1 Mar 2003

01 March 2003

In this issue

Featured articles

TRAVEL AND INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY: Terror-free zones

The London property market is in decline partly because large numbers of American citizens, who two years ago accounted for 60 per cent of tenancies of rented property in central London, have either lost their jobs in the City or else have taken fright in the face of the terrorist threat. It is not all bad news in the property world, however. Real-estate agents in Finland and New Zealand could not be happier. American ex-pats, more used to life in the cosmopolitan districts of London and Paris, have discovered a taste for living in the world's backwaters.

TRAVEL AND INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY: Ski resorts

I have just returned from a trip to the Alpine village of MegŒve, situated in the heart of the Haute-Savoie, in the shadow of Mont Blanc, where I successfully introduced my three-and-a-half-year-old goddaughter to the pleasures of skiing. It occurred to me, while out there, that there has never been a better time to head for the hills and buy a place in the mountains. According to the International Residential Department of FPDSavills (020 7824 9030), 'a nervous stock market and low interest rates have led many people to look at alternative investments, especially in overseas property offering both pleasure and profit'.

TRAVEL AND INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY: Where no birds sing

Very few white people have seen the source of the Oxus in the Great Pamir. This vast Central Asian river that never meets an ocean was a source of fascination to 19th-century geographers, and the question of its origin, for which there are six candidates, was only finally settled in 1892 by Lord Curzon himself. He chose the highest glacier as the true source. I prefer the source of the biggest volume of water, christened Lake Victoria in 1835 by a British army officer.

Titian’s touch of genius

Walking around this exhibition is a humbling experience. We are privileged to have a display of paintings of this quality in London, and it is an incredible achievement to have obtained loans of such distinction. One of the pictures scheduled for the show is not in fact available, 'Sacred and Profane Love' from the Villa Borghese in Rome, but two late additions more than compensate for its absence. One is the 'Crucifixion with Saint Dominic' from Ancona (which was so last-minute that it hadn't yet arrived when I previewed the exhibition), and the other is the magnificent 'Flaying of Marsyas' from the Czech Republic.

Poles apart?

In Warsaw last Tuesday the French defence minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, continued her President's ham-fisted strategy of offering patronising advice to Eastern European nations on course to join the European Union. 'It was better to keep silent when you don't know what's going on,' she declared. Poland's deputy foreign minister, Adam Rotfeld, resented the lecture. 'France has a right to its opinion and Poland has the right to decide what is good for it,' he told an interviewer.

Next up: Columnists