The worst cases of decaying frames can be replaced with exact replicas, with or without double glazing. One typical customer, whose windows let in draughts but refused to open, paid pounds 1,600 to have five 125-year-old sashes sympathetically restored. “It’s still a cheap way to add value to a period house,” Giles says.Meanwhile, replacement-window companies [...]

It is thus one of the best known paintings in China; the purchaser has not been named.The auction explosion in China is primarily an investment phenomenon. On 1 July 1968, a large colour print of it was enclosed in three publications, People’s Daily, Liberation Army’s Daily and Red Flag Magazine, putting several million copies into [...]

“Naff,” was the word most often used by interviewees who had tried them – a response due in part to the unaesthetic bed surrounds, and in part to the supposed titillation factor. “It’s hopeless trying to make love on them,” said a former user who wished to remain nameless. The myth of “seasickness” is never [...]

The Chinese called Mongolia “a moving country”, peopled by nomads of no fixed address. A world of horsemen and big skies, Mongolia is for those who mourn the fact that they never rode with Billy the Kid or Doc Halliday.Mongolians were born in the saddle, their lives defined by journeys. Each success was announced by [...]

There are some nice little local references among the hors d’oeuvres, or amuse-gueules, served with drinks while you wait for the meal. Pierre Koffmann and Bruno Loubet spring to mind, from Gascony and south-west France respectively.Perhaps there is more than a little leger-demain here. Last year he opened a second establishment, a super-modern brasserie in [...]

We then settled down to enjoy the mood – a bit, I imagine, like Dien Bien Phu in the days of the French empire, with everyone who came in talking the language of the occupying power. The few I fished out of my wife’s vegetable stew might possibly have been sung to by Bill Oddie, [...]