Serial drama
In Competition No. 3271, you were invited to submit a poem about the Oxford comma. Thérèse Coffey’s much-maligned edict about…
Wild life
Laikipia, Kenya No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise,…
There’s a blood crisis, so why can’t I give blood?
I read about the national shortage of blood last week with a feeling of gloomy inevitability. The brains of the…
Real life
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for something to catch a mouse that won’t cause it any distress,’ said the young chap…
Nobody on God’s earth wanted Truss
One of the most important ingredients in the oil used to anoint King Charles during his coronation is becoming a…
Barometer
Out to grass If Liz Truss is forced out of office (and doesn’t also resign her parliamentary seat as Tony…
Flesh and fisticuffs
Being of a squeamish sensibility and prejudiced by a low opinion of recent BBC drama, I can claim only a…
‘As capricious as a wild mare’
In 1930, when she was 19 years old, Edda Mussolini married Galeazzo Ciano. His father was a loyal minister in…
It’s all go in Wormingford
Ronald Blythe, the celebrated author of Akenfield, is to turn 100 next month, and to mark his centenary a beguiling…
Shock and awe
‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…
Motivated by love
At the start of Somewhere Boy, an 18-year-old boy is rescued from an isolated house by his aunt Sue following…
Letter from Mongolia
The first time I went to Mongolia was in 2014, when I travelled across the country with the actress Michelle…
2578: Torture
The same word appears as eight headwords in Chambers. Unclued lights indicate what they mean. The word will appear in…
Full marks for the bottom
My Policemanis a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and…
Beyond Truss
Seldom has support for a government fallen so far, so fast. Polls show that 24 per cent of the public…
Away with all the flesh
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties…
Puzzle no. 725
White to play. Mamedyarov-J. Polgar, Fide World Blitz, Dubai 2014. Black is lagging in development, and her last move, 10…Nb8-d7,…
Fall from grace
Robert Gore-Langton explores the remarkable life of televangelist Tammy Faye, and its descent into chaos
