London's Fat Bear gives Southern American cuisine the respect it deserves

American food doesn't get the respect it deserves in London.

I'm not talking about the burger joints and diners that define foreigners' ideas of American food, but the stuff of family celebrations and prized local restaurants. A cuisine that treasures ingredients from a vast and varied country with deep agricultural roots. The place that embodied "fusion" before it was a trend, as immigrants from hundreds of culinary traditions lived side-by-side or married and merged kitchens. A country where the enduring tradition of "pot luck" parties and "family style" dining reminds us that sharing great food is at the heart of what's good in life. Hell, we have a holiday dedicated to the idea. (Thanksgiving, if you're planning, is 22 November this year.)

You can probably find more Nepalese or Ethiopian restaurants in London than you can places that celebrate this kind of American cuisine. The two old warhorses, Joe Allen and Christopher's, sit a stone's throw from each other in Covent Garden. They're excellent, but expensive and noisy. Proper barbecue has seen a welcome rise in respect in London, but menus are usually limited to a narrow off-the-grill-and-sauce-it niche.

My discovery of The Fat Bear has therefore filled me with delight. It makes no pretensions to cover the whole country ... an impossible task when New York, St. Louis and San Francisco are as culinarily diverse as London, Paris and Rome ... but picks The South as its niche. And delivers to a standard that any Southern Living subscriber would applaud before inviting y'all round for a bite. This despite the fact that chef Judy Ong is actually from New York. (Believe me, that's a big compliment coming from a St. Louisan.) Husband Gareth Rees anchors a bar that does cocktails properly. No Shoreditch trend chasing or Mayfair price extortion: just an encyclopaedic knowledge of the classics mixed with healthy experimentation and an impressive range of top-quality boutique American brands. (And a few European classics, if you must.) Menu pairings include cocktails as well as wines; an excellent call when your bar is this good.

Nestled in the warren of narrow, winding streets between St. Paul's and Blackfriars, it's an intimate two-room place above a pub. The wood-slat blinds on the windows, the enormous bar on one wall and the excellent mix of jazz and zydeco on the sound system set an atmosphere to match the food. And though it's been close to full all three times I've eaten there, it's a small enough place to never be too noisy. One of those rare, moderately priced spots in London where you can catch up with friends over dinner and have a proper conversation without shouting or straining to hear.

(A quick disclaimer to university friends. Despite the fact that you have known me as "Bear" since we were 17, the above adjective has applied most of my life and Chicago banking magnate Homer Livingston once said he'd fund my bar and restaurant if I ever wanted to open one ... I have no personal ties to this place.)

For Americans with connections to The South, the Fat Bear pushes the nostalgia buttons. One taste of the pimiento dip (a spreadable cheddar cheese spiked with bits of red pepper) pulled me back to neighbourhood Fourth of July picnics. Corn dogs take a direct line to the state fair. Braised brisket, slathered with sweet and spicy BBQ sauce, took me to the back deck of my family home; I could almost hear the crickets chirping and see fireflies dancing in the trees. Most importantly, it was done properly. Simple words, but perhaps the highest praise anyone from the barbecue belt can bestow.

But would the food hold up for Brits, or even American Northerners, who had no cultural identification with the menu? Yes. Corn dog neophytes proclaimed them delicious, if a bit daunted by the fiery sauce. The dips, while curious, were satisfying. Buffalo wings with blue cheese dip were a huge hit across the table.

Fried chicken, done as Southern grandmothers demand with the bite of buttermilk that's so often

lacking in British versions, is delicious. The waffles on the side are reassuringly traditional, the sriracha-spiked maple syrup an exciting innovation. Gumbo and jambalaya both come studded with quality ingredients, spices well-layered and hot but not overwhelming.

Room for improvement comes with the desserts, opinions about which split the table on my last visit. I, who normally won't touch set cheesecakes, think their Oreo version is an addictively more-ish wonder. My husband, who prefers set and isn't an Oreo fan, thought the balance of ingredients was off and that it lacked the light airiness he wants in a cheesecake. The Brits liked the lemon tart. I referred back to the menu description ... actually Key Lime pie ... which the low-slung square before me most definitely was not. Key Limes are a specific variety with a unique taste, and the Florida classic has a colour, shape and texture not achieved here. The nostalgia factor came into play with the 'Nilla Wafer pudding. I thought it was the best of the lot, a triumph of a classic recipe ... including the re-creations of the distinctive biscuits' flavour ... that brought back happy memories of childhood. Two Londoners and one Michigander, none of whom had ever been exposed to this particular dessert (essentially a vanilla-heavy biscuit layered with sliced banana and vanilla pudding/custard), thought it was a bit vile.

Bottom line, there's enough to tempt your sweet tooth here but nothing that truly evokes The South's impressive dessert tradition. Where are the classic pies? Towering chiffons, flaky peach, bourbon-spiked pecan? How about lofty angel food cakes ... unknown in the UK but sure to be loved ... frosted in pillowy icing (my grandmother always opted for strawberry)? Or ambrosia, with citrus slices dressed in freshly-ground coconut, swimming in whipped cream, marshmallows and maraschino cherries? Actually, forget the ambrosia, Judy. This is one of those nostalgia options that will puzzle, and possibly disgust, anyone who didn't grow up with it.

With its comforting combination of food, cocktails and atmosphere, The Fat Bear gives American cuisine the respect it deserves. They can keep working on the desserts. And if Judy wants my St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake recipe, then one generously-sized ursus stands ready to help another.

Gracious, grand and cosmopolitan, Liverpool confounds expectations

Liverpool, I owe you an apology.

I imagined a grimy, defunct port town clinging to life through Beatles tourism and football. A fan of neither, I'd never been tempted to detour from other explorations of the Northeast to see what the city had to offer. My determination to see the Chinese warriors transcended my apathy, but I wasn't happy about their location. I made sure there was secure parking for the car in what I imagined to be a blighted city centre, and worried about safety while walking our dogs at night. Given the length of the drive, I booked the hotel for two nights but doubted there'd be much to see after the exhibition. We could always get out to lovely Chester or North Wales if it was too much of a bust.

How wrong I was. The financial collapse, the derelict inner city, the riots are all a short blip in the city's otherwise impressive history. As the most significant port on the west coast, Liverpool has been a commercial hub since Anglo-Saxon times. Throughout the empire it was fabulously wealthy, giving it a legacy of magnificent Georgian, Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings and an impressive museum quarter. It's also been a hub of innovation, adapting technology to build ever better docks as the world switched from sail to steam, canal boat to rail. In a rare lack of foresight, Liverpool failed to spot the revolution brought by container shipping. Thousands were made redundant when they were no longer needed to unload ships. The docks emptied. The city, its game seemingly over, became known for poverty and radical unionism.

But the next chapter isn't so told as often. Liverpool invested in container ports. The business is back. Motorways leading out of town are lined with distribution warehouses. They've poured regeneration money into the city centre, now a bustling, clean, affluent mix of lovely restored architecture and beautifully designed new buildings. High tech and creative industries are booming. Locals are proud of their city and warmly welcoming, if a little difficult to understand for southern ears. And it turns out it's a city of thriving cosmopolitanism. The Chinese warriors came here because Liverpool has the oldest Chinatown in Europe, is twinned with Shanghai and actively fosters its Asian trade links. The Irish community is better known, and brings with them so many Irish pubs with live music you'd think you were in Dublin. According to the Council, the city's four major universities host 50,000 students from 100 countries, who contribute more than £300 million to the economy every year and drive a diverse social scene. We ate at a Brazilian restaurant (after considering Thai and Cuban) and stayed at a hotel staffed by French, Italians and Spaniards. This is the only part of the North that voted to stay in the European Union. Liverpool is a grown up, sophisticated city of the world and worth every moment of the three days we spent within her borders. Here are some highlights.

BUS TOUR
Liverpool is a remarkably walkable city; most of the top tourist attractions are no more than a 20-minute stroll from the riverfront. It's still worth buying a ticket for a hop-on hop-off bus tour. There are two companies. We opted for City Explorer and their live guides (rather than the other company's recorded tours ... though their multi-lingual capability was clearly the choice for non-English speakers).  Combine your bus pass with a Mersey Ferry ticket for £16.50, all good for 24 hours. Though the guides clearly have a set of facts they're supposed to impart, they have lots of flexibility and different areas of expertise. So it's worth switching buses and repeating parts of the route. We had one guy who was clearly a Beatles expert (got a bit tedious) and another who was serious about history and architecture (our favourite). Do this first to get an idea of what you want to come back to explore in more depth.

CATHEDRALS
Liverpool's two 20th century cathedrals are polar opposites architecturally, and their position a short stretch from each other down the appropriately named Hope Street makes for a fascinating half day of compare-and-contrast exploration.

The Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral is ruthlessly modern: a brilliant white upside-down funnel commonly known as "Paddy's Wigwam". The interior is essentially a vast theatre in the round, with abstract shards of stained glass from the central tower and side walls providing dramatic lighting. If you're a fan of late 1950s and early 1960s modernism, this is a fascinating representation of it, especially in the decorative work in the side chapels and the stations of the cross. It's MadMen does God. Despite understandable local boasting, however, the style is not particularly unique. The Madonna delle Lacrime shrine in Siricusa, which I wrote about here, and the Abbey of St. Mary and St. Louis (aka Priory's church) in my home town are both examples of the post-Vatican II trend in round Roman Catholic churches. (I think the St. Louis version, an early masterpiece from renowned architects HOK, actually does it best.) Were Liverpool's example a theatre or lecture hall, I'd give it high marks. But for me the space is too devoid of any spiritual feeling to be successful as a church.

The Anglican Cathedral down the street does a better job on this front, starting with the reliably religious Gothic style for sanctity, then adding modern twists. Architect Giles Gilbert Scott is better known for giving us the iconic red phone box, but he came from a long line of architects famous for gothic revivalism and he was clearly carrying on grand family traditions here. I've never been in a church quite like it.

It changes levels dramatically, starting with an entrance porch six feet below below the rest of the church. Ceiling heights fluctuate along with the floors. It's more like a series of separate grand spaces that have been pushed together rather than a single church. This adds excitement, with a sense of discovery and constant movement. The style is a stripped down, modernised gothic with elements of art deco veering towards fascist overlordship. If they'd done Christianity inGame of Thrones, it might turn up as something like this. And yet that's making it sound rather brutal. It's filled with delicate design touches, from paintings behind the choir stalls that looks more like Arthurian legend than anything religious, to exquisitely embroidered altar hangings, to a gold-encrusted high altar that looks like it's been kidnapped from Spain. It is a startling pastiche, and I loved it.


PUBS
The height of Liverpool's affluence happened to coincide with the golden age of the British pub. A weekend's wandering suggested to me that there are more spectacular examples in a higher density here than in London, and that's not including the Irish places, modern chains and Beatles-themed spots. We're talking Victorian opulence here, with polished brass, frosted glass, exotic tile work and yards of ornately-carved mahogany. At the top of the list are the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, known locally as The Phil. Don't let the name throw you off; "dining rooms" was a sop to the temperance movement agitating in the city. Today, in a delightful demonstration of irony, a statue of Baptist temperance advocate High Stowell Brown now stands across from the doors, gazing upon drinkers 24/7. There is a restaurant upstairs, and they serve food throughout, but it is most definitely a pub.

Enter beneath an arch of writhing art nouveau brass scrolls to find an enormous horseshoe-shaped bar fronted with floral mosaic. The ceiling is jacobean-style strapwork, leaded glass windows with stained glass insets stand at the back, while straight ahead an enormous fire beckons. The snugs on either side are encrusted with repousee copper panels, more mosaic and intricately carved mahogany. And that's just the first room. In classic high Victorian style this place is divided into a warren of smaller spaces, including two elegant drawing rooms named after Brahms and Liszt (the whole place is themed on classical music to honour the Philharmonic concert hall just across the street). There's a particularly grand central hall where almost life-sized classical figures in plaster stretch above the wainscot to support a grand ceiling embedded with more stained glass. In the time it took to drink one pint in a cozy wingback, this became my favourite pub in all of England.

CULTURAL QUARTER
There's no better place to see proof of Liverpool's affluent past than in the Cultural Quarter, now a UNESCO World Heritage site thanks to its unique concentration of Victorian neo-classical buildings. (Well, not quite unique. It's very similar to Berlin's Museum island. The Berlin museums probably have more significant collections, but Liverpool has more and better architecture.) Built at the same time and in similar Greco-Roman style, the buildings are given added dignity by the way they cascade down a hill atop which the Duke of Wellington stands on a towering column.

The architectural assemblage includes the World Museum (where the Terracotta Warriors exhibition is now on), the Walker Art Gallery, the County Sessions house and the magnificent round, colonnaded Central Library. All these bow before the enormous St. George's Hall, architectural historian Pevsner's pick for one of the finest neo-Greek buildings in the world. It's an odd combination of law courts and concert hall. The area includes gardens, grand statues and cobbled open spaces. Modern additions like the Art Deco WWI memorial and the recent Hillsborough disaster monument are in a sympathetic style that fits with the wider scheme.

ALONG THE MERSEY
The Albert Docks contain a long string of grand red-brick warehouses that introduced the world to concepts like fireproofing and bonded storage (where you don't pay customs until you sell your goods). The city came very close to tearing them down in its darkest days. Now they're at the heart of  a renewal that stretches along the riverfront in either direction. It's a thriving place during the day, with a branch of the Tate, shops, restaurants and attractions like a pirate ship and a Beatles museum. I found it surprisingly quiet on a Friday night when walking my dogs there, however ... after dark nothing seems to be going on outside the restaurants.

A short walk west along the Mersey brings you to Pier Head and the buildings known as "the Three Graces": the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building. Tucked in behind the last is a magnificent Art Deco pile that appears to be a mysterious HQ without windows, and turns out to be a ridiculously ornate extraction chimney for the tunnel below. The Graces themselves all offer different takes on grand, early 20th century neo-classicism. Pier Head will remind you a lot of New York's grand buildings of the 1920s and '30s, unsurprising considering the direct passage of people and goods between the two cities.  Turns out European directors regularly use this area as a stand-in for New York when filming. The New York of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is actually Liverpool.

Modern architects have taken a stab at giving the city three new graces in the Mersey Ferry building,
the Museum of Liverpool and another gallery and office building. The last is black, the other two white, and all three have striking, shard-like angles as if the iceberg that sunk the Titanic drifted into town. They've been sensitively inserted into the scheme and their undecorated, reflective exteriors make a satisfying foil for the Graces. The Museum presents an excellent overview of the city's history and is free to enter. There's a statue of the Beatles outside the Ferry Terminal that tourists queue up to get a photo with.

Directly inland from the Albert Docks is a modern retail development called Liverpool One. It is essentially a three-story shopping mall with John Lewis as anchor, but the architects have literally ripped the roof off, creating an open-air canyon. A fourth story on the landward-side is filled by restaurants; glass and chrome bridges fly over the chasm below to a grassy expanse bigger than a football pitch, from which you have wonderful views of the docks and on which the city regularly stages concerts and festivals. Other restaurants line the west side of the field while the south (river) side falls away in terraces of trees and landscaping. It all feels like a sylvan park on a big hill, into which the shopping mall has been carved. A clever illusion, as the hill covers a car park. It's a neat bit of urban planning, and has clearly been successful as the streets spreading out from here are bustling with more big brands in both retail and dining.

Thus far, Liverpool has been successful in mixing old and new, but they are walking a knife edge. UNESCO recently threatened to pull the city's world heritage status over plans to build a complex of glass skyscrapers just west of the Three Graces, which critics say will destroy the city skyline.

WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE WITH MORE TIME
I didn't think I'd fill two days in Liverpool. After three, I walked away with a hefty list of things I missed. Though we bought tickets, we never had time for our ride on the Mersey Ferry. Beyond The Phil, there were all sorts of charming pubs I would have liked to explore.

We didn't delve into the food scene at all. Exhausted and much in need of down time, we managed to stumble across the street to a Brazilian steakhouse (Bem Brasil) that was a good example of its type but nothing special on our first night, and stayed in the hotel (the Novotel, near Liverpool One, allows dogs) for a perfectly passable but unremarkable dinner the next. Our bus tour guides made big claims for the city as a booming foodie destination, with the Baltic Market and Cain's Brewery Village being the hub of the scene. Distillers and microbrewers are gaining traction. One of our guides claimed that Ma Boyle's pub near the Three Graces has better corned beef sandwiches than New York. Considering I've never had a corned beef sandwich in England that gets to good on a New York scale, I was intrigued. I also spotted three separate restaurants that specialised in desserts only. Given Liverpool's long association with the sugar trade, is this a local thing? It could have used more research.

On the cultural front, the Walker Art Gallery is supposed to have one of the best pre-Raphaelite collections in the world. I would have loved to get inside St. George's hall. The Liverpool Philharmonic is much respected and is Classic FM's official orchestra in the North. Seeing them at home means getting inside a listed Art Deco concert hall. (And going back to The Phil.) Speke Hall is a rambling half-timbered National Trust manor house on the outskirts of town.

And, I suppose, it wouldn't do any harm to stick my head into the Cavern Club. I still think the disproportionate attention given to the Beatles and football distracts attention from the charms of this place, but at least now I can argue for the bigger picture.

Terracotta warriors invade Liverpool with style

In an uncharacteristic scheduling failure back in 2007-8, I didn't manage to snag tickets to the British Museum's sell-out show on China's first emperor and his terracotta warriors. The blockbuster drew in more than 850,000 visitors over seven months, becoming Britain's most popular cultural exhibition since the legendary Treasures of King Tut show in the '70s.

When Liverpool announced a similar terracotta warriors exhibition, I didn't waste time. Even if I would have to brave England's notorious bank holiday traffic and visit a city that, in more than 20 years in the UK, had never even piqued my curiosity.

Turns out I was wrong about Liverpool. (Of that, more in the next story.) But I was entirely justified to move fast for the terracotta warriors. They're on show until 28 October but weekends are already selling out well into the run, so move fast.

Standing face-to-face with these ancient, life-sized and remarkably charismatic figures is an astonishing experience, bridging centuries and cultures to find a shared humanity. There are nine here, from general to stable boy with all ranks in between, and one remarkable horse ready to snort and charge into battle. But, surprisingly, they aren't the best thing about this show. It's the wider context around them that elevates the experience, transforming this from a straightforward chance to take selfies with a few masterpieces to a subtle journey of discovery about a whole culture.

And that, no doubt, is exactly the intent. Because this isn't your standard, academically-driven show, created by curators over years and assembled from multiple points. It's travelling juggernaut of Chinese PR, assembled as a single package with a single message: we have been a phenomenally sophisticated civilisation for thousands of years. The single-mindedness extends to show design. There's a slight whiff of the amusement park about the experience as you queue up to enter a long cinema room, where a beautifully-produced film shows an array of gorgeous scenes on a wall of fractured, angled planes before the doors at the end fling open automatically to beckon you into the dramatic first room of the exhibition.

This familiar crowd pacing strategy, combined with the fact that the show has taken over an entire floor of Liverpool's World Museum, meant that the exhibition never felt crowded despite operating at sell-out capacity. Show designers clearly had crowds in mind. There's plenty of room between and around exhibits, large-print information panels are placed above head height and screening walls designed to resemble ceremonial gates hold down noise levels while separating show sections. There's atmospheric but unobtrusive background music, videos, animations and huge blow-ups of Chinese paintings and prints of the time to add colour to the earth-toned artefacts. Punters are welcomed ... even encouraged ... to take photos without flash. Don't know how to disable your flash? Just ask one of our staff members to help you with your device. It's a tourism triumph.

And a triumph of soft diplomacy. From the start, when a helpful chart lays the world you're about to explore against European history (roughly the height of classical Greek civilisation through the European Dark Ages), the sophistication of the art you're looking at argues that this is a world on par with ... and maybe ahead of ... Europe. Your first view is of one of those warriors: a horse keeper and one of his cavalry horses. The warriors go on tour a fair amount; there are thousands of them, after all. Horses are another matter. Experts estimate there are only 150 cavalry horses like this one, most un-excavated. And they're much trickier to move. So seeing this one was a real treat. But before you meet more of Emperor Qin's gang, you need to understand where he came from.

So we start 200 years earlier in the Warring States period, when seven families controlled small kingdoms and brawled amongst themselves to take over the wider country. (I suspect it's no accident the music in this section has a Game of Thrones feel to it.) Despite the upheaval of war, the period also gave China treasures of art, philosophy and religion that would underpin its culture for the millennia to come. Grave goods on display here are sumptuous and would be objects of desire today. Bronze bowls with intricate geometric patterns. Sinuous dragons. Round-bellied wine jars you'll want to cradle and take home. Clearly these states were prizes worth fighting for.

Enter Qin Shi Huang, who took over his own state at 13, conquered the rest of China by 38 and went to his eternal sleep with his facsimile court by 49. Like the ancient Egyptians, Qin surrounded himself with everything he thought he'd need in the next life. There were acrobats and strongmen for entertainment. Sadly, those terracotta figures didn't travel but we see the enormous, sumptuously detailed caldron they juggled to impress. A bronze goose looks lifelike enough to dispatch for dinner. Wine jugs stand ready for the banquet, jade ornaments prepared to adorn the great man's body. A one-third size model of two four-horse chariots ... one for guards to make way, the second an ancient mobile home bearing the emperor's body ... is one of the most spectacular sights here, even though they're modern copies of artefacts too fragile to travel.

But Qin leaves us in no doubt he's a warrior first. Here's his set of stone armour, implying that the afterlife has given him enormous strength. And, of course, the warriors. A stable boy crouches to one side, leaving seven front-line fighters lined up on a single platform. There's a variety here: general, light and heavy infantry men, archers. Uniforms vary to match their roles and, famously, every face is different. Though not completely unique. An interesting modern sculpture across from the warriors shows how a factory production line churned out body parts from moulds, then hand-assembled and

finished them to give that legendary variety. Though the warriors now share a patina with your garden pots, they were once painted to make them more realistic. Screens behind them alternate images of their colourful original state with scenes of their "homes" back in the trenches of the Emperor's tomb. The show designers continue their populist thoughtfulness here. Illumination is camera friendly, the open spaces around the warriors are broad and selfies (but no selfie sticks) are welcomed.

This is clearly the climax of the show, but there's a long and fascinating denouement. While following generations never met death on such a grand scale, the tradition of terracotta armies and courtiers continued. A Han dynasty general brought both mounted cavalrymen and foot soldiers on his journey to the afterlife. While the craftsmanship is a bit more crude, and they're only about a metre tall, there's an endearing warmth to their ranks and a thrill of excitement when you see that some have retained their paint. The Emperor Jing was clearly as worried about feasting as warring in his eternity, as his tomb pits revealed hundreds of domestic animal statues. There's a small farmyard here. (The gift shop offered replicas of the warriors. I would

have bought one of the pigs.)

Near the exit you come upon an intact tomb door, its lintel exquisitely decorated with hunting scenes. Past that, you enter a dimly lit room where a three-dimensional model of the inside of Emperor Qin's central tomb chamber stretches in front of you. My only criticism of the show: they didn't explain enough about it for me to appreciate the wonder of the re-creation then before me. Legend tells of 100 rivers of mercury flowing around his coffin through miniatures of the palaces and cities of his empire. Mercury was then thought to have immortality-giving properties; ironically ingesting the stuff may have killed Qin prematurely. Models of heavenly bodies are supposed to have rotated overhead, while gold illuminated the walls and booby-trapped crossbows were set to eliminate tomb robbers. Real Indiana Jones stuff. I didn't read all of this until I got home, so only then did I appreciate what a great job they did at creating the myth. The actual tomb chamber remains un-excavated. Signage in the exhibition suggests the reason is respect for both the dead and the heritage. A bit of post show research suggest the sky-high levels of mercury that test probes have revealed. The tomb designers have been successful at keeping invaders out, though not in the way they thought.

This is a show worth travelling for. It's also great value in light of recent London exhibition prices. Compare £14.50 for the warriors to a whopping £18.00 for the V&A's cruise liners show. You'll spend a lot more than £3.50 getting here, of course, but it's nice to feel that you're getting a bargain. And once you've visited the warriors, it turns out Liverpool makes for a great weekend of sightseeing. Which I'll cover in my next story.

Beauty is more than skin deep on London's new Fourth Plinth sculpture

A lamassu first opened my eyes to the realisation that there was civilisation beyond the Western European tradition I called my own.

I couldn't have expressed it like that at the time. I was eight.

My mother used to escort her art history class to Chicago to show them more of what they studied "in the flesh". The University of Chicago's Oriental Institute was always on the agenda. And there, wandering by myself in a quiet, cavernous gallery, I came face to face ... actually more face-to-kneecap ... with one of the the giant winged creatures that served as guardian figures at the gates of Assyrian palaces. The towering statue is a placid bull with a man's head, delicate feathers carved from shoulders upward to give him a mighty wingspan. Chicago's lamassu gazes down with a benign smile. As alien and awesome as the creature was, I instantly understood it was a guardian.

I've had a soft spot for the creatures ever since, and that one sparked my appreciation for the staggering cultural larder between the Tigris and Euphrates. I've never been there and have no family links to the place, but I am one of those odd people who ... as politics and wars have raged across the territory ... think of magnificent ziggurats, signature scrolls, relief carvings and winged bulls before oil, deserts, dictators and terrorists.

I was, therefore, pleased to see that a modern take on a lamassu was going to top Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth for the next two-year slot in London's rotating civic art scheme. Pleasure that turned to delight when I discovered the artist is also a professor at my alma mater, Northwestern University.

The lamassu took its place on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough to attend a chat about it between artist Michael Rakowitz and journalist Jon Snow at the British Museum yesterday. Complex layers of meaning surround the sculpture. You can enjoy it in complete ignorance ... it is remarkably beautiful ... but understanding its origins makes it all the more magical.

The new sculpture is part of a series Rakowitz has been producing since 2003 called the invisible
enemy should not exist. In it, he re-creates artefacts stolen from the National Museum of Baghdad during the war or, in the lamassu's case, destroyed in ISIS' iconoclastic fury. He skins his figures in Arabic newspapers and hammered-flat tins of Iraqi foodstuffs, creating a poignant memory of lost culture.

"I was interested in making ghosts, not fakes," Rakowitz said.

London's lamassu is mostly comprised of date syrup cans, an iconic ingredient in Iraqi cooking and one that Rakowitz' grandparents .... who immigrated from Iraq to the United States ... used to import. Though modern politics mean he's never visited Iraq, he grew up highly influenced by the culture. Like the diaspora of so many nations, the taste and the smells of the family kitchen maintained the strongest link to a family's origins. (I get this: the oregano-laden mist of my mother's pasta sauce and the sweet crunch of cannoli preceded art or history in my awareness of Sicily. Food is as critical a piece of culture as great art or music; a truth that lies at the heart of this blog.) So the date syrup tins aren't just a clever way of colouring the sculpture, they plug directly into that sense of lost heritage that immigrant food celebrates all over the world.

There are harsher realities here than lost art and grandmother's kitchen, of course. These are symbols for lost lives and lost economies. Dates were a bedrock of the Iraqi economy, with groves of more than 30 million trees once supplying global markets. Now numbers have dropped to something like 3 million. So the lamassu's skin speaks of a collapsed economy. It stands looking south, toward parliament; it could shift its eyes left towards Iraq 3,200 miles beyond: a beguilingly beautiful reprimand to how quickly we forget.

While the Iraq war is over in the minds of most Americans and Brits, Rakowitz pointed out, it's still very much a live trauma for those on the ground. And for more than two million Iraqi refugees around the world who don't feel it's safe enough to go home. Estimates say that somewhere approaching a quarter of that number live in the UK. Scores turned up at the British Museum to see Michael and hear about his project, which clearly connected with their souls. The most touching moment came when a young woman born in Iraq but living in London for most of her life spoke with passion about how much this work meant to her, and of her fervent hope that it would spark awareness that could help young people like her get home. I was standing with her afterwards when we met Michael. She cried. Her mum cried. I suspect, down the road in Trafalgar Square, the lamassu cried.

Beauty and tragedy. Comfort and harsh truths. Protection and destruction. The London lamassu is a creature of contradictions. As Michael reminded the audience: "hospitality and hostility come from the same root word ... things are complicated."

You can see the lamassu at the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square for the next two years. Look on it and be amazed. But be thoughtful, as well. Like my friend at the Oriental Institute, this sculpture has lessons to teach.

Cast off for luxury with the V&A's lavish Ocean Liners show

Government policies have a way of triggering unexpected consequences.

In the 1920s the United States, worried by immigration, cut the flow by putting tight quotas in place. For almost 70 years, ocean liners had been making a tidy profit packing their ships out with third class and steerage passengers leaving Europe for a better life. When that market evaporated, they turned their attention to the wealthy. First class had always been there, of course. But from the '20s through the arrival of commercial air travel, all the effort went into enticing the upper crust to take, and enjoy, long sea journeys. Thus came the golden age of the great ocean liners.

And there's your explanation for why the Victoria and Albert's new show, Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, won't give you much about the experience my ancestors had crossing to America, or what it was like to work on these giants. This is a show about style and glamour, a reputation now so ingrained that even the cheapest and cheerfullest of today's cruise ships still play on it as they pack thousands on board. Our fantasies will always live in first class, however, and that's what the V&A delivers with its usual panache.

After a brief introduction and a bit on marketing ... including a fascinating and beautiful range of posters and brochures ... we dive into the interiors. The great ocean liners were, quite literally, flagships for their national reputations, attracting their best designers and often receiving government funds. From the first late 19th-century interiors on display we see distinctive national styles emerging. The Germans went for bold, showy nationalism. The French for royal opulence. (Yes, there's Louis XIV's sun king emblem wrought into the ironwork of The France) The Brits are more subtle, letting the internationalism of their style remind travellers of scope of empire: William de Morgan tiles evoking the paradise gardens, exotic mosques and palaces of Arabia; Chinese themed lounges with lacquer walls; marquetry panelling with an array of hard woods from British possessions in. From the inter-war years, both the Americans and the Italians start to show their flair for modernism.

Early ocean liners made their first class passengers feel at home with interiors similar to the chateaux and country houses they occupied on land. Beautiful, but derivative. A more distinctive style developed after World War I, when the need to replace ships destroyed when doing war service combined with the world's desire to embrace the new. Art Deco perfectly matched the brief, and perhaps found its greatest expression in the floating palaces of the inter-war years.

We're treated to chairs, carpets and decorative items from the Queen Mary, Britain's pinnacle of the style now preserved and moored permanently in Long Beach, California. The ship's Catholic altarpiece and Torah cabinet, displayed side-by-side and both given Art Deco interpretations, remind us how every aspect of life was catered for. It's all quite subtle compared to the French interpretation. The Normandie only operated for four years before it was commandeered as an American troop carrier and burned in New York harbour during its conversion. Luckily that was after its luxe interiors had been removed, so we're treated to a variety here including a towering metallic wall mural of exercising youths and a range of fixtures and fittings. If you missed the point of the opulence, a film capturing life on board drives it home. It makes the German artefacts nearby look dowdy in comparison, though you can indulge in the uncomfortable fascination of watching everyone fall all over themselves to delight Hitler as he toured their flagship entry into the liner race.

After a hiatus during World War II, when many liners were once again pressed into military service, the grand ships saw a final flowering. There's a room of gorgeous 1950s modernism, heavy on Italian contributions. Perhaps a hint towards why so many of today's ships are built in Italy? The labels don't say. My favourite item in the room, however, is a glass panel from the SS United States etched with waving coral to give you the illusion you were under the sea, matched with the clean lines of a glass and steel cocktail table. The ship's interiors were designed by an all-female firm;  given the 1951 date, I would have liked to have known more about those trend setters.

Up until this point the displays had all been lavish treats for the eyes, but I'd been disappointed by the traditional presentation. Unlike the V&A's outstanding Opera show late last year, there was no audio guide, no accompanying soundtrack and no innovative signage. All very old school. Turns out they were saving the fun for the massive, penultimate room of the exhibition.

After passing through a room on engineering ... interesting but seemed at odds with the design focus of the rest ... you emerge onto the promenade deck. The entire wall to your right has been turned into a single projection of a sunny seascape with a liner occasionally crossing it. Deck chairs and a frosted glass version of a pool are to your left, where stylised bathing beauties show off a history of swimwear to the occasional sound of splashing. Beyond, a double-height room stretches before you, dominated in the centre by tall screens showing gorgeous flappers and their escorts in white tie and tails striding down a "grande descente".  (The central staircase was considered an essential part of any grand liner, and still features on most modern cruise ships.)

The room around this showpiece is dedicated to life on board. While music of the Jazz Age plays, Normandie. With six options including a vegetarian regime for the pooch trying to watch its weight; though I think my boys would prefer Le Regal de Sweeney with viande hachee, carottes, epinards et toasts.

you get to wander through marvellous clothes, luggage, jewellery and a section dedicated to food on board. There's an exquisitely-beaded flapper-era dress here that proves clothing can be art, and a diamond tiara given added lustre by the story of its rescue by a diligent lady's maid as the ship went down. But surely the greatest testament to the luxury of a world gone by is the dog menu from the

The exhibition ends with a gallery devoted to ocean liners in the popular imagination. At its centre, "floating" on waves created by dappled light, is the largest single artefact ever recovered from the Titanic: an ornate piece of carved panelling from one of the first class lounges. And there, on a movie screen behind it, we see the scene from the eponymous film where Jack hauls Rose onto a piece of floating panelling to get her out of the freezing water. You may not like the film, but you have to give James Cameron credit for historical accuracy. The prop is an exact copy of the piece before you. Elsewhere in the gallery we're reminded of the design legacy ships left back on land, and see more clips of films set aboard. I thought The Love Boat was sadly lacking ... surely the biggest definer of the magic of cruising to my childhood imagination ... but sponsor Viking Cruises may have over-ridden the reference to competitor Princess Lines.

Corporate sponsorship rarely gets more appropriate than this pairing. I've admired Viking's marketing since I first ran into their costumed Norse raiders standing beside their sponsored garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show. As a company that targets affluent, mature adults and emphasises local culture as part of the experience, their association with museums and classical music around the world makes perfect sense. (In the same weekend I toured Ocean Liners in London, friends in New York were seeing a Viking-Sponsored Downton Abbey exhibition.) It seemed unfair that Viking's only tangible presence in the exhibition itself was a model of one of their ocean-going ships, with a label that gave a nod to their interior design but nothing further to show it.

As I've experienced myself, Viking is obsessed by design. Their ships are elegant fusions of modernity and tradition, filled with thoughtful design details drawn from their Scandinavian roots. An etched glass panel or elegant chair from one of their Winter Gardens (above), or even a series of fabric swatches and a few light fixtures, would have brought the design ethos celebrated in the show right up to the modern day. You may no longer pack your tiara, nor can you bring your dogs for their own menu, but the obsession with style and elegance explored in this show is still alive, well and floating on the high seas ... if you know where to look.

Shockingly relevant Caesar christens London's newest theatre

It's a generally-acknowledged fact that Shakespeare's plays transcend their original time period, but I've never seen the time shift done better than the production of Julius Caesar now running at London's Bridge Theatre.

It was clearly meant from its inception to be a blockbuster to lure audiences to London's newest venue. The cast is particularly starry. Ben Whishaw is a wistful, scholarly Brutus pushed against his will into doing the right thing. David Calder gives us an aging dictator in leather bomber jacket and red baseball cap emblazoned with "Caesar" in bold white letters; a none-to-subtle channelling of Donald Trump mobilising the mob. David Morrissey, fresh from playing the creepy, manipulative Roman commander in Britannia, gives a compellingly manipulative Marc Antony. And Michelle Fairley (most recognisable as Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones) is brilliantly cast as Cassius. The gender bending ... Casca and Decius Brutus also appear as women ... gives a whole new and topical angle to the frustration of the conspirators as outsiders; you can interpret their frustration as that of intelligent women trying to crack through the glass ceiling of Caesar's inner circle.

The powerful performances from all of these familiar faces would have been enough to make this memorable. The creative staging made it remarkable.

The Roman mob is oft referred to in Shakespeare's text. Here, it's a very tangible additional character. This production is staged as theatre in the round, with 150 or 200 audience members standing on the floor. They're encouraged to play their part by theatre staffers mixed amongst them. We enter the theatre to a political rally in full swing. A band is playing hard-driving rally standards: Eye of the Tiger, We're Not Gonna Take It. Red flags with Ceasar's logo fly, vendors sell Caesar hats, the audience dances. Above, three circles of seats look down on the crowd; merely by our seats and our separation, we've become part of Brutus and Cassius' liberal elite, looking down on a populist uprising with vague discomfort.

It's brilliant theatre. And by plugging into current fears it has a visceral relevance. Later on, those same audience members are given Caesar posters to hold up at his funeral. We watch the tide turn on their faces as Brutus' carefully reasoned, fact-based, confident but uninspired address at first has them on side. Then their mood flips completely as Mark Antony's emotional appeal whips them into a fury. The Roman elite stand by in bewilderment, unable to understand how the people have been lured to support something so obviously against their own best interests. It's Brexit all over again.

The stage itself plays as much of a role as the crowd. It's comprised of big rectangles that can lift from slightly elevated to towering over the crowds' heads. The ground beneath us is shifting constantly, a metaphor for the politics on stage. It's particularly effective in Caesar's assassination scene, when levels ascend to him on a king-like throne, and in the final battle when the two sides are separated by a physical chasm between them.

Nicholas Hytner, the director of this production and one of the people behind The Bridge's creation, argued passionately that London didn't have a truly modern theatre space. This staging certainly validates his point. I was less enthused about the Bridge's public spaces. Considering that it's purpose-built and that pre-visit emails entice you to come early for an exiting variety of food and drink, I was shocked at some of the basic issues. There's just not enough room.

There's one main public space that functions as dining area, lounge, bar, box office and coat check area. It certainly looks cool and trendy: one long bar, a constellation of interesting light fixtures, a collection of small tables and breakfast-bar style perches. Arriving two full hours before the play, all available seats were already gone. By half an hour before curtain the pile-up at the bar was challenging. Exiting was a shoulder-to-shoulder scrum, as all members of the ground-floor mob were waiting in two sluggish queues that stretched all the way to the doors (they'd been forced to check everything before getting in). And this wasn't even a sell-out performance.

It's possible that these are just early teething pains, and the situation will certainly improve in the summer. There's a wide lawn in front of the theatre with a sweeping view of The Tower and Tower bridge; it's clear they plan for crowds to spill out here in good weather. But in the winter, it certainly seems like the facilities are inadequate for the performance space.

I'd definitely recommend seeing performances here, but go elsewhere for your pre-theatre libations. There's a new branch of The Ivy directly next door, which definitely requires advance booking but would certainly be the logical choice for dining. And, whatever you do, avoid checking anything.

Julius Caesar runs until 15 October. Can't get to London? There's a live broadcast to cinemas on 22 March. You won't see a better transposition of Shakespeare to the modern world. Book it!

Afghan treasures give the world another chance. Will we take it?

Since the turn of the century, the world has watched in helpless horror as forces beyond our control have destroyed priceless cultural heritage. The Bamiyan Buddhas. Palmyra. Nimrud. Surely, if another such disaster was on its way, and we had the power to stop it, the global community would step in to prevent more horror. Right?

Maybe not.

There's a remarkable place in the Afghan hills, near the border with Pakistan, called Mes Aynak. It was a cosmopolitan centre of trade and pilgrimage along the Silk Route ... like Petra or Palmyra ... run by Buddhist monks made fabulously wealthy by the vast deposits of copper below the city. The site dates back some 5000 years, reached the height of its prosperity between 600AD and 800AD, and covers an area roughly the same as Pompeii. It's barely been excavated, however, since it was lost to history for about 1000 years, then lost to the political misfortunes of Afghanistan since its rediscovery in the late 1970s.

Sadly, the copper that gave birth to the place may now be its executioner. A Chinese company owns the mining rights and plans to destroy Mes Aynak to cash in on a more lucrative jackpot than human history. And that's just the start of the place's problems. There's government corruption, a chronic lack of resources, infighting amongst foreign archeologists parachuting in and the Taliban threatening everyone with death and destruction. It's all captured with gripping drama by documentary filmmaker Brent E. Huffman in Saving Mes Aynak.

His ability to cram this into a film of just an hour is a marvel of storytelling. The fact that he shot all the footage himself, without a crew or protective security, over visits from 2011 to 2014, is a marvel of either bravery or foolhardy bravado. I'm not sure which. But I'm positive that makes him a worthy professor of documentary film making at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.

The Medill link is how I ended up at a private screening of, and discussion about, his film last night. (Our Northwestern Alumni Club has matured nicely in recent years, and there are a few young Medill stars working at CNBC and CNN who lean towards journalistically-flavoured events.) It reminded me of the soaring idealism of the whole journalistic profession in my post-Watergate youth, and how I went off to university quite sure my writing would do something noble for the world. I'm probably past that, but I can use it to encourage you to see this film ... which you can stream or download from channels listed here.

Watch Saving Mes Aynak if you love art history. The fusion of styles they're unearthing here ... Western Classical, Near Eastern, Chinese ... looks like nothing I've ever seen before. It's a beguiling reminder that Alexander the Great stranded thousands of Greeks here, and legend has them merging into the culture. Watching these temples and statues emerge from the dust is like discovering what became of that legendary world.

Watch it if you're interested in the growth of China and its partnerships in the developing world. Here's a textbook example: buying rights for what seems like a fortune to the local economy, but is a small fraction of the profit they'll make; promising jobs but delivering only menial ones, while Chinese expats do the professional roles. Seeming to do it all with admirably efficiency; Huffman said that since his filming they've even done a deal with the Taliban to get them on side.

Watch it if you live in a G7 economy, get frustrated with government and wonder what the hell those idiots are doing with your taxes. The Afghan government of this film is a textbook example of corruption. Both the Chinese investment and the international funds to support the Mes Aynak excavations never trickle down, while leaders build ever bigger mansions within their walled complexes. Not only does national heritage get tossed aside, but mining permissions get made without any consideration for the environmental effects likely to impact hundreds of villages in the area. Dignified, hard-working locals not only have no recourse for protection, but say with bitter resignation that if they complain, they'll be categorised as terrorists and enemies of the state. Most of us are blessed to live with government infrastructure built to prevent things like this. This comparison shows us why we should be thankful, and treasure it.

Watch it if you need a story of the triumph of the human spirit. Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori is a hero worthy of great fiction. Soulful and determined. Risking his life daily for a greater cause. The little guy caught in a crushing system but fighting on. The underdog, reminding us all of the wonders of his culture and breaking crude stereotypes. (One bit of good news: Huffman says he's been promoted since the film's release and is now a much-respected authority.) If you loved The Monuments Men ... the book, not the tragic film adaptation ... you'll love this documentary. It's the same battle to preserve the soul of mankind, shifted to one of the cradles of our civilisation.

Watch it. Then spread the news on social media. Tag organisations that would proactively care about saving the site ... or at least who want to avoid the bad PR that would come with its destruction.

Huffman's film has been at the heart of a steady, heartfelt advocacy campaign. Almost four years on, Mes Aynak still stands. No doubt partially because of this film. But the fact that copper prices have been unusually low is probably a factor, too. As those prices start to rise ... as they are doing ... Chinese patience will stretch.

Whether it's preserved in situ ... or simply bought enough time for experts to find, understand and rescue its treasures ... saving Mes Aynak gives the world a chance to do penance for Bamiyan, Palmyra and Nimrud. I hope we take it.