Longing to be wanton
Once in a while, just at the right moment, a truly gorgeous real-life love story appears out of the blue,…
Puttanesca
The lockdown could have been the moment I was waiting for: a chance to make those long, slow recipes whose…
Farce and frolics
Cinema history is a strange thing. A couple of months ago the Guardian began a series in which film critics…
Author’s notebook
To my surprise, what I miss most about life before the lockdown are parties. As others pine for restaurants and…
The best recordings of Bruckner’s Eighth
I am daunted. Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony is a work that I regard with love, awe and even anxiety. I always…
to 2454: 17 Across
The thirteen unclued lights are all breads, hence the puzzle’s real title at 17A. First prizeNicholas Grogan, Purley, Surrey Runners-up…
Bridge
My entertainment last week was watching the NN-Cup, a ‘Goulash’ tournament normally held in Moscow, now played online for the…
Have you caught the remote-working bug?
One of the few benefits to emerge from this pandemic is that the world’s population has been given a crash…
Floor
In the game of ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’, begun by Alan S.C. Ross (1907-80) and popularised in Nancy Mitford’s volume Noblesse…
Who pays tribute to whom?
At a well-reported political meeting at London’s Queen’s Hall during the first world war the preacher and suffragette Maude Royden…
Wrestling with ideas
One of the delights of going to stay with my grandparents in the 1970s was that my grandmother was a…
The birth of a new telecoms giant heralds the end of Branson’s empire
This month’s most significant corporate deal attracted less attention than it might have done in normal times, crowded out by…
The good die young
In the two generations since Watergate, the image of the journalist has gone from that of plucky truth-seeker to sensationalist…
The Spectator’s Notes
A friend, a senior retired mandarin, emails. He complains that rural lockdown means that he and his wife have ‘got…
Opposites attract
On the way back from my daily dawn march in the park, I often pass my neighbour, a distinguished gentleman…
Who can still make a Sunday joint last a week?
Sunday lunch was always roast beef and, in the traditional way, the Yorkshire pudding was served first with gravy, supposedly…
The magic realist
It was not until I went to Harvard in 1988 to take a year out from the Foreign Office that…
This is not a natural disaster
Should our future permit an occupation so frivolous, historians years from now will make a big mistake if they blame…
In defence of the lockdown
I realised things were getting back to normal when I threw away a third of a tin of chopped tomatoes…
