Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson

Robinson is The Review's Managing Editor. Having spent the last decade spanning both visual and printed media, he has filed interviews across the political spectrum with the likes of Sir David Frost and Donald Trump. Peter founded the magazine's sister company, Screaming Eagle Productions in 2015, dedicated to making high quality TVC, short films and documentaries. He writes and produces editorial and films across travel, automotive, finance, fashion and profiles.

Travel

Collineige

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Having just flown back from France two days prior to my first proper ski trip of the season to attend the wedding of fellow correspondents, Drs. Paul and Lucy Farrow, I was all too aware of just how soul destroying budget air travel is. If you have ever flown in Asia or the US you will have noticed that some of the planes operating are far from in their heyday. Flight used to be about prestige, people dressed for the occasion, cigarettes came with mandatory jade holders, champagne flutes would clink and the captain might even come and join you for a toast. Now the ashtrays on planes are welded…

Automotive

McLaren 650S

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It’s like a high pitch shriek – a whine, if you will – like someone’s boiling live sparrowhawks in a pan in front of a horrified animal rights activist. I am, of course, speaking of the noise that every single person who took a ride in the McLaren 650S made aloud: a combination of undulated fear and excitement. Cue the Scotchgard seats. The McLaren 650S will take you from your Eames lounger to eyeball-drying speed (60, obviously) in just under three seconds. That’s impressive for anyone (not when compared with anything. Just in general. Full stop). If you’ve never been catapulted to 60 miles-per-hour in less than three seconds, you…

Food & Drink

Coq D’Argent

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Some years ago, when I was a mere slip of a lad, I met up with an old friend outside the city-slicker terminal that is Bank Station. Pinstripe suit and Hermes tie-clad financial aficionados shuffled past me in neat rows, no doubt heading for a lazy lunch at one of the usual suspects. When my friend Darren arrived, he was sporting his usual trader attire and informed me that there was a great restaurant nearby with London’s best view. It was a massive understatement. In the internal columns of the No.1 Poultry building is a small and unassuming glass elevator that takes you up the seven floors to Coq d’Argent,…

Travel

45 Park Lane – W1

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It isn’t very often that a hotel launches in central London and makes such a Conrad Black-sized dent in the hotel hierarchy. 45 Park Lane opened its doors to the usual pomp and ceremony in September 2011. It collected its awards, welcomed its establishment and glitterati clients, and promptly sat down with a cocktail whilst its fans rallied around clapping and fawning uncontrollably. It is most definitely the heir apparent to the top of the London hotel scene. I have been a quiet fan of 45 Park Lane for sometime now. I have coveted her art deco lines and enviable location like a lion stalking a Cartier encrusted gazelle dragging…

Travel

Summer Lodge

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I am continually dumfounded by people’s lack of appreciation for history. It can be forgiven of the ill-educated, but surely not anyone with a basic appreciation for England and her peerage system. Irrespective of your political alignment, we would not be the nation we are today without a fair dose of dukes, earls and barons. Henry Thomas Fox-Strangways was the 2nd Earl of Ilchester, a British peer and Member of Parliament in the 18th century. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he held office for six years, gained the rank of Captain before his passing in 1802, and was succeeded by no less than nine children. I think we…

Travel

Chateau de Bagnols

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Is there anything more splendid than spending a night in a chateau? Of course, I am accustomed to penthouses, apartments, villas and the like, but nothing has the quite the same feel as a chateau. I first encountered this mainstay of the French countryside whilst visiting the Comte and Comtesse de Vanssay in the Loire valley. How wonderful it was to wake up in such a grand building every day, and to become part of that building’s history. The Chateau de Bagnols was built, or at least started, between 1217 and 1222 by Guichard d’Oingt. He built the main defensive fortress with three round towers linked by curtain walls with…

Food & Drink

Le Jardin

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There are few settings more beautiful than the banks of Lake Geneva, a place where time stands still. So, there could be no better view to gaze over from than the terrace at Le Jardin. Dining out at the Dorchester Collection’s, Le Richemond is, of course, an experience. Head Chef Sylvain Bailly has a certain culinary finesse. He trained for six years with Alain Ducasse and his collaborators. Le Jardin is a Gault et Milau winning restaurant and is listed in the Swiss guide. The menu is local and uses seasonal produce with a focus on fine Italian fare. The dining room was beautiful: crimson and crystal detailed. But with…

Marine, Travel

Heesen Sirocco

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If you are a regular reader of The Review, you may have noticed that we are somewhat lacking in the nautical editorial department. Now, this is nothing to do with our interest in all things sea bound – very much the opposite. It’s because we have always strived to genuinely review the best and brightest for you, accepting no substitutes along the way, and no doubt ruffling some feathers. But that’s our job and we work tirelessly at it, so your moisturised debutant hands don’t have to. No doubt your father slaved away at the Fortune 500 company he inherited, so that you could go to Harrow and Oxford, and…

Automotive

Drive Southwest

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It’s a mystery to me why more people don’t realise that you can hire a supercar in the UK. Day after day, petrol-heads squeeze themselves into a special helmet two sizes too small and drive a few laps around a local track on an ‘experience day’. As if it wasn’t bad enough that you are wearing a helmet, you are given an instructor to glare at you every time you change gear or push the car over 60. As if you need the helmet; you’re never going to hit a speed that would be likely to do any damage. Suffice to say, you are much better off hiring a sports…

Automotive

Aston Martin DB9

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Aston Martin has always held a special place in my heart. As a boy, I remember watching Timothy Dalton drive across Arctic tundra in the V8 Vantage Volante, being chased by the Ruskies. Times have changed, though, and the Iron Curtain has fallen. This issue, we couldn’t be further from tundra. This quarter, I convinced the ladies and gents at the hallowed Aston Martin Lagonda head office to loan us their new V12 DB9 Volante for an epic drive from Bristol to Antibes. The last time I drove across Europe was in a One Series BMW, following a team of 110 Defenders from Copenhagen to Monaco on the Gumball Rally….

Property, Travel

Villa Sandryon

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The resort town, or commune, of Antibes is probably best known as one of high society’s original summer retreats. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, and Scott Fitzgerald were all enamoured by the Jewel of the Cote d’Azur, located half way between Nice and Cannes. In the 1930s, the Antibes region and, more specifically, Juan-Les-Pins was regarded as a bolthole for the international jet-set, casinos, nightclubs and white beaches stretching out as far as your monocle could see. Some 80 years later, and whilst the former lodgings of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Chateau la Croe, has like many regency buildings, fallen to the Oligarch, Juan-Les-Pans…

Travel

Le Richemond

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Located across from the Square des Alpes, Le Richemond sits in pride of place on the banks of Lake Geneva. We arrived on a quiet Saturday evening, sat-nav fully deployed in the DB9. If, like me, Geneva is a mere stop-off destination before heading for the alps, it really should be given the respect it deserves. Now, I cannot work out if we arrived slightly off centre in regards to which side of the road we should be on, or if we went down a one-way street. Either way, anyone coming face-to-face with an Aston Martin DB9 tends to give way, especially in Geneva. It turns out we needn’t have…

Cars

Maserati GranTurismo

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I don’t think I have ever looked so good stepping out of something. Walking out of business class from LHR to JFK is a close second, but even then you know you’re heading into passport control with the great unwashed. The Maserati Gran Turismo Sport lives in the rarefied atmosphere of the layer cake. My first real super car experience was a jaunt across nonchalant France in a California a few years ago. Paris, Bordeaux and Le Mans were all taken in over the space of a week and it really forged my appreciation for the marque. We would only have two real days with the Maserati and so like…

Culture, Travel

Art of Flight

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On my first ski trip, what seems like millennia ago, my friends insisted that we watch Art of Flight. It was a right of passage they said. Sure there were plenty of other cult boarding films out there. But art of flight was really pushing the boundaries. You try carrying five 4K cameras weighing in at 60 pounds a piece into back country. The staff at The Review are always interested in alternative investment opportunities and film is one that is sure to be with us for a long time to come. Cinematography is an art form, one of the last few vestiges that has a trade craft. Taking that…

Time

40,000 Leagues

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Given that orange is one of the most visible colours in the spectrum, it makes sense that Alpina’s new Extreme Diver 300 timepiece features the colour heavily. I’m not a diver. I scuba a little and snorkel when I can, but 300 metres? No need. I can, however, appreciate a fine timepiece, and as the weather in our usually-cold-and-wet little country seems to be doing us proud, why not consider one just for the sheer hell of looking good. The new Extreme Diver collection features a three-hand auto and mid-size quartz. The range is indeed designed for professional divers. It has a serious bezel, an adjustable strap to go over…

Food & Drink, Travel

Jumeirah

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When you park your marque in the Jumeirah Carlton Tower’s underground bunker, you pass Phantom nestled next to Ferrari, tucked in beside Aston. It might as well be a private car club. In hindsight, we probably should have let the concierge park our pool car though. However, at the time, a white Ferrari FF was arriving with the usual pomp and ceremony from a well-honed door staff. This is Kensington at its most seductive. The gold gilt and mahogany lobby is refined and unassuming, the staff polite and courteous, with personality too. This makes a change from the usual robotic gofers you find at many London hotels. Having checked in,…

Travel

The Lancaster Hotel

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Do you remember 1966? Can you tell me one thing that happened that year that doesn’t involve words, football or Germany? Labour won the election, that’s about all I can remember and I wasn’t even born. I’m pretty sure my mother was still an infant. That’s less a comment about how young I am, you understand, and more about how young my dear mother was when she brought me into this world. Words by Peter J Robinson It is also the year that TP Bennett Architects completed an eighteen-story office block opposite Hyde Park. There is nothing that makes English Heritage want to attach a blue plaque more than precast…

Interviews

In Memoriam

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If you were to compile some of the most famous interviews of the 20th Century, no doubt John Lennon interviewed by Jann S Wenner, Marlon Brando by Truman Capote and Malcolm X by Alex Haley would all feature high in the list. But none have made an impact on the collective psyche as much as Sir David Frost’s interview with President Richard Nixon. In honour of the passing of Sir David Paradine Frost, OBE, we bring you one of Sir David’s last interviews – with Peter J Robinson in 2012. Some two years ago, I decided that a new magazine that we were preparing to launch needed a big name,…

Automotive

Austin Healey 3000

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My understanding of the classic car world could be described as entry level at best. It begins with the classing system. I assume that if it comes with colour-coordinated driving gloves and requires a checklist to start it, you can class it as a classic. Apparently not. Antique means it was built somewhere between 1880 and 1930. The pre-war, war and post-war classifications speak for themselves. Then we have classic from the late-50s to mid-80s. Having probably given one era too many years, I fully expect the Bristol owners club to organise a very slow picket outside my apartment, ending with a drive for scones somewhere. Ok, let’s give the…

Automotive

Camaro

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When Cheverolet put the Camaro on sale in September of 1966, the SR-71 Blackbird was flying at Mach 3 over mother Russia, The Beatles were apparently more famous than the son of god and wooden-toothed Walt Disney sadly popped his clogs. The 60s were a time of psychedelic drugs, JFK, civil-rights and a cultural counter revolution; a time that I would be hard pressed not to spin the dial to, if old Doc Brown turned up the in DeLorean. So, whilst America was on its way to a decade of societal change, so was the automotive industry.When Ford released the Mustang in 1964, there was no serious reaction from GM….