Sunshine isn’t all that will dazzle you as we move from spring to summer this year – we know where to stay in 2024 for waterside partying, meals fresh from the farm, shipwreck dives and more. So let us brighten your holidays with new-to-Smith stays from Bali to the Balearics and Somerset to Singapore. JAPAN ..read more

Our dark sedan pulls up, depositing two blinking and frazzled honeymooners in the warmth of a Mauritian morning. We’re led into a vast, shady loggia with stone columns and a ceiling of hand-carved wood. A songbird is warbling from its perch somewhere in the pair of palms sprouting either side of a splashing fountain. Having ..read more

The official theme of the 62nd Milan Design Week 2024 (from 15 to 21 April), might be Materia Natura (natural matter), with its A-list roster of designers looking towards a more sustainable future; but with hundreds of creative visions fit into a short space of time at venues across the city, interpretations of the subject ..read more

Paris is disappearing. The inner city has ceded to the suburbs, Haussmann has given way to Le Corbusier. But my mind is going in the other direction, cantering into an era of feathered hats and foppish kings. Why? Because this is my Louis XVI moment. It’s a stretch, I know. Sitting in this unapologetically orange ..read more

I’ve always respected the environment, but while travelling in Fiji I somehow take it up a notch, catching myself mumbling ‘excuse me’ into my snorkel. There are so many fish swimming around us – schools of orange-and-white-striped ‘Nemos’, parrotfish and barracudas – more than I’ve seen on any other reef. And though apologising to aquatic ..read more

Love him or loathe him, Damien Hirst knows a thing or two about shock value. Since bulldozing his way onto the world’s stage as part of the YBAs in the early 1990s, the artist has raised more than a few eyebrows with his provocative oeuvre. During his polarising career, he’s encased a cast of a ..read more

The Easter break is ‘thump, thump’-ing in, like the holiday’s giant egg-delivering rabbit mascot… Plan what to do over its two bank holidays, or fill the school hiatus, with our pick of themed events at child-friendly hotels for all ages and seasonal stays for grown-ups. KIDS (AGE THREE AND UP) GET EGG-DUCATED AT THE AMPERSAND ..read more

I flew to Costa Rica in search of sunshine. As it turns out, I found so much more than that. The country is raw, spirited and rough-edged in places – and it’s a far cry from city life in London. Among the surf breaks, jungle canopies and dirt tracks, I found a real sense of ..read more

Sidestepping any attempt at pigeon-holing, Soho’s history charts a course from Henry VIII’s hunting ground to high-society enclave, gay village and vibrant immigrant hub. It’s a riotous recipe for a red-light district littered with blue plaques, where drag queens serenade pre-theatre dinner crowds, broadsheet journos bump shoulders with mascara-smudged clubbers, and Karl Marx once lived ..read more

Accessibility means different things to different people – it could be vision or hearing impairment for you, say; neurodiversity, limited mobility, or perhaps the need for wheelchair access for someone else. Navigating such varied requirements – as a traveller, but also as a hotelier – takes planning, insight and a whole lotta intel. We spoke ..read more