Barometer
Naming the weather Former BBC weatherman Bill Giles has said he’s fed up with storms being named. — The practice…
Comfort the suffering
If a single book could help you to be kinder and more compassionate, could expand and deepen your understanding of…
Descent into hell
In my work as a reviewer, a small, steady proportion of all the books publishers send me concern the Holocaust.…
Father, son and holy ghost
No disrespect to any of the present incumbents, but Karl Miller (1931–2014) was a literary editor in an age when…
Nothing matters very much
Nothing will come of nothing, said Lear, because he wasn’t familiar with quantum physics. According to our current best theories,…
Carve their names with pride
‘Women,’ Captain Selwyn Jepson, SOE’s senior recruiting officer, once wrote, ‘have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage…
Night of the living dead
On 5 February 1862, the night Abraham Lincoln and his wife gave a lavish reception in the White House, with…
Light in the East
Christopher de Bellaigue, a journalist who has spent much of his working life in the Middle East, has grown tired…
Back with a vengeance
One hour in No. 5 Cheyne Row, Virginia Woolf observed, will tell you more about the Carlyles than all the…
Goodbye, Uncle Bill
While Bill Leak’s talents as an artist and satirist are plain to see, the man also had a great gift…
In memoriam: Bill Leak, free speech warrior
He wrote about it, talked about, put brush and pencil to paper about it and railed about it with wry…
It’s over
The Prime Minister must accept full responsibility for the political predicament facing the government and his leadership. Writing for the…
18c threatens young people
While much of the debate about section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act has focused on Andrew Bolt and Bill…
Will the government miss another free kick from the union movement?
Today thousands of CFMEU members across Australia took the day off work to march in solidarity with retail and hospitality…
The Jews of Asia?
For months I have been peddling my vociferous obsession with Korea onto unsuspecting friends and colleagues. What began as an…
The Suffolk-Essex border
You’ve already seen a picture of the Essex-Suffolk border. Assuming you’ve seen Constable’s ‘The Haywain’, that is: the Stour (the…
Mutkin’s masterpiece
This Saturday, 11 March, the annual Oxford v Cambridge Varsity match is being hosted by The Royal Automobile Club Pall…
no. 447
Black to play. This position is from Kozera-Wang, Varsity Match 2016. White has powerful threats and Black has only one…
Mark making
In Competition No. 2988 you were invited to compose a poem making the case for a national commemoration day for…
Dear Mary
Q. Most of my friends have small children and being mostly media types in west London, have given them silly…
A vintage that tastes of Old Possum
Eliot. After 50 years trying to make sense of his verse, and at the risk of admitting to rampant philistinism,…
Ambition deficit
Some Budgets are historic, most are boring and a small number can be remembered as a disaster. After just a few months, Philip…
High life
A lousy fortnight if ever there was one. Two great friends, Lord Belhaven and Stenton and Aleko Goulandris, had their…
