Life
Must Harry and Meghan’s son really learn to ‘essentialise’ race?
‘Ha, ha,’ said my husband, as though he’d made a joke. ‘Here’s one for you.’ He waved a page of…
Coco Gauff won fair and square, but she played terrible tennis
Martina Navratilova has never been shy about telling it like it is. She came out when other athletes were hiding…
Tuscany’s killer climate
The hotel manager had arranged for me to borrow an Alfa Romeo Spider Duetto two-seater convertible (1982) for the afternoon.…
Not going to the osteopath cured me
Not going to the osteopath worked a treat. Walking out of that surgery after hearing the crunching coming from inside…
Bridge
All high-level bridge tournaments involve playing with screens placed diagonally across the table — and there are numerous rules to…
Howard Staunton
Staunton was the most successful British player of all time, winning three matches against European masters in the 1840s which…
no. 562
White to play. This is from Wassin-Grigorchuk, Izola 2019. Although the game is only just out of the opening, White…
Twister
In Competition No. 3106 you were invited to submit a poem with an ingenious twist at the end. This challenge,…
2416: Silence
The unclued lights share a common feature at least once, different in each case. Across 7 Liechtenstein test about…
to 2413: Sign here please
The unclued lights are EPISCOPAL SIGNATURES First prize Jason James, CambridgeRunners-up K.M. Robb, Borrowstounness, West Lothian; McNeill, Belfast Got something…
I love Boris for not firing me when I wrote a play about his sex life
Fourteen years ago, almost to the day, Lloyd Evans and I received a note from Boris. It was the press…
The Battle for Britain
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What the new generation of tennis players could learn from Rocket Rod Laver
A chum was in Waitrose a year or two back, and was bending down with some difficulty to look at…
Dear Mary: How do I stop men sending me articles from the Guardian?
Q. It is difficult to know what to do when homeless people ask you for cash as you are leaving…
The devil eats Prada: Patisserie Marchesi 1824 reviewed
The Prada Café is both a cake shop and a historical inevitability. It sits on Mount Street, almost opposite the…
The Lib Dems are wrong – it’s ‘ballocks’ to Brexit
I agree with James Joyce on the spelling ballocks. The Liberal Democrats made their MEPs wear T-shirts printed with ‘Bollocks…
The death of free thought
Hold the presses, this is a world exclusive. A Boris ex I sat next to last week gave me the…
Why can’t my mother be allowed to die at home
As they say: it all happened so quickly that it wasn’t until afterwards. One minute I was bawling at my…
Is my osteopath a psychopath or a mystical healer?
Either the osteopath is a psychopath or he is the second coming. I see no other possibility. I turned up…
Why female jockeys are a better bet
When Hayley Turner was made, she wasn’t just given a competitive spirit, a sensitive pair of hands and excellent balance.…
Bridge
I know I’m not the strongest declarer in the world (or even at the table) but I didn’t realise my…
Tigran, Tigran, burning bright
This year Tigran Petrosian would have celebrated his 90th birthday. The Armenian grandmaster and world champion was noted for the…
no. 561
White to play. This is from Reti-Bogolyubov, New York 1924. How did Reti conclude his attack with a fine blow? Answers…
Belles of the ball
In Competition No. 3105 you were invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by…
2415: The limit
1A (hyphened) suggests a word which, with changes to its 7D 33, becomes the four other words (including a name)…
