Life
Why schools can't teach character
I participated in a lively discussion about character education at Policy Exchange earlier this week. For those of you who…
Battle for Britain
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S&M&B&Q: Why aren’t there sex-and-shopping novels for men?
I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and…
Dear Mary: How can I stop my future son-in-law saying ‘must of’
Q. My future son-in-law has been successfully house-trained in the use of upper-middle-class English over the years that he has…
Wine merchants might just be the happiest people in the world
A delightful girl came to see me this morning. She is helping with the research for a biography of David…
Should ‘suicide’ mean pig-killing?
There was a marvellous man in Shakespeare’s day known as John Smyth the Sebaptist. ‘In an act so deeply shocking…
A vintner’s vocation
A delightful girl came to see me this morning. She is helping with the research for a biography of David…
S&M and B&Q
I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and…
The beauty of fire escapes and the vanishing of Edward Hopper's New York
Autumn in New York: they even wrote a song about it that was a great hit 60 years ago. Last…
'My boy was my all': letters from a bereaved mother to a Somme widow
My maternal grandmother (née Clarke) had six brothers, all keen poker players. All six volunteered to fight in the Great…
Why won't the law go after the terror of my park?
What is the point of the Dangerous Dogs Act when there is a man marauding with an illegal pit bull…
The only good thing about Halloween is that it makes people hate bats
I always dread Hallowe’en. It may have originated in Europe as a Christian celebration for remembering the virtuous dead and…
Maybe Mrs Oakley is right: all my tips will come in second
The novelist Anita Brookner once declared that in real life hares always beat tortoises: ‘Every time. Look around you. And…
Bridge
Every obituary written about Tony Priday, who died recently aged 92, said what a class act he was. I would…
Winning hand
Tension has always existed between games of skill, such as chess or draughts, and games seemingly based on chance, like…
No. 338
White to play. This is from Hebden-Mannion, Isle of Man 2014. White’s next move completely destroyed the black position. What…
Two hander
In Competition No. 2871 you were invited to submit a dialogue in verse between man and God. The tone of…
2186: From the off
Unclued lights (two of two words and one doing double duty), singly or paired, reveal some that are to be…
To 2183: Group theory
Extra letters in clues plus 1A give ‘the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks’, an extract from a quotation…
I swam up to a beautiful girl on the beach, and my life changed
I’m writing this from Portugal, where I’m staying with my old friend Sean Langan. His family has owned a farm…
Battle for Britain
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Test cricket and the Archers are both in deep trouble
Lions and weasels The Archers and Test cricket: words you rarely find in the same sentence and more’s the pity…
Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to shorten the guest list for my 21st?
Q. I am organising my 21st birthday party at our family house in Italy. It is a fantastic location, but…
Want to shake hands with your dinner? Beast is your kind of restaurant
Beast is next to Debenhams on Oxford Street and it is not conventionally beast-like; rather it is monetised and bespoke…
Why you might not want corridors in your historical novel
I read C.J. Sansom’s novel Dissolution on the train recently with pleasure. For an historical novel narrated in the 1530s,…
