Why we should all start hoarding cash and loo rolls
If there’s anyone in Britain who knows how to keep grocery shelves stacked, it’s former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave…
High life
They have stepped into the pop-culture spotlight via the HBO hit Succession, a hatchet job on the very rich and…
Portrait of the week
Home In an extraordinary wrangle between government departments, the Treasury accused Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, of ‘making things up’…
Stepmother superior
Leos Janacek cared about words. He’d hang about central Brno, notebook in hand, eavesdropping on conversations and trying to capture…
Conkers
Last weekend, for the 54th time, hundreds of competitors met to compete for the title of world conker champion in…
This grotesque failure to market rugby
Could rugby union get any better? The entertainment in the Premiership is breathtaking and the overall product as good as…
Letters
Gasbags Sir: Seb Kennedy tells us that, like Covid, our looming energy crisis came from China (‘Power grab’, 9 October).…
Mind your language
There’s a rude gesture in Pickwick that I don’t quite understand. Mr Jackson, a young lawyer’s clerk in conversation with…
Dear Mary
Q. On a train journey the other day I sat opposite someone I found immensely attractive. We struck up a…
Morrissey remastered
Many of us who grew up loving the Smiths have rather shelved that affection in recent years. Many of us,…
Totally bats
There is a Batman restaurant in London, or rather there was: Savini at the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus. Savini was…
Spooky furniture
‘I’ve actually seen ghosts.’ This statement comes less than ten minutes into the first episode of Dark House, a limited-series…
Chicken Marbella
What is it about retro food? I don’t mean nostalgic food, from school dinner favourites to your grandmother’s signature dishes.…
The pandemic has made cynics of us all
A report by MPs into the spread of the coronavirus has concluded that the government’s approach constituted one of this…
Letter from Gozo
Our plans for the Seychelles twice thwarted, we finally decide on Gozo, Malta. Afraid that the Insulate Britain brigade might…
Aristotle and transphobia
Professor Kathleen Stock of Sussex University is accused by a group of students of being transphobic and a danger to…
Rhodes to nowhere
I’m sympathetic to Oliver Dowden’s formula for defusing culture-war disputes about statues of controversial historic figures: ‘retain and explain’. That…
Chapter and verse
In Competition No. 3220, you were invited to supply a newly discovered short story by a well-known 19th- or 20th-century…
The sudden mate
The hero pauses, plays the move, and announces ‘Checkmate!’ The villain crumples in shock. It’s a scene played out countless…
2528: Not to Lose
Unclued entries are words (one hyphened) or phrases (three of four words each, one of three words, two each of…
