Revolving doors
There is a curious twist in the montage on the cover of Rodney Tiffen’s Disposable Leaders; a detailed treatise on…
Moroccan diary
‘I will call this a KKK meeting’, he announced, triumphantly. Perhaps seeing my bewilderment, my garrulous Moroccan host pointed to…
A bad lot
In Competition No. 2999 you were invited to supply a poem which takes as its first line W.S. Gilbert’s ‘A policeman’s…
2311: Keith II
The unclued lights, (two of two words), are of a kind. Chambers does not give the solution at 12 Across.…
Solution to 2308: Landmark
Solution to 2308: Landmark This puzzle was Doc’s 600th to be published in this series. The unclued lights are two-word…
Dear Mary
Q. Re getting away from bores at drinks parties (Dear Mary, 20 May). I take issue with the idea that…
A gruesome retelling
‘A shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead’ intoned W.B.…
Moments of absurdity
The bestselling humourist and New Yorker essayist David Sedaris is renowned for an almost hypnotic deadpan drollery and maybe especially…
Homer Simpson in a chasuble
This is one of the most remarkable, hilarious, jaw-droppingly candid and affecting memoirs I have read for some time —…
The war in the shadows
I once spent an evening, back in the mid-1980s, with William Colby, the legendary spy and director of the CIA.…
The ruin of a ruin
In the welter of Syrian bloodshed, why should we remember the death of a single man? Because he was the…
Home from the hill
As well as being a leading architectural historian Mary Miers is an editor at Country Life. For her latest book…
Cold comfort
All animals, Scott Carney tells us, seek comfort. But human beings are a bit different. We don’t need to spend…
Perfect, gentle Knight
I once asked Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, what she did to relax. Nailing me to the wall…
Forty years of comfort-eating
In 2015 a pair of linen drawers belonging to Queen Victoria sold at auction for over £12,000. In old age…
The last great pandemic
The symptoms of the Spanish flu could be ghastly. Perhaps Laura Spinney should have chosen her title with more care…
The fount of all knowledge
Somewhere around the middle of the 17th century our modern concept of the museum began to take shape. Until then…
Food
Pollen Street Social lives in a Georgian house on Pollen Street, Mayfair, a narrow curve between Hanover Street and Maddox…
High Life
New York Although both guilt and innocence fascinate me, I’m not so sure that there is such a thing…
Who put the cult into multiculturalism?
A British General of the Raj, told that suttee was an Indian custom, replied: ‘We have a custom too. When…
Obamacare, Trumpcare… Mediscare?
In his joint press conference with Malcolm Turnbull in New York this month, Donald Trump said that Australia has ‘better…
Green power fantasies
The cool phrases among the proponents of green electricity are ‘distributed networks’ and ‘micro networks’ which, we are told, will…
Back to basics
At the end of law school you undertake ‘practical legal training’ to develop the essential skills of advocacy our adversarial…
Holy Land Diary
Last week, I was in Tel Aviv, to receive an honorary doctorate. The official party entered to the strains of…
