Aussie Life
Do fish have feelings? And if they do, does anybody care? RSPCA Australia’s willingness to lease their logo to salmon…
Aussie Language
The New York Times has chosen a word to describe what happens to people under Covid restrictions: ‘languishing’. Under lockdown…
Tea with the WI offers lessons on responsible investment
Late-breaking exam results: many of the City’s top fund managers have failed a vital test of ‘stewardship’ — defined for…
Treehouses
You can’t (and probably shouldn’t) design a treehouse. Treehouses should grow organically, in every sense: they must be made of…
Letters
Out of practice Sir: GPs are not ‘hiding behind their telephones’ (Leading article, 4 September). In-person appointments are the core…
Tsunami of piffle
Deep breath. Here goes. Winsome Pinnock’s new play about Turner opens with one of the most confusing and illogical scenes…
Portrait of the week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced a new tax in the Commons branded a ‘health and social care levy’.…
The brave new world of work
Is flexible working better or worse for productivity? What is the correct blend of remote and office work? Billions of…
Emergency exit
For 18 months, the government has held power over us as never before in peacetime. The emergency powers granted by…
Man up
‘The world is hell, and men are both the tormented souls and the devils within it.’ This was the cheery…
Low Life
In the New Year I was introduced to a couple who had fled Britain impulsively on New Year’s Eve with…
Sale of the century
In my bedroom there is a small lidded laundry basket. It was designed by Geoffrey Lusty for Lloyd Loom, a…
Real life
‘I’ve got COPD,’ said a friend of mine, not elaborating at all as I stared at him waiting for him…
Bridge
The end to the European Championships Qualifier — from an English perspective — was one of the most dramatic ever…
Darkness visible
Translating the story of Jimmy Savile to stage or screen is a creative minefield, says Jonathan Maitland, who knows from first-hand experience
Dear Mary
Q. My granddaughter Jane has been asked on a date to the Wolseley by George (both pseudonyms). Although she finds…
Divine comedy
Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce…
The stories that are too good to check
Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news…
Bricking it
Herself is an intensely powerful film about domestic violence that isn’t Nil By Mouth or The Killer Inside Me or…
Testing times
In London, the weather is a gentle sashaying mockery. An Indian summer reminds us of the sullen apology of summer…
Quenelles
When Peter Quennell was sent down from Oxford for consorting with a woman called Cara (by Evelyn Waugh’s account), he…
