Forging a new life
At Intelligent Life, the Economistmagazine where I worked for some years, it was easy to feel intellectually challenged. Even the…
Diary
Rishi Sunak had a pre-game Twix and a Sprite to prepare for this week’s impressive Budget. I used to have…
Plato the censor
The Globe theatre’s project to ‘decolonise’ Shakespeare, as if that would make plays like The Tempest ‘acceptable’ to them and…
Dutch courage
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
Running on full and empty
The bigger the next big thing, the smaller the room you want them playing in. You want the people who…
Small but perfectly formed
Haydn is looking well — in fact, he’s positively glowing. The dignified pose; the modest, intelligent smile: it’s only when…
Double vision
Charlotte Hobson describes the complicated relationship of two artists who championed simplicity
What this Budget tells us
The Budget and the spending review gave the clearest indication yet of what the post-Covid government might look like. During…
Who owns the language?
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is giving local residents £25,000 grants to enable them to change the names of…
Real life
‘My phone says I can’t go out until Tuesday, so I can’t come and meet you,’ said my friend. And…
High life
New York I find most films nowadays as fascinating as a lengthy history of orthodontics but then I’m spoilt rotten,…
Could a truthful Clinton have saved the US?
What if Bill Clinton had told the truth? Would America’s sexual and political history be different? The thought occurs because…
Group think
In Competition No. 3222, you were invited to supply a dystopian short story that incorporates as many collective nouns for…
Barometer
Filming fatalities The actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a cinematographer on set when mistakenly given a gun loaded with real…
Dear Mary
Q. Our two daughters often bring friends down for the weekend. These friends are more than welcome; we enjoy their…
Why the Reds have got the blues
Not so much the hair dryer: more a gentle home perm. Contemplating the increasingly less youthful visage of Ole Gunnar…
Why lockdown sceptics lost the argument
I’m optimistic that the government won’t implement ‘Plan B’, let alone impose another lockdown — but not because sceptics like…
Faking it
Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…
Letter from Israel
From an Israeli army base on the border with Lebanon, I can see the village of Maroun al-Ras. An Iranian…
Witch
‘No, darling, I certainly wouldn’t call you a witch,’ said my husband. ‘You’re not thin enough.’ The Oxford English Dictionary…
to 2527: The main dilemma
The question posed by the song is 11A/ 22A/37A. Suggested by 37A, other unclued lights were anagrams of words meaning…
Puzzle no. 677
Black to play. Turner–Jackson, Hull 4NCL GM Tournament 2021. Which move did James Jackson play to ensure a decisive advance…
2530: Ups and downs
Clockwise round the grid from 2 runs a quotation (5,3,3,5,6,4,3,4,3,3,4,5) followed by the poet’s first name. Her second name is…
