Great matters were trembling in the balance. The prime minister needed cash to achieve his objective and as Parliament was…

‘There lies the dearest freshness deep down things’ — and also the dearest Frenchness. It is easy to be rude…

I cannot remember a jollier lunch. There are two brothers, Sebastian and Nicholas Payne, both practical epicureans. They have made…

There is a dive near St James’s which could claim to be the epicentre of international reaction. It is also…

Most of my friends are still on a cloud of post-election euphoria. There is one exception: those involved with opinion-polling.…

There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention…

The supermarket chains are not always blameworthy. Their missionary efforts have helped to ensure that wine drinking in Britain is…

For many years, the Central American republic of Guatemala had a grievance against the United Kingdom. It claimed sovereignty over…

Towards the chimes at midnight, a few of us left a — respectable — establishment near Leicester Square. Eight or…

Meeting to taste wine, we started by talking about dogs. Roy Hattersley is good on the subject, which ought to…

When we consider poets who perished before their day, thoughts turn to the Romantics or the war victims: Burns, Keats,…

We were discussing wit. I uttered a self-evident truth which proved gratifyingly controversial. Of all the people I encounter, the…

It is an old adage, but still pertinent. ‘Every generalisation about India is true, and so is the opposite.’ The…