This week saw the launch party for the new Sloane Ranger's Handbook (see review page 112). Held in the New Sloane's hangout, Kitts nightclub in (where else?) Sloane Square, it was jammed with all the right sorts. The club was doling out plenty of Champagne, naturally, but also Cosmopolitan cocktails, which weren't about at the time of the first Handbook in 1982. There were no velvet hairbands or even frizz: the invention of hair-smoothing serum to eliminate wispy curls has done as much to reinvent the Sloane as any social and economic upheaval. The girls looked tall, groomed and thin several pounds lighter than their 1980s incarnations.
The men, however, were resolutely unchanged. Dark suits, paunches, unruly curls over the tips of their ears (why no John Frieda Frizz Ease for Men?) and appreciative glances at cleavages. In fact, most of the men there were probably at the original launch, too. Some were even in full hunting regalia. Peter York, the author, and I snuck outside for a cigarette, and he introduced me to a man in jodphurs, who asked me to the Connaught Square Squirrel Hunt ball. The times they are not a-changing after all.
read Sandy Mitchell's review of Older, faster, more expensive
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Can't you hear me S.O.S? Our treasured native dog breeds are at risk of extinctionDo you know your Kerry blue terrier from your Lancashire heeler? A simple lack of publicity is often to blame for some of the UK's native dog breeds flying dangerously low under-the-radar.
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'There are architects and architects, but only one ARCHITECT': Sir Edwin Lutyens and the wartime Chancellor who helped launch his stellar careerClive Aslet explores the relationship between Sir Edwin Lutyens and perhaps his most important private client, the politician and financier Reginald McKenna.
