Surreptitious sonnet
In Competition No. 3264, you were invited to submit a poem in response to the following journal entry by Wallace…
Puzzle no. 718
White to play and win. Composed by Alexey Troitsky, Novoye Vremya, 1895. Trapping Black’s queen looks unimaginable on such an…
There will be blood
House of the Dragon got off to a pretty uninspirational start, I thought: no major characters brought to a shocking…
Letter from Cape Cod
Doing nothing is glorious. It is one of life’s deepest pleasures and ultimate goals. Yesterday, I walked a couple of…
Apple strudel
It’s possible that, like me, your first encounter with the Grande Dame of the Austrian pastry world, the apfelstrudel, was…
2571: 10”
The unclued lights (one of two words) are of a kind. Across 1 Bringing down plane that was used…
Gorbachev’s legacy
In her memoirs, Raisa Gorbacheva recalls the moment when her husband turned from bureaucrat into reformer. ‘I’m in my seventh…
Learning on the job
Sir Tony Blair’s Tone-deaf suggestion that Stem subjects should dominate the curriculum of all schools would paradoxically take education back…
Real life
My favourite vet came to see Darcy and immediately put his finger on the problem. Dusk was falling when he…
What Macron wants
When Liz Truss said ‘the jury’s out’ on whether France was a ‘friend or foe’, Emmanuel Macron publicly corrected her:…
The money shot
Is the onscreen portrayal of investment bankers as monsters true to life? Martin Vander Weyer talks to the writers of Industry
High life
Nostalgia barged in like gangbusters. What brought it on was a brief article about the most charming and enchanting of…
Bridge
The beautiful city of Wroclaw in Poland is currently teeming with bridge players, all of them there for the 16th…
The changing shade of the Greens
How pleasant it is to watch an idea fall apart. Especially when it is an idea held by people you…
Centuries of myth-making
Every country has an origin story but nonehas ‘changed it so often’ as Russia, according to Orlando Figes. The subject…
Pride and shame
I first read Pride and Prejudice in a feminist theory course. I wanted to be cynical about it and notice…
Australia’s miracle of multiculturalism…?
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Labor’s victory in the last federal election in May is a victory for multiculturalism.…
The truth about Extinction Rebellion
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse – Extinction Rebellion are back! Well, if you thought an unprecedented…
Labor’s Lilliputians
Not since Gulliver’s Travels has there been such an absurd visual image: a giant of a man towering over a…
Brown study
Those of my readers who do not reside in Melbourne may not be aware of the significant event underway in…
