The rise of the on-the-day party drop-out
A new drinks-party-shirking method has taken hold in British society. I call it ‘Lastminute.non’. Previously, the way of not going…
Dark secrets of the British housewife
Juliet Nicolson reminds us of how difficult it was, even in the 1960s, for women to admit to sexual frustration, abuse, extramarital affairs or alcoholism
With glee to the silvery sea
Before Beeching’s cuts, hordes of British holiday-makers rushed by train to the coast every summer – from ‘bracing’ Scarborough to the ‘Devon Rivera’
The depressing rise of ‘direct cremations’
Twenty per cent of last year’s funerals in Britain were direct cremations – up from 14 per cent in 2020.…
Oxford’s LTN farce
Last week’s cheering news that the High Court has deemed Lambeth Council’s imposition of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood on West Dulwich ‘unlawful’,…
Prepare to feel nauseous at this School Dinners exhibition
If your stomach turns when you walk past a Japanese restaurant with moulded plastic replicas of sushi on display, prepare…
The magic of early radio days
Beaty Rubens takes us inside the British home 100 years ago as the glamorous new device becomes central to family life
The brilliance of Cicely Mary Barker
When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief…
Is anything still cheap?
Things used to cost approximately what you expected them to cost. Now, the price of almost every item is eye-wateringly,…
Tirzah Garwood just isn’t as good as her husband Eric Ravilious
Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…
‘Carried away by those Russians’ – the dreadful fate of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters
The queen’s repeated warnings to Alix and Ella of the danger of marrying Russians were ignored, and both Princesses of Hesse would die appalling deaths at the hands of revolutionaries
What’s gone wrong at Winchester Cathedral?
The Dean of Winchester, the Very Revd Catherine Ogle, has announced that she will be retiring on 1 May 2025.…
The joy of party bags
The perfect, unpretentious, well-constructed party bag was given to guests leaving a recent Hatchards party. It contained a wedge of…
My prep school scarred me for life
‘A part of me died at school’, Charles Spencer writes in his shockingly stark account of sadism and sexual abuse at Maidwell Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1970s
Please stop clapping at funerals
The Happy Clappies – evangelical Christians who clap along to worship songs during church services – have been around since…
In the dark early 1960s, at least we had the Beatles
The first half of the decade saw towns bulldozed, the Beeching cuts, everyday racism, political scandal and the threat of Armageddon. But there was also Beatlemania…
Gas works
Hell is a heat pump
Beware of pity
In her powerful memoir-cum-manifesto, Selina Mills tells us what she misses most, what irritates her most and why she won’t have a guide dog
Journeys out of hell
In a profoundly moving family memoir, Daniel Finkelstein describes the miracle by which his mother, as a child, was rescued from the hell of Belsen
Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea
Their decline began with the arrival of package holidays in the 1960s – and new schemes for their revival seem already to have backfired
