Joshua Bell’s London

“The first time I came to London, I was 17,” the violinist Joshua Bell, now 54, told me. We were at dinner together following a recent performance of his at Wigmore Hall, a small but renowned concert hall. “I came with my parents to make my first album,” he continued. “This was in the ’80s,…

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What We Saw at London Fashion Week

LONDON — Farms aren’t normally a source of stylistic inspiration for the upper echelons of fashion. But at London Fashion Week, it felt as if some designers had barnyards on the brain. Simone Rocha had hay fever — she packed her sheer layered skirts with similar-looking stuff — and Christopher Kane offered tops and column…

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How to Cook for Unexpected Guests

“The Clark Hilton” was my grandmother’s wry name for the rambling house in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where I grew up. We had a constant stream of guests because my parents issued standing invitations to family, friends and their families, and friends of friends to stay for a meal, a night or even a month. And if our hotel had a lobby,…

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