Will Hawkes

‘When I came here, people would look at you funny if you said you’d had a drink during the week,” says John Taylor, Sweden’s favourite TV gardener-turned-cider maker, as he gazes across the soft folds of the countryside outside Malmö. “It was like you were an alcoholic: ‘You’re drinking on Tuesday?’”

Michael Farquhar is concerned about Christmas trees. The operations director at D&D London is pondering how he'll manage to buy a decent tree for each of the restaurants he looks after in time for the festive period.
"How will we get them?" he says over coffee in a South London café. "They normally come in from Holland, Germany or Norway. Every restaurant needs on...

On an unseasonably chilly June afternoon, Syndale Farm’s homely kitchen is the best place to be. Outside, the Kentish hop gardens are sodden after a morning of rain; inside, farmer John Clinch is making tea while his daughter Anna chats to Eddie Gadd, owner of Ramsgate’s Gadds’ Brewery, at the kitchen table. The trio has just finished a tour of the hop gardens, where the cones are yet to appear on bines winding their way up smartly arranged trellises.

Many British men consider themselves beer experts. It doesn’t matter if their wisdom is derived entirely from what’s on offer at their local pub or in the drinks aisle at Tesco; they know a good pint when they taste it. Beer is among the pub bore’s favourite topics, rivalled only by football in the league table of misplaced British male...

Tradition dictates that Oktoberfest begins when the mayor of Munich taps a huge wooden barrel, triumphantly announcing “O’ Zapft is!” (“It’s tapped!”) as beer gushes forth. Alas, in 2021 as in 2020, it’s more a case of O’zapft isn’t. Oktoberfest is cancelled, again, thanks to Covid.
This year there will be no huge tents on the Theresienwiese, the festival’s central Munich home, no oompah bands pumping out Ein Prosit, the classic Bavarian drinking song, no Antipodeans taking ill-advised funfai...

Berkeley Square is unusually quiet. At 10 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday morning in early June, the place is as sleepy as a village green. There’s little to no traffic, and from the sidewalk on its eastern side, I can see just seven people: a personal trainer and his charge, a middle-aged man in boxing gloves; four women sitting in two groups in front of a coffee shop; and a young man in a white shirt inside a high-end car dealership, his eyes fixed on a computer screen. As I glance toward him, he c...

Like many in the hospitality industry, Jay Patel is raring to go. His restaurant, Legare in London's Bermondsey, won't open until May – but that's due to lack of outdoor space, not desire. "I'm real...

When I reach for the tin that holds my wife’s favorite tea, I think of Belgium. Each time I make a meal for my children, their water glasses evoke warm Mediterranean days and the tang of Dijon mustard. A beer in my favorite mug is a reminder of Franconian bierkellers, while a cricketer’s grin on a koozie summons the intensity of Australian sunshine.

It’s raining, and Ross Hukins isn’t happy.
“It’s not proper rain,” Ross, a hop farmer in the village of St Michaels in the Weald of Kent says, as he holds out his hands. A drop or two sneaks through the canopy of Challenger hop bines towering over him. “We had rain like this on Saturday but it just mizzled. I want an inch of rain in ten minutes.”

In Paris, you’re never far from a glass of wine. Step into a classic bistro and there will be good-value reds from the valleys of Rhone and Loire. Higher-end restaurants will inevitably point you in the direction of first-growth Bordeaux. New-wave wine bars are bursting with biodynamic Beaujolais. And a glass of Alsace riesling is de rigueur at a brasserie.

The day before our vacation in France, I asked my three children what they were most looking forward to. Was it the swimming, the sunshine, the beach or — and I would have put my house on this — eating ice cream every day? “The sleeper train,” said the oldest. His brother quickly concurred. And the 3-year-old? Also the train.
In this, they’re model Europeans. According to European Union statistics, rail use grew for the sixth consecutive year in 2018, the most recent year for which figures ar...

Modern breweries are embracing the beer style that was once eclipsed by the craft movement. Will Hawkes investigates the return of bitter

The Cotswolds attract money and crowds
Few bits of the English countryside attract as much slavering attention as the Cotswolds. This stretch of central and southwestern England, covering 787 square miles between Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, is uniquely appealing. It is the English countryside as both natives and tourists imagine it to be: green rolling hills, idyllic golden-stone villages and quaint medieval churches.
The price of such charm is popularity. A lot of people visit the Cotswold...

LAGER has taken a kicking in recent years. The king of the British bar-top has found itself under constant attack as craft beer advances on all fronts.

"Macroswill", "yellow fizz", "cooking lager": these are some of the nicer things the craft crowd have had to say about Britain's favourite pint. It seems the message is getting through.

The British Museum has ancient treasures from throughout the world

The British Museum is full of priceless plunder. Most of its exhibits were obtained when the British Empire covered almost a quarter of the world’s land, including large chunks of Africa, North America, Australasia and Asia. Pax Britannica being what it was, there’s also plenty in the museum from bits of the map never painted pink, such as the Elgin marbles, removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the early 19th century.

Moral...