Low life
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
The perils of smoking three-year-old Glaswegian skunk
Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried…
40-plus reasons to love and hate France
I apologised, was gladly granted an indulgence, and on Sunday I packed a small bag and reached into a drawer…
My first world war obsession
My reactionary first world war reading jag continues. The literature is vast, but so is my capacity and fascination. I…
Guns and gin: just another Spectator Wine Club lunch
East of London the Thames broadens dramatically to a surreal waste of mud and sewage-coloured water lined with shipping-container dumps.…
A pub brawl certainly livened up a boring football match
I told Oscar to wait outside and I went in and said to the barman: ‘Would it be all right…
The English-Scottish gender divide
Once the house move was completed, Catriona’s oldest and best Scottish friends, two of them, came to stay for a…
450 bottles of red? What more could I want from a neighbour
I have a friend here in this French village to which we moved just over a week ago. He is…
A foretaste of Frexit
Moving day. The contents of a hillside shack to be moved four miles to a cave house perched high on…
Back from the brink
The long table was set out under four beautifully pollarded plane trees festooned with coloured lanterns and red balloons. Twenty…
For the love of gin
I’d missed the train, and the next was due in 45 minutes, so I popped into the nearby salon for…
What would Oscar tell his dad first about our eventful fortnight in the south of France?
I was present in the room when Oscar encountered his father for the first time since returning from his fortnight…
A spiritual journey to see some very expensive paintings
The Villa Carnignac art gallery is located on a Mediterranean island off the French Riviera called Porquerolles. Purpose-built to show…
Why the kindness of strangers trumps a pagan festival
The entire Alpine village, contemptuously dismissed recently in an online tourist guide as a nondescript centre of old peasants and…
How to survive a French heatwave
Me in a black polo-neck jumper looking sour; Oscar wearing a floppy hat; her youngest daughter nude and stooping to…
Confessions of a cave-dweller continued
The cave house next to ours is let out to weekly renters. A green-eyed German with a ponytail came out…
At 62, I’m looking for a hole in a rock
Towering above this medieval French village is dun-coloured cliff of volcanic rock, dramatically floodlit at night, topped by two ancient…
Portrait of a seven-year-old state-run child
Saturday morning. Quarter to 12. Sit-down fish and chips at the Silver Grill: me, Oscar and Oscar’s cousin Atticus. Atticus…
The anatomy of a Spectator summer party
I flew from Marseille to Gatwick, rode the Gatwick Express to Victoria, and walked down the thoroughfare of Victoria Street…
Up close with the Rolling Stones
At 7 p.m., panting, I knocked on the door of room 201 of the Hotel InterContinental, Marseille, expecting it to…
Why I was proud to be a dustman
I heard the last and final call for flight 6114 to Nice while shuffling forward in the unexpectedly long queue…
Cancer? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world
Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my…
Donald Hankey: a remarkable – and neglected – English voice
Last year the BBC radio drama department received 3,797 scripts from hopeful authors, of which just 33 were recommended to…
Why did a Ukrainian oligarch invite me to his party in Paris, and pay for me to get there?
On Monday night I went to a party at the Crazy Horse nightclub in Paris thrown by the oligarch Vitaly…
Was our Airbnb host a closet toreador?
We were standing in the tiny hall: me, Catriona, Annette and her toy Yorkshire terrier, Ahmed. It was our first…
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