Spectator Competition: Elementary
For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries…
Don’t blame Ben Stokes
So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me…
Dear Mary: How do I get my friend to clean up after her dog?
Q. Every so often we’re invited to our friends’ house for lunch or dinner. It’s close by and the house…
Scott’s vs Mayfair
Kingsley Amis was obsessed with Scott’s on Mount Street, Mayfair, and he knew a lot about food. He ate himself…
If you’re ‘reaching out’, you sound deranged
‘Why doesn’t anyone do what you ask them to?’ enquired my husband, who is something of an expert on the…
My advice to the next generation
Everyone went to the same school as someone famous. In my case it’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland, who joined my former…
Why are roast potatoes so hard to get right?
Roast potatoes shouldn’t be complicated. We’re talking two ingredients, plus some salt and maybe herbs if you’re feeling fancy. It’s…
Make mine a Moka pot
It’s strange the things that can trigger amity or affection. At the beginning of the capsule/pod coffee-maker craze, when George…
The young women hypnotised by Polanski
A friend mentioned to me last week that a third of young women in the UK are planning to vote…
Blame the EU for your increasingly bossy car
When Eileen, a 75-year-old British grandmother, bought a brand-new car she found its advanced driver-assistance repeatedly told her the speed…
Foetal femicide has arrived in Britain
Last summer, the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi introduced a clause to the Crime and Policing Bill that will decriminalise all…
In praise of the climate ‘emergency’
All this winter, until New Year’s Eve, and for the first time since I started keeping llamas, Vera, Ann and…
No sex please, we’re Gen Z
For many years now we have all been agonising over the fertility crisis. Why aren’t the kids having kids? It’s…
In defence of the Freemasons
It’s a personal delight that on 29 September 1829, the first day of Robert Peel’s new force, the first warrant…
