Life
Why Ben Stokes should win Sports Personality of the Year
Oh those lazy, hazy, Stokesy days of summer: how long ago they seem now. When England won the cricket World…
Dear Mary: How do I stop getting lumbered with the washing up on weekends away?
Q. A friend, who is very careful with his money, occasionally invites a group of six to eight out to…
Nauseating, but I like the garlic bread: Legoland Windsor reviewed
The theme music to Legoland in Berkshire is the theme music to The Exorcist. It appears from speakers hidden in…
Where did ‘decuman’ come from?
‘What made you chase that hare?’ asked my husband with rare geniality. John Ruskin was to blame. He asked James…
The cops are impotent in lawless New York
New York Things are heating up, in both London and Nueva York, as this place should correctly be called.…
The lessons I learned cycling across Rwanda
The backmarker of the peloton was Eric, a tall, stick-thin Rwandan. Under his cycling helmet he wore a baseball cap…
How you can tell the gender of a thief
My attempt at being Columbo was only taking me so far. In solving the mystery of who raided the barn,…
Cheltenham was the perfect antidote to election politics
I can only be sorry for the 67,496,581 citizens of the UK who were not at Cheltenham last Saturday. For…
Bridge
Well, it has taken 12 years, two relegations, one second place and endless ‘nowheres’ playing the Premier League and we…
A fresh approach
Reimagine democracy. Reimagine capitalism. Reimagine education. For all the reimagining thrown at big ideas, they don’t seem much perturbed. You…
no. 581
Bagi–Zvjaginsev, Montenegro 2019. Black to play. 61… Ke6 looks obvious, but Zvjaginsev preferred 61… Rg6! and White resigned instead of…
First or last
In Competition No. 3125 you were invited to compose a comically appalling first or final paragraph of the memoir of…
2435: A little puzzle
Unclued lights, two of two words, are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. Across 12 …
to 2432: Getting dry
The DODO (30) organised the CAUCUS RACE (12) to get dry. Participants included ALICE (2), EAGLET (7), DUCK (17), MOUSE…
Prince Andrew should have married someone like my wife
Like many people, I watched Prince Andrew’s Newsnight meltdown with mounting disbelief. Why had he agreed to do it? It…
The Battle for Britain
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
No one else has the weird levels of self-regard shown by people who appear regularly on TV
One of the more tedious tropes of recent years is for journalists to bemoan the rise of populism while busily…
Dear Mary: How do I stop my husband eating everything in the fridge?
Q. A friend of a friend has an apartment in Venice. I would like to commiserate with her about the…
Wine that puts politics in its place
In the era of vinyl, lost in one of Bruckner’s longueurs, it could be hard to tell what was stuck,…
From Pliny to poetry: the history of ‘ictus’ and ‘ductus’
‘I know the difference between ictal and icteric,’ said my husband proudly, reminding me of Tweedledum in Through the Looking-Glass.…
I’d rather live under communism than the tyranny of social media
At the time it felt like a century, but it was only 12 years. I began this column in 1977…
The joy of a Rwandan airport
Our plane touched down in Rwanda at 7 p.m. Stepping outside on to the metal steps, I smelt that unmistakable…
The strange case of six missing horse rugs
The night after the fireworks display the barn was raided and our horse rugs were taken. Good job I’ve watched…
Bridge
Congratulations to Janet de B and her team, who had an excellent week last week — as I know to…
Dubov’s dynamite
When Daniil Dubov advanced his queen’s pawn in Batumi last month, he might as well have chewed the head off…
