Robert Bound

Crunch! Like a heavy gold fist, it’s finally time for the Fifa World Cup to punch us all in the face again. Not without criticism, the tournament has ballooned from being a mere global behemoth to a time-devouring leviathan: 48 teams will play across three host nations and 16 stadiums; the stage for 104 matches across 39 days. It’s not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a mission: Apollo 13 without enough oxygen or handy hints from Houston (though that is one of the host cities).

What does a hotel do all day? Check in, check out, rinse and repeat – perhaps you’ve heard it all before? But the best hospitality brands are islands of perfection where the professionalism of the staff allows guests to forget their cares. The Rosewood is one such enclave of excellence. Occupying 43 floors of Kowloon’s 65-storey Rosewood Tower, the property is almost an autonomous, luxurious city-state in itself. But it’s best used as the starting point of an adventure in the real city outside.

After standing on the scales, feeling the chilly steel of the stethoscope on its chest and going, "Ahhhhh," the global art market's annual health check is complete. It arrives in the form of the yearly Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report, authored by Clare McAndrew, published yesterday and examined further at last night's live event at The Royal Academy of Arts in London.