2333: Unchangeable
One unclued light is a three-word phrase indicating the way in which each of the answers to clues in italics…
Lewes
Autumn is upon us, and the streets are full of families in fancy dress. People of all ages are dressing…
to 2330: IMAGE
The poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ (originally ‘XXII’) by William Carlos Williams is considered perhaps the foremost example of IMAGISM. First…
The tyranny of the bedtime story
All surveys carried out by retail businesses with a view to generating press coverage should be treated with extreme caution,…
Dear Mary
Q. What is the etiquette of hospital visiting? A friend in his fifties is about to spend six weeks in…
Death hovers over the scrum
Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a…
The queen of hotels
Jean-Georges at the Connaught — formerly the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, but it was renamed during the first world war,…
The
Veronica, who looks at Twitter, told me of an exchange she thought would interest me, about the use of the.…
The Spectator’s notes
Theresa May’s style of negotiating with the European Union is coming spookily to resemble David Cameron’s. She is in the…
Wayne’s world
Ballet would have been an obvious revenue stream for Sadler’s Wells when it reopened back in 1998 but straight-up classics…
The old ways
I’m sitting across a café table from a young man with a sheaf of drawings that have an archive look…
Amazing Grace
In the first scene of this distinctly odd documentary, Grace Jones meets a group of fans, who squeal with delight…
Rattle’s hall
Even in a Trump world where reality is what you say it is, the London Symphony Orchestra’s announcement of a…
Irish ayes
Luigi Cherubini is the pantomime villain of French romantic music. As head of the Paris Conservatoire in the 1820s he…
London calling
Madame Monet was bored. Wouldn’t you have been? Exiled to London in the bad, cold winter of 1870–71. In rented…
Family planning
Beginning starts at the end. A Crouch End party has just finished and the sitting room is a waste tip…
Diary
I hope one of my children studies law so at least he or she can read about me in Constitutional…
The Multiculti cult
While it is said that a really bad idea never quite goes away, we could surely try to make multiculturalism…
No charge in electric cars
Imagine ordering a population to evacuate from the path of a hurricane if they only had electric cars to drive.…
Here we go again
You don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that the next costly national distraction after the gay marriage circus…
Sex and gender in the British Empire, anyone?
In 440 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus broke with tradition by collecting primary sources and then systematically and…
Simon Collins
In a couple of weeks we’ll know whether the last 5 million votes in the same-sex marriage postal survey confirmed…
Age of Endarkenment
All around us, we are seeing the cultural lights of Western civilisation flickering, if not being dimmed or even switched…
Up the Zambezi: why Rio Tinto’s colossal coal cock-up is going to court
Another week, another blue-chip in the dock. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought fraud charges against London-based mining…
