Charlie Watts
The endless news is of shows locked down as every form of life is locked down in a nation struggling…
Aussie Life
As a child in Budapest, I heard my grandfather tell the family around the Sunday lunch table to beware the…
Aussie Language
You’ve often come across the charge that ABC news and current affairs programs are being made by ‘activists’ rather than…
Portrait of the week
Home Britain brought its last troops home from Afghanistan, having flown out more than 15,000 people since 14 August; but…
High life
Gstaad Good manners aside, what I miss nowadays is a new, intelligent, finely acted movie. Never have I seen…
Letters
A glimmer of hope Sir: After the debacle of the West’s shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was comforting to read…
The turf
A Sandown Saturday proved the perfect send-off for 12 raceless days on the otherwise wonderful Isle of Mull. A Frankie…
Kanye West: Donda
Grade: C– The nicest thing one can say is that this is a marginally better album than we would have…
Doctor who?
Nye Bevan famously said that he was only able to persuade family doctors to support the creation of the NHS…
Barometer
Escape velocity The evacuation of Afghanistan was likened to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. What were the…
White mischief
Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which…
Off colour
In the 18th century, art historians’ admiration for the beauty of white-ish ancient Greek marble statuary led people to draw…
Low life
Not long after Catriona and I first met, her husband painted my head and shoulders portrait in oils as I…
Another Albion
As August unwound, the EIF settled into the cavernous gazebo that is Edinburgh Park, and things began to loosen up.…
Odd and odder
Leos Carax is the director whose films have always been wilfully odd. Ron and Russell Mael (the brothers from the…
Melodic genius and trainspotter
For some reason, I’d got it into my head that the main work in the Gringolts Quartet’s midday recital at…
Bridge
It’s not often that bridge makes headlines, but last week something extraordinary happened. At the online European Qualifier for the…
Real life
We began searching for the farm of our dreams in Wales as we planned our escape from Surrey. The problem…
Rottweilers in frocks
It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century…
Diary
I have no personal investment in America’s Afghanistan war. My own service in Vietnam, now a half-century in the past,…
