London Hotels
The test of a truly great city is reinvention. Does it have the courage to change? London holds a PhD…
All sorts and all sports
Sport isn’t about putting a ball into a net or over a bar or into a hole. It’s about the…
An open book
Kindle highlights turn the lonely pleasures of reading into a communal event
Simply not Kricket
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
Going underground
The strange fascination of tunnels and bunkers
X marks the stop
In 1964, as part of his railway cuts, Dr Beeching ordered the closure of Duncraig, a small, little-used station in…
Far from pitch-perfect
It isn’t just the elk, either. Also bringing proceedings to a halt in this wonderful anthology are camels (Bahrain), cows…
Put your lips together and blow
Paul McCartney says he can remember the exact moment he knew the Beatles had made it. Early one morning, getting…
Licence to talk dirty
There aren’t many jobs that allow a nice middle-class Jewish boy to say ‘fuck’ in front of his parents. But…
Bully laughs
The comedy club theory of dictatorship
Strong meat
Fans of Count Arthur Strong (and yes I know he’s so Marmite you could spread him on a cheese sandwich)…
Hidden gems
No one watches Antiques Roadshow for the antiques. Instead we’re hanging on the punter’s reaction to his three-grand valuation. ‘It…
The skinny jeans conspiracy
Why will no one sell trousers that fit me?
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Look back in laughter
Britain is still an essentially Victorian country (see Daily Mail for details). So it’s no surprise that we keep returning…
Binge benefits
The occasional alcoholic blowout is much to be preferred to steady, everyday drinking
Riding for Rwanda
This is a book about Rwanda. It’s a book about cycling. But it’s not, in the end, a book about…
Last orders at the Death Café
An attempt to break the taboo on mortality with the aid of coffee and biscuits
A wicket way with words
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors…
