Travel
No Worries Atoll
Escapes don’t get any greater than your very own private island, says Oliver Thring
Lebanon with the show!
Beirut is abuzz with new art, new collectors and some exciting new exhibition platforms to bring them all together, says Zain Alatas
A Sorry Site?
Having mortgaged its future on becoming a major business and tourism centre, Dubai now resembles a ghost town. Sophie McBain examines whether the emirate has what it takes to bounce back
And the Living is Vamizi
Never heard of it? That’s sort of the point, and only one part of the charm of this discreet gem of a laid-back Indian Ocean getaway, says Christina Kenyon-Slaney
If You Build Them, Will They Come?
Can a string of grand-scale, starchitect-designed museums help the Gulf states shed their reputation as a cultural desert, asks John Arlidge
Riadical Chic
As unlikely as it seems, Marrakech’s most luxurious hotels are intimately bound up with the raging Arab Spring. Josh Spero discerns the connection
The Spirit Level of Libya
Sophie McBain, Spear's new staff writer, lived in Libya for two and a half years. Recently returned, she writes about the stasis, depredation and surprise renaissance of the Libyan people
A Total No-Brainer
Andrei Navrozov quickly loses his mind — in the best possible way, of course — at Rocco Forte’s luxurious Verdura Resort in Sicily
The Master Builder
With the Arab Spring in full flower, a billionaire builder of several towns in the Middle East might be worried - but Samih Sawiris is sanguine, says Josh Spero
Sail the good yacht Anouska Hempel
21 February 2011: This Summer, Dalmatian Destinations adds design doyenne Anouska Hempel’s treasured gullet, BELUGA, to its portfolio of luxury yachts available to charter in Croatia and Montenegro
Books
Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour
Michael Lewis
Kyle Bass, a Texas-based hedge-fund manager who did well out of shorting the sub-prime property market before the 2008 financial crisis, used to play the international strategy board game Risk as a kid, which led him to find out everything about a tiny country called Iceland, which was a key strategic location in the game
The Gentry: Stories of the English
Adam Nicolson
How delicious the notion of the gentry is. How beautifully it shades into every kind of 19th-century fraudulence, into Eric Hobsbawm’s Invention of Tradition. How easily it locks on to the much later and altogether more middle-class idea of the gentleman
Zahawi and Hancock on 'Masters of Nothing'
Anne McElvoy
The Wide Blue Yonder
A new breed of Tory MPs emerged from the 2010 general election, and already some are making their mark. Anne McElvoy looks at two of Cameron’s cabal
HNW Events
Spear's/Speechly Bircham Seminar: How to be a philanthropist in the 21st century
21 February 2012
Spear's Young Turk Awards 2012
01 April 2012
Spear's Design for Living Awards 2012
01 May 2012
Spear's Wealth Insight Forum 2012
19 September 2012
The Diary
Mark Hix
04 Jan 2012
Amanda Palmer
22 Nov 2011
Patrick Perrin
11 Oct 2011
Nicky Haslam
05 Aug 2011
Stephen Webster
06 Jul 2011