Bread
I cannot claim the gift of prophecy, but early this year — before lockdown panic-buying and the warnings of a…
High life
Gstaad I experienced my first Zoom conference last week, and didn’t think much of it. As the great Yogi Berra…
La petite mort
The oldest churchyard in Torquay is being used by people openly having sex and sunbathing nude in broad daylight. This…
Real life
Always the National Trust sticker. It feels like every time a car parks across the gateway to my horses’ field…
Solution to 2470: Express route
The unclued lights are places served by the Norwegian HURTIGRUTEN ferries from Bergen to Kirkenes. Tromsø (at 4D) overruns into…
Hundrum
Mulan is Disney’s latest live-action remake, coming in at 120 minutes, compared with the 1998 animation, which ran to 80.…
Pirate principality
In 2012, the editors of Vice ran an article aimed at would-be contributors to their self-avowedly edgy magazine headed ‘Never…
Epic of gossip
Staying with Peregrine Eliot (later 10th Earl of St Germans) at Port Eliot in Cornwall, Lucian Freud remembered that the…
Forlorn hope
Parents are always terrified of bad family history repeating itself. Prince Albert dreaded his son Bertie turning into a roué…
Fools and fraudsters
In Money for Nothing, Thomas Levenson brings us into the story of the South Sea Bubble by writing about the…
All things to all men
Britain’s two most famous legendary figures, King Arthur and Robin Hood, remain enduringly and endearingly elusive, and thus ever-fascinating: Arthur…
Stanley and his women
It sometimes rains in Cookham. It rained all day when I visited the Stanley Spencer Gallery to see the exhibition…
Going quietly mad
Like Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel Eileen (2015), Death in Her Hands plays with the conventions of noir. Vesta Gul, a…
Sold down the river
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
To save the Union, negotiate independence
The first cabinet meeting of the new term and Boris Johnson’s summer holiday were both dominated by one concern: how…
Act of God
Man plans, God laughs. Fide, the international federation, organised an Online Olympiad, with 163 teams taking part. We got a…
Portrait of the week
Home Simon Case, aged 41, the private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge 2018-20, was appointed Cabinet Secretary and Head…
With the Benedictines
From 18 October 1946: Their whole aim and object is to exemplify in their lives and corporate activity their sense…
The man who hunted himself
Graham Greene was constantly searching for peace of mind along with escapist thrills, says Nicholas Shakespeare
Barely touching the void
The Royal Albert Hall, as Douglas Adams never wrote, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely,…
Barometer
Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting…
Little wonder
The British Museum’s aim is to use its collection ‘for the benefit and education of humanity’. If that manifests itself…
