Hit & Run

Friends in high spaces: TV helped popularise lofts

Hit & Run: So long to loft living

It's official. It's no longer fashionable to live in a loft. The monument to 1990s city living – all open plan with no bourgeois walls or middle class privacy – as popularised by Friends and Jamie Oliver – is dead.

Inside Hit & Run

Hit & Run: A club that's members only

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Sarah Palin's promise to lay bare the backstage details of her vice-presidential bid appears to have been an empty one; sections of her forthcoming memoir Going Rogue have been disputed by McCain campaign staffers before it even hits the shelves.

Hit & Run: Would we care if he were alive?

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Imagine that this year's breakout novelist is a 56-year-old Russian-American called Vladimir Nabokov, whose 12th work of fiction, Lolita, is making waves.

Hit & Run: SimplicITy computer delivers over-50s to the digital age

Thursday, 12 November 2009

If social networking is something you do at the bingo hall, windows require (net) curtains, and a Mac is to be worn in the rain, chances are you're old. Because, apparently, old people don't do computers.

Hit & Run: Red carpets and mint cake

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

If there were a device that could measure toughness – an adrenalin radar scanning the planet for nutters in harnesses – hardcore hotspots would probably include the Himalayas and Alps.

Hit & Run: Holding out for a hamster

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

I'm in the toy department of Boots on High Street Kensington and I'm holding a picture of a robotic hamster. "Do you have this?" I shout at a sales assistant. "I must have this. There are only 46 days left until Christmas," I explain desperately.

Hit & Run: Best job in the world?

Thursday, 5 November 2009

In the "My Oxford" column of the new Oxford Today magazine, Ian Hislop is asked if he'd like to be a student again. "Oh yes," he replies, "and I've a major fantasy that, somewhere, there [is] a college so desperate that they will ask me to be Master." As job applications go, this has a touchingly scattergun quality: any college will do, as long as I get to be Master. It's a fantasy shared by many: a job combining the roles of academic, diplomat, upholder of tradition, guardian of protocol, sports cheerleader, party-giver, gourmand, gossip, wine-tippler and amateur fundraiser.

Hit & Run: Snotty nose, cashmere leggings

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

They look good on the uber-trendy child models in the ad campaign, and you know they'd look good on your offspring, too.

Team Obama - Too much of a good thing?

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

In case you didn't find time between your roast and the X Factor results show to read the 7,500-word dissection of the Obamas' marriage in The New York Times Magazine, one of the more revealing passages tells how the First Couple wasn't always so appealing.

Hit & Run: Find a branch near you

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

The Met Office has declared that this autumn is officially an Indian summer, predicting balmy temperatures of 21C in the South-east and Midlands tomorrow. What better way to celebrate the arrival of "summer" – and save some money during half-term – than with some leaf peeping?

Hit & Run: A paw carbon rating

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Forget scratched furniture and suspicious patches on the living room carpet – your pet suddenly has a lot to answer for: the planet's environmental future no less.

More hit & run: