Cars and watches, watches and cars. For no obvious reason where you find a love of one you will inevitably find a love of the other; the petrol-head who has no interest in the timepiece on your wrist has not yet been born. Whatever the reason for this marriage of passions it has done nothing […]
It’s unlikely yet true that the existence of some of the finest watches in the world, some costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, is down to something as mundane as good local government. In fairness to any outraged local councillors reading this I should point out, though, that the local government in this case did […]
Authenticity is a word which means different things to different people. To human beings it means “real”, “actual” or “what it says it is”. To people who work in marketing it means “close enough”. So it is with watches. The psychology of how certain types of watches are sold, mostly to men, doesn’t flatter the […]
So as the smoke clears from Taxgate David Cameron is revealed to be, well fine actually. Again. Despite some calamitous media tactics early on the PM has done what he usually does, which is emerge jauntily unscathed from yet another attempt to inflict terminal damage. In fact the main fallout, in the minds of the […]
This week I’m asking you to bear with me for a moment, because on first impressions our subject may appear a bit less glamorous than usual. It’s not though, I promise. It’s fun and adds pleasure and value to your collection for relatively little money. Trust me, I have your best interests at heart. Straps […]
As today’s column appears we are in the middle of the vast Baselworld watch expo in Switzerland, the most significant show of the year and one in which the giants of the industry whip the covers off numerous new pieces. If horology is your thing I suspect you’re seeing ten emails a day, and scores […]
Like many Europeans (and indeed Americans) I am watching the rise of Donald Trump with a mix of horror, sadness and trepidation, not to mention a macabre fascination. It’s like one of those compilation videos of slow-motion car crashes; obscenely hard to turn off. This week news that militias (a particularly specific, emotive and important […]
I have a friend (let’s call him Dave) whose girlfriend regards his entire life as a blank page, something for her to write on. Jenny (let’s call her Jenny) likes to make sure Dave eats the right stuff, stays within his recommended weekly alcohol intake and takes the right amount of exercise. Dave is also […]
The vintage watch market, as we’ve discussed before, is a jungle full of nasty surprises to snare the unwary. Yet there is a way of buying great classic watches at a saving, with absolutely zero risk of getting a wrong ‘un, and even from a seller who will happily fix any problems you might encounter […]
Today we’re going to talk about just one watch brand. It’s one of the greatest of them all. Since it was founded it has had a forensic, almost fanatical focus on quality. Unlike 99% of watch-makers it makes every last piece of its watches itself, right down to the lubricating oil inside them. The watches it […]
“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, used to be the old Yorkshire saying. In other words, if you’re prepared to do the dirty jobs nobody else will, there’s money in it. In the world of vintage watches though, we are increasingly finding that where there’s brass there’s muck as a combination of the popularity and cost […]
The problem with watches, like cars, is that nobody really needs a nice one. A car which reliably, economically and safely gets from A to B is enough for the vast majority. So it is with timepieces. Inexpensive, reliable and robust; job done, say most normal people. But many of us are not normal, are […]
When we think of the things Britain is famous for making and selling to the world what springs to mind? Back in the day we might have thought of the might of British industry; ships, aircraft, railways and giant feats of engineering. In more recent times high end cars and fashionable clothes. Music and literature […]
This week we’re going to take a look at a pair of watches launched in 2015, but not just for their undoubted merits; we’re in pursuit of a wider point. What makes these two special is what they represent in terms of how the watch market is changing, what’s driving that change and what it […]
I always think that one can chart the point an event becomes a real fixture on London’s social calendar from the moment many of the women arriving at it begin stopping by the advertising boards outside to pose for pictures. “Reasonable chance of Tatler exposure”, they think. In the case of SalonQP, the luxury watch […]
I don’t know what they’re drinking over at Omega these days, but it’s definitely not pints of lager any longer, and whatever it is it’s working. After too many years of producing over-sized, garish golf club bling, someone at Omega seems to have remembered that it is in fact one of the great houses of […]
Politics, like some of the odder elements of physics, operates under some strange rules; but rules they are and they are as insurmountable as E=MC2. One of those rules is that a given policy or position can have a political impact vastly out of scale to its actual significance if other factors conspire to make […]
In the wake of the death of author David Nobbs earlier this year a magazine suggested its readers should revisit the set of his novels on which the TV series “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” was based. For the uninitiated, Nobbs’ books and the programmes they spawned chart the mental demise of Reggie […]
Days two and three of revelations in the Daily Mail, which is serialising Lord Ashcroft’s very unauthorised biography of David Cameron, may have made fewer headlines than the…er…eyebrow raisers on day one, but they follow broadly the same pattern: David Cameron likes a drink and good time and before he got married he liked chasing […]
Down the Charing Cross Road they will come, again; banners borne proudly high, t-shirt slogans shining in the sun, joyously explaining what they want, and very firmly demanding when they want it by. They will flow through Trafalgar Square, news crews walking carefully backwards like wading birds as they film Charlotte, Russell and Jeremy at the […]
