If Nero were alive today, he wouldn't have fiddled while Rome burns — he'd have bought stuff off the internet. And this is the page he'd have come to in order to help make his choices, where he'd have found the weird and wonderful as picked out by Victoria Marston and Toby Keel.
Is it right that we fight off the ennui of 21st century life by buying things we don't really need, but want anyway? Probably not, but that's the world we're in, and Toby Keel and Victoria Marston are here to help you navigate your way through it.
Much of this year, Utterly Inessential has focused on things to make staying in your own home for months on end a more pleasant experience. This week, though, we've handed over the keys to Country Life's luxury editor, Hetty Lintell, who went up to Scotland over the summer — and made these notes on how to make it through in one piece.
Well all be wearing face masks for a long time yet, so in a shockingly topical twist to Utterly Inessential we have one that fits the brief of design-overkill quite magnificently — as well as our usual mix of wonders. Victoria Marston is your guide.
Time to forget the necessities and indulge in this week's nice-to-haves. Victoria Marston and Toby Keel are your guides.
Victoria Marston guides us through this week's collection of wonders, where every whim of fussy humans and even fussier dogs is taken care of.
After a few weeks of sipping cocktails beside a hotel bar in Cap d'Antibes, albeit sadly only in their dreams, Victoria Marston and Toby Keel get our Utterly Inessential shopping guide back up and running.
Country Life's travel editor Rosie Paterson shares some ideas as we all start thinking once more about holidays.
Let's be honest: we've all let standards slip a bit (well, a lot) since lockdown began. That ends here.
One of the great frustrations of the 2020 lockdown has been the extraordinary good weather. The answer to making the most of it is, of course, garden furniture.
There's a corner of the internet where the only rule is that things must be lovely — and you just found it. Victoria Marston will be your guide.
Never again will you be able to look at your charity shop-sourced Scrabble set with the same light in your eyes.
You don't need to sprinkle a bit of luxury into your working from home set-up. But it helps.
The time between winter and summer has been made all the more strange by the current circumstances. However, there's nothing like a little retail therapy to make one prepared to face the coming season, whatever it may hold. Alexandra Fraser rounds up some of her spring favourites.
