Life
Knee-jerk
A little joke by Paddy, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, turned upon something to be shunned. Conservative ministers, he said, had…
Three sisterhoods
The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles has been mentioned in this column before. I can report that the membership is…
The pound sterling doesn’t buy happiness
My second favourite religious joke is an old Jewish joke (which I read in the Harvard Review, so I assume…
High life
Back in the very early Sixties there was an uninhabited islet off the west coast of Greece by the name…
Low life
When I was 32, tired at last, for the moment anyway, of seizing the day, I stopped drinking and gave…
Real life
Incredible as it seems to me now, there was a time when a wolf whistle was annoying. A man would…
Long life
I have been, on and off, a lifelong smoker; but I gave up in January 2009 on the day of…
Wonder Wall
One of the greatest parliamentary sketch-writers of all time, Norman Shrapnel, made a point of never socialising with the politicians…
Bridge
One person who lets out a whoop of delight when I am on holiday is my saintly partner, Artur Malinowski.…
Gifted and talented
Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I have persisted in the belief that the ability to play chess well indicates…
No. 330
White to play. This position is from Polgar-Bareev, Moscow 1996. Neither king is entirely happy and in such situations having…
Rhyme time
In Competition No. 2863 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author.…
2178: Saint and playwright
The unclued lights are connected by 33/23. One pair of unclued lights gives one context, in which two further pairs…
to 2175: Elated grunt
The four works were Waverley (anagram of 12/21), Kenilworth (15/8), The Talisman (29/2) and Ivanhoe (38/37) by SIR WALTER SCOTT (diagonally…
The wolf in all of us
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Aidan Hartley earlier this week about whether the young men fighting for…
Battle for Britain
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Those ‘traditions of English football’ in full
That excitable but likeable hombre, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, took it upon himself to give a stern lecture to the…
Dear Mary
Q. In his Spectator notebook of 30 August, describing a recent gaudy at the Oxford college he attended in the…
Vienna without the Austrians
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Escalated
Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, spoke to Sky television last week about how little he…
Vienna without the Austrians
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Those ‘traditions of English football’ in full
That excitable but likeable hombre, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, took it upon himself to give a stern lecture to the…
Wonder Wall
One of the greatest parliamentary sketch-writers of all time, Norman Shrapnel, made a point of never socialising with the politicians…
High life
Can somebody tell me when America last got it right? Uncle Sam’s track record in selecting leaders in faraway places…
Low life
In my late twenties, it was not unusual for me to wake up in a police cell wearing a paper…
