Life
Video games like Fortnite are fun — so they must be bad
It was only a matter of time. The headteacher of a primary school in Ilfracombe in Devon has banned ‘Flossing’,…
The Battle for Britain
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The true winner of this World Cup? Russia
Like most people with any taste, I like the odd vodka, I love Crime and Punishment, I enjoy Turgenev and…
Dear Mary: How do you deal with a monologuing fellow guest on board a yacht?
Q. A long-standing friend has an admirer of some means. He has invited her to borrow his fully staffed and…
A Wimbledon-themed tea has little to do with tennis, but I loved it: Claridges reviewed
Claridge’s is a toff sanctuary and one of the best hotels on earth. It specialises in its own myth, which…
Has Boris brought ‘turd’ back into polite society?
I have never lost my admiration for Boris Johnson’s summary of British ambitions over Brexit as ‘having our cake and…
The limitations of left-wing hacks
Oh, to be in England, and almost die of heat after the Austrian Alps. Yes, Sarah Sands was right in…
Up close with the Rolling Stones
At 7 p.m., panting, I knocked on the door of room 201 of the Hotel InterContinental, Marseille, expecting it to…
Sex and MOTs
Opening a button of my shirt to get the horse lorry through its MOT is the sort of thing I…
The happiest Royal Ascot in memory
Let’s get the crowing over first. The returns from our Twelve to Follow over jumps last season were somewhere well…
Bridge
The Hubert Phillips is a knockout tournament unlike any other. First it is mixed — there has to be at…
We still have Paris
The second leg of this year’s Grand Tour was contested in Paris, almost immediately after Leuven. For Paris, Anish Giri…
no. 513
White to play. This is from Nakamura-Kramnik, Paris Blitz 2018. The third victim of Nakamura’s hypnotism was Vladimir Kramnik who,…
Question time
In Competition No. 3055 you were invited to take a well-known figure on the world stage, living or dead, and…
2366: The square
Three items (one consisting of three words, and two consisting of four words each) read clockwise round the perimeter. Part…
to 2363: Case ending
In Henry VI part II, Dick says to Cade: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’, thus…
In the crazy world of identity politics, facts don’t matter
According to a poll of 538 experts on women’s issues, the United States is one of the ten most dangerous…
The Battle for Britain
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It doesn’t matter how hard you work – just how busy you look
The behavioural scientist Dan Ariely once found himself chatting to a locksmith with a curious problem. The better he became…
Dear Mary: How does a Wimbledon ball girl deal with a disgusting player?
Q. I’ve accepted an invitation to stay in a small house party in France. My host hasn’t mentioned who else…
London’s perfect Paris brasserie
We order some French things better in London — often, admittedly, with French help. A grenouille friend recently took me…
Ideation, from suicide to management speak
‘Suicide!’ yelled my husband, while performing an inappropriate mime of a hangman’s noose. That was his reply when I asked…
Is it time to move to Austria?
Schloss Wolfsegg I was watching two very old men slowly approaching the open doors of the Pilatus airplane I…
Why I was proud to be a dustman
I heard the last and final call for flight 6114 to Nice while shuffling forward in the unexpectedly long queue…
Me and my gun
Finally, I got my hands on a gun. About the size of a sawn-off shotgun it was, just under 20in…
