Adopt a hero
I am often asked which players I admire most and which grandmasters, writers and champions exerted the most influence on…
No. 572
White to play. This is from Nguyen-Alekseenko, Khanty-Mansiysk 2019. White’s queen and rook are both attacked. How does he maintain…
Moggisms
In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with…
2426: Her love
The unclued lights (including one of three words, two of two words, and a pair) are names for or are…
to 2423: Redheads
The unclued lights were all leaders of the USSR. First prize Wendy Atkin, Sleaford, LincsRunners-up Robert Burgon, North Berwick, East…
David Cameron is more authentic than Boris Johnson
I don’t recall exactly when I first met David Cameron, but it must have been in Oxford in 1985 shortly…
Farewell, Garry Richardson. We’ll miss you
A day of sporting shocks this Sunday past. As if the news of Tracey Horrobin’s bewitching performance with the ball…
Dear Mary: Can I ask my vegan friend to buy eggs and bacon when I stay with her?
Q. The other day a dear friend rang from her car with all the time in the world to burn…
It’s so easy to go mad in Oxford: Chiang Mai Kitchen reviewed
Oxford is a pile of medieval buildings filled with maniacs, and is therefore one of the most interesting places on…
The link between politics, moisturiser and your air conditioning unit
I asked my husband if I should spend £59 on 20 millilitres of Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Intense Reset…
In Vogue
A kangaroo on the beach with a model was the unsubtle cover of Vogue in December 1965. It will be…
Deserter dads
Nearly everyone in New Zealand has been made to feel they could play a part in the forthcoming Royal Commission…
What to do to grinning do-gooders
In the 1860s, Australian colonies adopted, virtually unaltered, the English Companies Act 1862. Despite initial distrust of this new corporate…
Worse than 18C
The federal government’s draft religious discrimination bill highlights – no doubt unconsciously – some of the limitations on freedom of…
Woodstock woes
Thanks to the refusal of Australian weather to stick to the IPCC script, Sydneysiders have just experienced one of the…
Iran’s hostage chess
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad,’ wrote Mark…
Brown study
I have recently been reading two political books each of which was a complete waste of time and money. Then…
Campus of dunces
Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) showed higher education failing democracy and impoverishing students. Forty years later,…
Our unique opportunity
Australia, more than any other, is a child of the two great English-speaking nations. They have for two centuries successively…
Euro notes
Hungary rhapsody for Tony Abbott If only the voters of Warringah had been Hungarian. The land of goulash and paprika,…
Conversation stopper
A s heavy snow fell in southeastern Australia this week, for the third time this year, preparations were still underway…
Diary
When a few months ago my friend Tom Switzer – former editor of this magazine and now director of the…
The eve of the Bernie-Warren online battle
The great ‘Bernie vs. Warren’ online wars have yet to fully commence, and the current state of affairs resembles something…
Kiev won’t chicken out over Trump’s desired Biden probe
For several years Donald Trump has depicted himself as a kind of Roger Thornhill, the advertising executive in Alfred Hitchcock’s…
