After a date with an old flame, our correspondent finds that the refreshed Volkswagen Golf GTI is still the classiest act in town by far.
A GENTLE refresh, power lift and price drop were all the excuses I needed to book a date with an old flame: the Golf GTI. Well, a mate of mine’s old flame, to be truthful, because, back in the early 1990s, although I did fancy my fellow art teacher’s foxy VW GTi Mk2 16-valver, I actually went out with her (much) dirtier French sister, the Peugeot 1.9 GTi. We were the GTi art department.
The VW was more stolid, aristocratic. I drove it once on a long tour back from Tours and enjoyed the novel respite of its solidity and precision. The Pug GTi I was more smitten with was, by comparison, a Betty Blue without the tranquilisers. A tempestuous, plate-smasher of a car. French loons had shoehorned an oversized van engine into an undersized go-kart, shrink-wrapped it in a black leotard and let it loose on the road. Boy, did it like to drive!
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Plants for plants' sake
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Capturing the castle
Seventy years after Christian Dior’s last fashion show in Scotland, the brand returned under creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for a celebratory event honouring local craftsmanship, the beauty of the land and the Auld Alliance, explains Kim Parker
Nature's own cathedral
Our tallest native tree 'most lovely of all', the stately beech creates a shaded environment that few plants can survive. John Lewis-Stempel ventures into the enchanted woods
All that money could buy
A new book explores the lost riches of London's grand houses. Its author, Steven Brindle, looks at the residences of plutocrats built by the nouveaux riches of the late-Victorian and Edwardian ages
In with the old
Diamonds are meant to sparkle in candlelight, but many now gather dust in jewellery boxes. To wear them today, we may need to reimagine them, as Hetty Lintell discovers with her grandmother's jewellery
