The turf
The emphasis may all be on speed horses these days, with breeders interested only in horses that struggle to get…
What’s the Tory majority for?
One of the things that distinguishes Boris Johnson from the last three Tory prime ministers is that he has a…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. I recently attended a wedding which was (for me) quite ‘grand’, with a church ceremony followed by a reception.…
Little people, big nightmare
I think it’s for the best if we ban all children’s books containing the word ‘dream’. Dream big, little dreamer,…
Bridge
‘Table presence’ is a funny old expression in bridge. You might think it means what it would in any other…
Free schools are victims of their own success
For the founders of the West London Free School, of which I was one, last Thursday should have been a…
The ever-changing scene
It must have been shortly after my first performance of Not I in London in 2005 when Matthew Evans, the…
The game of life
The extraordinary sporting achievement of Emma Raducanu and the response it has received from royalty and politicians alike makes one…
Real life
The two-acre smallholding lived up to its name in being very, very small indeed. We had to squeeze around the…
Letters
A kick up the assetocracy Sir: While it was heartening to see Fraser Nelson take a stand against the ‘assetocracy’…
Mann’s secret desires
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
Portrait of the week
Home The government decided to offer booster vaccinations to those over 50. Children aged 12 to 15 would be offered…
A brainwave… or not
We open with Theo, our narrator, and Robin, his son, looking at the night sky through a telescope. ‘Darkness this…
Passports
The Egyptologist Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson interprets drawings in a tomb in Thebes as persons queuing up to have passports…
Into the woods
Anyone who spends time among trees senses how good that is for their physical and mental wellbeing, says Ursula Buchan
Let’s have more diversity at the BBC
I noticed with interest that Gigalum island — off the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll — was up for sale for…
Australia and the new special relationship
The awkwardly-named AUKUS agreement reflects Washington’s escalating concern about China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific. It signals London’s determination to be…
Sir Humphrey’s spirit survives in Whitehall
Fear has been the watchword of Westminster this week, as nervy ministers check to see whether they have survived the cull.…
A Cheney imperiled
Kemmerer, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has the political brain of a sucked egg, as her egregiously self-destructive decision to join…
The patriotism of CNN’s ‘magic wall’
It’s becoming spooky season, by which I mean not Halloween but elections — at least in Virginia and New Jersey,…
Democrats reluctantly backed Newsom: ‘It was more like taking out the trash’
In August, polls showed that Gavin Newsom’s chances of surviving a recall were slipping away. Many Democrats were so apathetic…
Dan, why not get Our Mary on the phone?
We need to get Our Mary on the line. That’s Mary Donaldson from Tasmania, the future Queen consort of Denmark.…
Does AUKUS show there’s still life in the Morrison government?
Yesterday’s surprise announcement of AUKUS – the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership – is huge news. Not only is…
