Life
The Battle for Britain
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Thanks for nothing, Pickford
You might hate the Premier League for its determination to suck all the money out of football, but at least…
Dear Mary
Q. An old friend offered to treat me to a birthday lunch, provided I choose and book the restaurant myself.…
Ivy league
Oxford is not an easy city to homogenise; but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. I found a vast shopping…
Adrenochrome
QAnon, the conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy theory, teaches that President Donald Trump is in secret warfare with a worldwide network of…
Aussie Life & Language
Simon Collins I have been wondering what whale tastes like. There must be quite a few Australians who know. After…
High life
New York New York, New York, once a wonderful town/ The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown/ The…
Real life
‘I can’t put it off any longer. She’s dying and I don’t think I can ignore the inevitable. We’ve got…
Low life
‘Yes, I will have a coffee,’ said the van driver. He’d driven down to the south of France from Devon.…
Dear Mary
Q. A year ago we sent out 150 save-the-date notices for our wedding this December. We are still going ahead,…
Lockdown sceptics are following the science
You probably haven’t heard of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is a petition started by three scientists on 4 October…
Memories of Perry
I had known Perry Worsthorne for several years before I went to work for him in 1986 (horrifying how time…
Are you guilty of ‘genteelism’?
‘Everyone’s been very kind to my husband and I,’ said someone behind me in a (spaced) queue. That is the…
The Covid challenge
The Covid problem lies as much in the delayed action of the virus as in the virus itself. Since symptoms…
The Battle for Britain
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The turf
Fortunately for me and the politicians we entertained over my years covering the darkest profession, Mrs Oakley didn’t do a…
Bridge
‘I have a wonderful hand to show you,’ Gunnar Hallberg exclaimed when I saw him last week. Gunnar is a…
Chess players on ice
We are what we do. Alas, in its zeal to suppress the virus, this government would have many people doing…
Puzzle no. 626
Rapport–Sprenger, Bundesliga, September 2020. The game continued 1 Bxc4 Rxc4 2 Bxe5+ f6 3 Bf4 Rxe4+ 4 Kf3 and was…
2479: Shielded
The unclued lights (one of two words and one hyphened) are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Across 10 United…
Solution to 2476: Playtime
The unclued lights form pairs of famous soloists and the instruments they play; 1A/19, 5/34, 23/8, 31/39, 43/16A. First prize…
Letter of the law
In Competition No. 3170, a challenge inspired by Shelley’s assertion that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’, you…
Aussie Life & Language
Brendan Ward A re-run of Cathy Freeman’s heart-stopping 400 metre race at the Sydney Olympics in September 2000 recently animated…
Kiwi Life
Once upon a time here in New Zealand, when political dinosaurs still roamed the earth, Prime Minister Keith Holyoake startled…
Bridge
One of the things that makes bridge so endlessly fascinating is that it is forever changing and growing. At high…
