Journal
ESSAYS | TRAVEL | HOME & INTERIORS | PEOPLE | CURIO | FOOD & DRINK | FAMILY, WOMEN & WELLNESS | EDUCATION
Essays, features and dispatches from the last twenty years – some written for The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller, some about the work I do for brands, and some just because. Start with the most-read: the one about having a baby with my gay best friend.
The anti-pregnancy pandemic: How Covid has stopped women like me from having babies
Far from being at home with nothing to do but procreate, for the rising numbers choosing late motherhood 2020 is presenting challenges
Writing for Goodwood
My background as a journalist means I can research any topic. For Goodwood I wrote some pieces of fashion history, delved into topics including why thrift and vintage is making a comeback and what it’s like to be an impersonator and interviewed impersonators, designers, traders and makers.
Go your own way
WHEN MY 74-YEAR-OLD FATHER asked me to walk a stretch of the famous Camino de Santiago with him to celebrate his 75th birthday, I said yes.
Natural beauty
Artists have long been driven to bridge the gap between humans and the natural world around us.
Capture the moment
Professional photography shouldn’t be reserved for special occasions, it’s the simple interactions and the day-to-day that makes up most of our time and it deserves to be captured more often.
Raise a toast
Can a pale ale change the world? Activist and beer maker Louisa Ziane thinks it can
What does home mean?
At London’s newly reopened Museum of the Home, the trends of British domestic life over four centuries are chronicled in evocative detail. But, learns Ellie Fazan, finding the essence of home lies in understanding the feelings and needs that remain very similar down the generations
Quality and craftsmanship
Ellie Fazan visits former mill town Long Eaton to meet the suppliers of sofas to the Cotswold Company and finds out how they are keeping proud local traditions of upholstery alive by producing quality handcrafted furniture
Taste the landscape
Rolling fields, native wildlife and much-loved livestock are the key ingredients for superb English fare. Add passionate producers, and you’re in for something extra special
A fair deal
We meet some of our Fairtrade suppliers and learn how a few simple choices can help to change lives. From chocolate to coffee and quinoa, buying Fairtrade can improve living and working conditions for farmers, support the fight against child slavery and help cope with the challenges of climate change
Culture bounces back
“To be an artist is to believe in life,” said Henry Moore. And to see art is to feel alive. It liberates our souls, feeds our imaginations and breaks down barriers; it brings joy and can prompt sudden sadness, but most of all it makes us free… In a time when the future of cultural institutions is more uncertain than ever, some brave newcomers have popped their heads above the parapet, daring to open for the first time during the pandemic. We round up the best of them.
Spirited away
When it comes to creating a classic gin, it turns out that less really is more. We go behind the scenes of a distillery whose ethos of simplicity produces a gin as deep, cool and clear as the waters of the Cumbrian lakes that inspired its creation
Optical illusions
A year-long Van Eyck celebration is underway in the Belgian city of Ghent. ELLIE FAZAN finds a weekend there helps put things into perspective...
Small town girl
From a tiny place surrounded by the forests, mountains and lakes of British Columbia, to becoming London’s new queen on the techno scene, the DJ we know as B.Traits has been on quite a journey
The cherry on top
From its foundations in the modernist movement, this 1930s property – set within a prestigious English estate – has been redesigned for the 21st century, creating a home of extraordinary symmetry and craftsmanship
Fancy that
There are those for whom the lure of the dressing-up box goes way beyond the odd outfit hire. For these pleasure-seekers, life really is a dress rehearsal…
A novel approach
A thing of extraordinary symmetry and beauty, this modernist property takes inspiration from Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room, a fictional tale about art, architecture, and desire
Desert island bliss
Ellie Fazan joins a new safari boat tour of The Philippines' 'last frontier', an archipelago of hidden coves, coral reefs and empty white beaches.
Life below zero
Wildlife photographer Ginny Scholes fulfilled a lifelong dream when she took her camera on an Antarctic expedition
Horse power
Voluntourism in Malawi: can horse power make a better world?