Life
2650: Detention for history
One of the unclued entries is responsible for a quotation that makes up the others (two of three words, one…
Even Orwell’s Thought Police didn’t go as far as Trudeau
You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar…
The magic of Aintree
However hard some people try to make it a business, jump racing remains a sport and the Grand National its…
Dear Mary: How do I choose who to sponsor for the London Marathon?
Q. For the past couple of years, many of my sons’ friends have been gamely running the London Marathon for…
Aussie life
It’s been a long time since the beer garden of the iconic Oaks Hotel in Sydney’s Neutral Bay lost all…
Language
We all know what it means when someone is said to have been ‘thrown under the bus’ by their colleagues…
The glory of German wines
I have had three recent conversations, all lively if unrelated – and all well lubricated. The first concerned Anglo-Saxon England…
Will I ever get my HRT?
The novelty of living in a place where a policeman called Ambrose lives in a house whose door you can…
My father’s greatest act of kindness
I’ve been busy planning a trip to New Zealand and Australia. I’ll be gone for about five weeks from mid-June,…
There are three sides to every story
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who died last month aged 90, was perhaps most famous for his dictum that: ‘Nothing in…
Dear Mary: should I encourage guests to strip their beds?
Q. Our son, 17, who is generally a credit to us, has started eating with his mouth open. It’s the…
We ought to banish more words
Why do people say: ‘You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment’? Are they using it as they…
Bridge | 13 April 2024
I’ve been waiting for what feels like decades to make a contract by means of an intra-finesse. And not just…
My life of genteel poverty
Every year at the beginning of April, I tell myself I must top up my Isa before the 5 April…
