Life
High life
Gstaad I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: the memoir of Barbara Black, the wife of my…
Bridge
My friend Ollie Burgess has just made the bold move of quitting his job in Manchester, and moving to London…
Low life
Hairpin bends in a stony forest. Downhill. Steep, then steeper. Smooth frictionless tarmac. I’ve got the car barely under control.…
It’s all in the timing
Three bottles, three questions that delivered three different answers. I was in Dorset — cannot keep away — enjoying the…
Boris’s critics were right all along
A friend emailed me earlier this week in despair about the Prime Minister. ‘Boris reminds me of a hereditary king…
The turf
It is all, it seems, in the tweaks. So said Aidan O’Brien, Ireland’s master-trainer supreme, before his tough filly Magical…
Bat
My husband may not often be right, but he had some cogent criticism of the much-quoted words of Geoffrey Howe…
Aussie Life & Language
Giles Auty While clearing our cellar recently my wife and I came upon a compact printing press which her late…
Being a do-gooder did me no good
Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, has a lot to answer for. Some armchair psychologists think the reason I…
Real life
A man without a mask appeared to be dying of Covid, or something quite like it, on the London to…
In praise of today’s young footballers
You suspect that a bar of duty-free Toblerone, no matter how supersized, wouldn’t really do the trick when hapless England…
Dear Mary
Q. I have just been out to my first lunch in months. Ten of us sat around a table in…
A flash of life
A ghost review, now, of a ghost restaurant: the Connaught Grill, which is yet to reopen after pandemic shuttered its…
Low life
The old dog was in a companionable frame of mind and she trotted along at my side, glancing up now…
Bridge
The bridge world has lost some glittering stars this (ghastly) year, the latest being France’s Catherine d’Ovidio — multiple world…
Uptick
Political commentators love talking about the optics — the way something looks to voters. Just at the moment, though, everyone…
The Battle for Britain
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2474: Love me do
31 3 worked for the 43 of 21. The 43 of 34 got him for 24 35 and sent him…
Between the lines
In Competition No. 3165 you were invited to supply a job reference for a well-known public figure, past or present,…
High life
Gstaad It snowed on the last two days of August up here, and why not? We’ve traded freedom of speech…
Puzzle no. 621
Black to play. Rios–Adams, Online Olympiad, August 2020. The White king is running short of squares. Which move did Adams…
Internet trouble
It was as baffling to me as quantum entanglement. Every time the Algerian player on the Zoom call shared his…
Solution to 2471: Inky
The unclued lights can be preceded by BLACK. First prize Stephanie Reeve, Papworth Everard, CambridgeRunners-up Hilda Ball, Belfast; Peter Chapman,…
Aussie Life
Peter Scammell There is no doubt that the corona virus pandemic is changing the way we live and think about…
Bridge
A major pandemic has been sweeping through the bridge world since the game went online — and it’s called cheating.…
