Marmalade
The spectrum of ‘bestowing homemade gifts on one’s friends’ ranges from giving to foisting. Pure giving is when you make…
2535: Green light! Cross!
In this pangrammatical puzzle, the unclued lights are of a kind near 21A. Ignore all accents. Across 7 Fresh…
Puzzle no. 685
White to play. Maxime Lagarde-Thai Dai Van Nguyen, Reykjavik 2021. Lagarde found a brilliant finish, forcing mate in just a…
All human life is here
When is a life worth telling? The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky’s six-volume autobiography The Story of a Life combines high…
The new immortals
In the world of books, a modern classic is an altogether more slippery thing than a classic: it must walk…
Vindalism
In Competition No. 3231, you were invited to supply an example of pretentious wine writing. Space is tight and the…
Real life
One of the village vegans gave the bacon sandwich resting on top of the recycling bin outside my house an…
The Spectator’s Notes
According to the new Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the Russians wish to ‘put at risk…
Why I don’t walk under ladders
Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said…
The truth about that No. 10 party
People seem surprised and a little doubting that the Prime Minister is incapable of remembering if he attended a party…
Work in progress
If I could lift one thing from younger generations, unpeel one idea from their anxious minds, it would be the…
Hunterston’s closure is the nuclear accident no one noticed
So farewell, Hunterston B, the nuclear power plant on the Firth of Clyde that shut last week after 46 years’…
A slice above
It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…
To die for
If there’s any form of entertainment that I will reliably find time for, no matter how big the to-read pile…
Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Barn
Grade: A I have persisted in buying everything Neil Young releases since I first heard On the Beach as a…
Wild life
Kenya Wondering what this year will bring, at dawn this morning I stood in the waves in front of our…
Magical mystery tour
At a village train station in deepest Kent two men and their pet mongoose are setting off on their honeymoon.…
An abiding evil
The premise of White Debt is that the author’s ancestors ran a business selling a product grown by slaves. Therefore…
Alumni
My husband is forever being sent magazines from his Oxford college inviting him to give it money. I suggest he…
Solution to 2536: At rest
The unclued lights (3 composers, 3 artists and 3 writers) are all buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. The name should…
