Journal
Notes from eight years of designing private trips. One observation per post, drawn from a specific situation. The post is the post, not a teaser for the next one.
The Journal is kept in rooms as well, each holding one kind of writing. Start with a room, or read on for every piece, newest first.
Two pieces
The Drawing Room
The finest addresses: the hotels, suites and houses we would choose first.
One piece
The Great Hall
Family and celebration: travelling with children, and the trips that mark a year.
Four pieces
The Library
How travel works: the planning, the timing and the small things that change a trip.
Five Things: Airelles Palladio, Venice
A Palladio building on Giudecca, St Mark's five minutes across the water, four new kitchens and the city after dark: five reasons to stay.
Four Places to Spend Christmas and New Year 2026
A Mayfair Christmas, Hogmanay in Perthshire, a fortnight of festivities in the Bavarian Alps and Christmas Eve in Vienna, all with 2026 dates confirmed.
What the Second Trip Knows
The second journey is better than the first for reasons that have almost nothing to do with where it goes.
The Itinerary That Is Too Full
When a budget is generous, the trip rarely fails on quality. It fails on density. Too much of a good thing is still too much.
Subject to Availability
The hedge is the honest part. Certainty offered up front is usually a promise somebody else has to keep, and was never asked whether they would.
The First Twenty-Four Hours
A journey is judged on its first day, and the first day is almost entirely logistics. The part nobody designs is the part everyone remembers.
The Room That Ruined a Perfect Hotel
The hotel was right. The room was wrong. Quiet observations from eight years in private client travel.
The rhythm
A post goes up when there is a sharp idea, and not before. That is the discipline.
Every post closes with an invitation to write back. I read everything.
When you’re ready