Alpacas – the latest must-have wedding accessory
Of all the window displays in Amsterdam this spring there was just one that stopped me in my tracks. I…
Portugal’s entrancing capital has always looked to the sea
Paris, Venice, Montevideo, Cape Town, Hobart. There are cities, like fado, that pluck at the gut. In my personal half…
Beautifully out of sync: All the Lives We Never Lives reviewed
‘Myshkin’ wants ‘a tiding ending’ to his life and has settled down to write his will. An ageing Indian horticulturalist,…
Chopin’s Piano is an eclectic trip through 19th-century romanticism
It is easier to say what this book is not than to describe what it is. It is not a…
Nothing doing
There is a long and noble history of books about doing nothing. In the 5th century bc the sage Lao…
First Novels
Katharine Kilalea is a South African poet who has written a startlingly good first novel. OK, Mr Field (Faber, £12.99)…
Caryl Phillips’s new novel manages to make Jean Rhys boring!
The problem with writing about writers — and a particular blight on the current vogue for autofiction — is that…
The Stuart supremacy
Few twists of political fortune are as discombobulating as the youngest child making off with the family inheritance. Richard III,…
Why I am not drinking for the rest of the year
What a week this has been! What a great mood I’m in! Why, it’s almost like being in bed… with…
The anatomy of a Spectator summer party
I flew from Marseille to Gatwick, rode the Gatwick Express to Victoria, and walked down the thoroughfare of Victoria Street…
Is EE fantastic after all?
This was going to be about how a major phone company surprised me by delivering a fantastic service. I was…
Bridge
I have a horrible feeling my column this week is going to read like a mutual-back-scratch. In the last issue,…
Leningrad Lip
This description of Viktor Korchnoi was coined (an oblique reference to Muhammad Ali’s nickname of Louisville Lip) by Ian Ward…
no. 514
Black to play. This is from Karpov-Korchnoi, Dortmund 1994. In this unusual position Karpov has two queens but Korchnoi’s forces…
Closed shop
In Competition No. 3056 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of the High Street. Your…
2367: When pigs fly
Five unclued lights form a quotation from a work concerning the 18 of 19, 15A and 23. The 18’s name…
to 2364: Frolicsome Threesome
WEIN (2D) suggests 21, 35 and 37 (German wines); WEIB suggests 10, 25 and 42 (Germanic female names); GESANG suggests 14,…
Video games like Fortnite are fun — so they must be bad
It was only a matter of time. The headteacher of a primary school in Ilfracombe in Devon has banned ‘Flossing’,…
The true winner of this World Cup? Russia
Like most people with any taste, I like the odd vodka, I love Crime and Punishment, I enjoy Turgenev and…
Dear Mary: How do you deal with a monologuing fellow guest on board a yacht?
Q. A long-standing friend has an admirer of some means. He has invited her to borrow his fully staffed and…
A Wimbledon-themed tea has little to do with tennis, but I loved it: Claridges reviewed
Claridge’s is a toff sanctuary and one of the best hotels on earth. It specialises in its own myth, which…
Has Boris brought ‘turd’ back into polite society?
I have never lost my admiration for Boris Johnson’s summary of British ambitions over Brexit as ‘having our cake and…
An inconvenient truth about child abuse
In debates about child abuse and neglect, truth normally becomes the first casualty. ‘A quarter of Australian children had witnessed…
May day for Brexit
I confess to being incredibly naive. After the 23 June 2016 Brexit referendum when 1.7 million more Britons voted for…
