Aspirin should be reassuringly expensive
Last year, those rationalist killjoys at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prosecuted Reckitt Benckiser over four products: Nurofen Migraine…
My pedigree chum
The backlash has been brutal, unforgiving and, in common with the left’s reactions to so many things, almost hysterical in…
Letters from my husband
At this time of general opprobrium for Britain by the more vociferous officials of the European Union, most particularly Jean-Claude…
Enemies of history
At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to…
Why go into politics?
The state of politics here, and in the United Kingdom, and in the United States, raises the question of why…
A few good books
It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever ITV or the BBC decides — the latter usually with charter renewal…
A five-ring fiasco
The ambitions of the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin — that they…
Ice cream
It was a mistake to tell us about the gelati-to-sightseeing ratio. This was the formula my father, his younger sister…
No. 419
White to play. This position is from So-Giri, Bilbao Masters 2016. How did White make the most of his active…
Rich in legend and song
There is an immediate problem for anyone producing a guide to places in Scotland with literary connections: as Walter Scott…
2271: I’m not here or there
All but one of the unclued lights can be preceded by the same word, large or small. Solvers are requested…
Maryland’s mean streets
Quick tip, should you ever find yourself alone in the interview room at the police headquarters of Prince George’s County,…
Paddy Ashdown’s magical thinking
The dog days of July probably aren’t the best time to launch a new political movement, but then the people…
‘I wish you were never born’
All parents worry about the extent to which their children will expose their private weirdness to the world. They tell…
Dear Mary
Q. Every summer, just when England is at its loveliest, we have to pack everything up and make a stressy…
Paean to the Starman
On 11 January 2016 Paul Morley was awoken by an urgent voicemail from the Today Programme. Could he talk about…
Wow!
Veronica has become quite an addict of Twitter, just as the rest of the young are forsaking it. ‘It’s easy…
Smashing stuff
‘Joe lay in bed in his mother’s house. He thought about committing suicide. Such thinking was like a metronome for…
Nothing new under the sun
Rupert Sheldrake had it coming. In A New Science of Life (1981), he argued that animals and plants have inherited…
Rough justice for Sir Shifty, but MPs have got him bang to rights
Not even your quixotic columnist is prepared to mount a full-on defence of Sir Philip Green this week, following the…
The gospel truth
More brides in Britain go down the aisle to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ than to any other tune, Simon…
High life
Rosa Monckton is married to my old editor Dominic Lawson and they have two girls. Rosa was a close friend…
Everything is illuminated
One could honour God with prayer, of course, and build cathedrals, amass treasuries, turn choirs into stained-glass jewel boxes, carve…
Real life
The colourful banners at the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais spell out the words Treat Shop Relax Refresh Eat. But it…
Heavenly bodies
Initially it must have been a nasty surprise. On 16 August 1972 an amateur scuba diver named Stefano Mariottini was…
