Famous chef Heston Blumenthal will be opening his first London restaurant in 2010. Blumenthal, who runs the three Michelin-starred The Fat Duck and a gastropub, The Hind's Head, both in Bray, England, will be opening a new restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. Blumenthal's new restaurant will explore his passion for the history of British gastronomy, and the restaurant will be three times the size of The Fat Duck. While it's great to see Blumenthal moving into a more central location we hope he doesn't spread himself too thin a la Gordon Ramsay.

In the age of digital books, the Kindle, and, ahem, blogs, one unassailable argument for the survival of paper are beautiful, lavishly designed books. Books that are actually pleasing design objects, if not works of art.

Persephone Books is a small London book publisher on a wonderful shopping street called Lamb's Conduit, which I discovered on a retail tour led by Clare Dowdy, author of One Off, about unique retailers worldwide. (Arrange Dowdy's tour through the InterContinental Park Lane London.)

Persephone, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, publishes just 83 books, and ones you won't easily find elsewhere -- neglected classics by 20th century writers who are mostly women. Their books are bound in an elegant dove gray, and the endpapers are unique to each book, and are prints of antique fabric designs. (You can get a matching bookmark.) It's fun to visit the store and hard to buy just one -- I walked away with An Interrupted Life: The Diary of Etty Hillesum, and The Journal of Katherine Mansfield -- although you can also order online.

Beautiful blonde Brit actress Sienna Miller has put her posh London townhouse (above) up for sale at £995,000, or about $1.6 million. The starlet, as well known for her roles in films like Alfie as for a heated romance with Jude Law, apparently favors a "Manhattan meets Morocco" vibe judging by the décor at the residence situated somewhere between Marylebone and St. John's Wood not far from her pal Kate Moss' pad, though there seems to be some debate about how posh the location really is.

The house, which boasts both a fireplace and a terrace, features a striking ground floor studio-style reception room with a galleried study area as well as a louche lower ground floor entertaining area complete with a Turkish bath and sauna. The Real Estalker notes that Miller purchased the house 2007 for £1.2 million, or about $1.9 million (at the current deflated rate of exchange) which means that even if she gets her full asking price, she stands to lose at least $325,000 on the deal.

Model Elle Macpherson is the latest celeb to drop the price of her home more than once. The Australian supermodel first put her London home on the market for £9.5 million last summer. The seven-story, Grade II-listed property is located in the Notting Hill area. Macpherson dropped the price to £8.95 million a while back but now she has switched agencies and dropped the price to £7.5 million.

She has a recurring role in a new television show, "The Beautiful Life" which will debut in the U.S. this fall. She bought the home in November 2006 after her break-up with multi-millionaire Arpad Busson, the father of her two children. Busson is now engaged to Uma Thurman. The Victorian property was built in the 1850s and has six bedrooms. It has been redone in a modern style and includes a large kitchen with multiple islands. Listing pictures are in the gallery below.

[via Cityfile]

High-tech houses full of computerized everything and robotized everything else are all the rage these days, but back in the 60's most people hadn't even dreamed of having remote-operated bathtubs and automatic dumbwaiters. Sir Stirling Moss did, however. Renowned as the "greatest driver never to win the world championship", Sir Stirling retired as one of the most distinguished racing drivers in the world. Having retired after a crash put him into a coma, Moss built himself a swanky townhouse in Mayfair, London, and packed it with all the gadgets and gizmos he could shake a titanium rod at. The best feature could very well be the one-of-a-kind carbon fiber elevator which was built especially for him by the Williams F1 team.

Seem a bit much? Moss certainly doesn't think so: the octogenarian is building himself a new house on a 2,300 square-foot plot along the river in the the retirement community of Deerfield Beach, Florida, complete with all the environmentally-friend credentials you'd expect. Click on the link below to view The Sunday Times video tour of the Moss residence in Mayfair.

Ready to eat the most luxurious curry around? For £2,000 a portion, the London restaurant Bombay Brasserie is serving Samundari Khazana, or Seafood Treasure. The dish includes caviar, abalone, sea snails, truffle shavings , a whole lobster splashed in edible gold and four hollowed-out quail eggs stuffed with caviar. The curry was launched to coincide with the DVD launch of the movie Slumdog Millionaire. You can see a picture over at the Daily Mail.

London's Heathrow Airport seems to be the spot if you want to wile away a layover in a luxury airport lounge. The latest comes from an alliance between Delta Air Lines and the Air France KLM group. The two-level minimalist styled lounge features a spa, restaurant, wine bar, oxygen bar and entertainment hub. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also reports that the lounge has an indoor "living wall" made up of over 60 types of plants which is located near various seating areas. Weary travelers can sit in full-body massage chairs, use personal computers, take a shower or grab a nap in a daybed.

Heathrow Airport also has a lavish British Airways airport lounge and Virgin's Heathrow clubhouse is more like a resort with a Cowshed spa that includes tanning booths, a Bumble and bumble hair salon, a pool, cinema, cocktail bar and a business center. The airport boasts a variety of restaurants including one by Gordon Ramsay and shopping that includes Burberry, Versace, Hermes and Cartier.

It was only a matter of time before the popular Graham Swordfish watch got overhauled into a woman's watch. It doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense given the fact that the Swordfish is a large aggressive watch attempting to evoke an image of air combat, but with popularity comes marketability. The image of the watch has been reformed into something sparkly that makes you think of the well-known Beatles' song. The clever connection links the British band to the British watch brand, and suggests that "Lucy in the Sky" is still a watch with an aviation theme. Though I don't think Graham wants its potential customers considering floating over strawberry fields - forever.

Inside the watch is an automatic mechanical chronograph movement. The bug-eyed chronograph subdial magnifiers remain, but are basically useless as the dials now just have hands with some random placed diamonds. You'd have to be really sharp to use the chronograph with any precision. The watch does look pretty with over 150 diamonds organically placed all over the dial and case. Oddly enough, the watch is still 46mm wide, which would look silly on all but the largest wristed of women. There are plenty of men even who won't wear a 46mm wide watch. The main draw of the timepiece is the aggressive large size with soft decoration making for bold statement of a watch. The Lucy in the Sky collection is available in stainless steel or red gold, with a white or black face. Prices are likely to be between about $10,000 and $20,000.

Ariel Adams publishes the popular watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Ferrari just opened its first store (above) in the UK in London's fashionable Mayfair, second in size only to their Milan flagship. Located in a beautiful historic stone building, the store features a Ferrari Formula 1 racing car on display and carries the full line of Ferrari by Panerai watches, sunglasses, luggage, clothing, model cars and even Ferrari-branded bicycles - everything but actual cars. Ferrari's Formula 1 driver Kimi Raikkonen presided over the opening of the chic boutique, billed as not just a store but an "homage to the history and spirit of Ferrari's twin souls of racing and luxury." Ferrari plans to open 40 retail stores worldwide to capitalize on customers who want a bit of (relatively) affordable Ferrari magic.

It may seem like a strange time to be promoting six-figure supercars, but evidently somebody forgot to tell the organizers of the London Salon Privé. The exclusive supercar show is held every year at the Hurlingham Club, but this year's, despite the economic situation, is slated to be the biggest yet.

Headlining this year's salon will be the Veritas RS III, an exotic roadster made in Germany. Packing a choice of 480-horsepower V8 or 600-horsepower V10 sourced from BMW's elite M division, the RS III carries a price tag upwards of $375,000 and can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in less than four seconds en route to a top speed in excess of 200 mph while delivering the most unadulterated motoring experience known to man. Only 50 examples will be produced, and the first is making its world debut at the London show. Several new high-priced rides will also be on display for the first time in the UK, including the Morgan Aero Super Sport, Aston Martin One-77, Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT S and Maybach Zeppelin. A day pass to the event will cost £125 when the show opens on July 22.

A vineyard in London? In a boost for English wine London's first commercial vineyard since the medieval era has been planted. The Forty Hall Organic Farm is located in the London borough of Enfield. Around 1500 Bacchus vines were planted. The Bacchus varietal does well in cooler climates and produces a light white wine.

Decanter reports that Sarah Vaughan-Roberts, the vineyard manager, has said that she hopes the gravel-rich soil at Forty Hall will become the 'terroir' of London wines. The vineyard was set up by Capel Manor Horticultural College and the Forty Hall wine will be sold directly to consumers within a ten mile radius of the vineyard. Profits will go towards promoting sustainable urban agriculture.

Think round beds are just for those hotels in the Poconos? The Sanctum Soho in London offers deluxe suites that have circular beds with "suspended liquid-metal discs" above them, offering a rather elegant version of the old mirror-on-the-ceiling trick. The Sanctum Soho has 30 rooms and is designed to be a "rock and roll" hotel offering a hedonistic experience. CNN reports that the hotel is owned by Mark Fuller and by Iron Maiden co-managers Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor who want to provide a safe haven for celebrities and plan to enforce a strict, "no autographs, no photographs" rule. You can get a drink anytime day or night and guests have access to an on-call guitar doctor or can borrow a guitar from the reception desk. Rates start at £175 for the smallest rooms which are called "crash pads" and go up to £3500 for the most lavish suite, the garden suite which has two king bedrooms, two freestanding baths, two full ceiling rain shower rooms and a plant-filled terrace.

Could there be a glimmer of hope in the collapsed London real estate market? Bloomberg delivers the news from Knight Frank LLP which shows that luxury home prices increased in April for the first time since March 2008. The average value of homes over 1 million pounds rose a modest 0.4 percent from the previous month. With the pound trending low against both the dollar and the euro London homes are becoming more tempting to foreign buyers once again even though the bank accounts of some of those buyers may be a bit diminished. The gains seen by Knight Frank were at the lower end of the luxury market. The downward trend continued with properties costing more than 10 million pounds which fell by 2.2 percent in value from March. But since U.K. house prices as a whole rose in March for the first time since way back in October 2007 and sales and viewings are on the rise it does seem that a bottom may have been reached.

Five months ago when Forbes ranked the world's most expensive houses (in terms of current listings) only three of them clocked in at over $100 million. And in fact, one of those, Leona Helmsley's Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, CT which started out at $125 million had already been reduced to $95 million by the time the list was published (it's currently being offered at $75 million). The other, Fleur de Lys in Beverly Hills listed at $125 million, was therefore the world's most expensive and one of only two $100 million-plus properties officially on the market.

Re-surveying the field now we've decided it's time for a new World's Most Expensive list, mainly because despite the recession - or, perhaps, because of it - there are now seven properties in what we've dubbed the Hundred Million Club (N.B. - those listed at only $100 million don't make the cut), three of which are in the U.S. These are the modern-day equivalents of the magnates' great estates we wrote about back in February.

Some recent market activity which regular Luxist readers will be aware of makes a new ranking imperative. For starters, last month Candy Spelling listed her Holmby Hills mega-mansion at $150 million, making it the world's most expensive estate. Then just last week a mansion at No. 10 Belgrave Square in London hit the market for around the same price - £100 million, or about $149 million (depending on exchange rates), while a second Belgrave Square property finally completed renovations and has been listed at £80 million, or about $120 million.

We also received confirmation this week that an incredible 40-room private mansion in Paris' Place des États Unis (above), built in 1890, has been listed at €105 million, or about $138 million. Fleur de Lys, whose "world's most expensive" status (though not its "legendary estate" status) was also usurped by the $135 million Manaplan Residence in Palm Beach now languishes in 5th place (sorry, Mariah).

Here is our new ranking of the world's most expensive estates (in terms of current verifiable listings), all members of the Hundred Million Club:

1. The Manor - Holmby Hills, CA: $150 million
2. No. 10 Belgrave Square, London, UK: $149 million
3. Place des États Unis, Paris, France: $138 million
4. The Manalapan Residence, Palm Beach, FL: $135 million
5. Fleur de Lys, Beverly Hills, CA: $125 million
6. No. 31 Belgrave Square, London, UK: $120 million
7. Updown Court, Surrey, UK: $110 million

You know it's bad out there when one of the world's richest men, Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia is divesting himself of his assets like it's going out of style. We last wrote about Prince Alwaleed last month when his Kingdom Holding company sold its 50 percent stake in the exclusive Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva and he's not done yet, two of the world's most famous hotels may be up for sale.

Prince Alwaleed, who is worth $13 billion after seeing his wealth tumble from $21 billion last year, is putting the Raffles of Singapore hotel up for sale for $450 million. The legendary hotel was once the home of writer Somerset Maugham and has been around since 1887. This is the hotel that gave us the cocktail known as the Singapore Sling and has been a stopping place for decades of movie stars.

Also said to be up for sale is London's Savoy hotel. The historic London hotel is currently receiving a major renovation. Its sale price could be around £200 million, the same at which Irish property investment specialists Quinlan Private sold it for in 2005.