to 2493: Opposites
‘I WANT TO BE ALONE’ (1A) and ‘COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME’ (49/27) were supposedly said by Greta GARBO…
2496: Depart Paddington
Clockwise round the grid from 3 run seven dramatis personae; unclued lights give anagrams of two more. The play’s title…
There is no justification for supporting the IRA
Roy Greenslade held a number of prominent positions in Fleet Street over the course of a long career. But he…
No place like home
In Competition No. 3188, a challenge designed to make us all feel better about the looming prospect of another enforced…
The conservative appeal of drug gangs
According to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the easing of lock-down will be accompanied by a rise in crime…
Low Life
I was supine on the slab and a nurse was rigging me up via wires and tubes to machines and…
The turf
With the Cheltenham Festival close, the quest for serious punting money intensifies. I had one potential contributor identified at Kempton…
Diary
Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…
Walls of fear
In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…
A robot with feelings
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
The Russian conundrum
Churchill was wrong: Russia is neither a riddle nor an enigma. Russians themselves concoct endless stories to glorify their country’s…
A study in parental tyranny
In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…
The last of old England
Thomas Hennell is one of that generation of painters born in 1903 whose collective achievements are such an adornment of…
A three-pipe problem
It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…
Sentimentality served junkie-style
The thing to remember about Chet Baker, an old acquaintance says of the errant jazz musician in Deep In A…
Will Keir Starmer change tack?
A sign that the political landscape is changing in favour of the Conservatives can be found in a YouGov poll…
Election integrity is at stake
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in one of the most important cases for voting rights in decades.…
Will America’s ‘cold civil war’ turn hot?
If the first month of 2021 is anything to go by, the American culture wars show no sign of abating.…
Meghan’s critics and defenders are both wrong
When it comes to Harry and Meghan, is it time for everyone to take a collective deep breath? With the…
How the West can avoid Beijing’s propaganda trap
This time next year the Winter Olympics will have drawn to a close. Beijing will have become the first city…
Immigration is no longer a political problem
Ask voters what the most important issue facing Britain is and just 2 per cent say immigration. Even when you…
Barnier and France fear Brexit Britain’s next moves
Michel Barnier – still officially the EU’s Brexit taskforce leader – gives few interviews. As a Savoyard and keen mountaineer,…
An excess of black bile
Footling around on the internet recently, I stumbled on a clip of a young woman singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ to…