discover Turin, the hometown of Martini. I had a 15 minute window to decide if I could jump on a plane in the next 24 hours and spend the next 3…

Ode to the Ladies Pant Suit of Zanzibar

When fashion has been borrowed from the past over and over again, it’s rare to find something that you haven’t seen before. I was browsing through snippets of a new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, and noticed that among the historic photographs captured throughout East Africa from the 1890s-1920s, there was one…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCXCII)

1. In search of the permanent wave… Wireless permanent-waving machine introduced in 1934 by Icall Limited to satisfy a demand for a machine in which there was no direct connection to electricity when the heaters were applied. The heaters were disconnected before applying to the head, known as the “falling-heat” method. Because such heaters started cooling…

How to Save the French Brasserie

I‘m gastronomically-challenged when it comes to the French brasserie. The truth is, I really have no idea if the food is any good because I’m too busy side-eyeing the floor tiles, the typefaces, ogling at the glass ceiling and imagining the entire scene exactly as it was 50 or 100 years ago. Walk into any…

A Brief Compendium of Vintage Hollywood Test Shots

Ah, the pressures of Picture Day. Who can’t relate to the anxiety of getting that perfect shot for a yearbook, driver’s license, or, in this case, beloved Hollywood classic? For actors like Audrey Hepburn and Liz Taylor, sitting for test shots was all in a day’s work. We wish we could travel back in time…