Australian letters
A Del Con writes… Sir, your leading article of 28 May 2016 sets out the terrible choice we face on…
Brodie Castle
Is there a more forlornly romantic spot in Britain than the moors east of Inverness where the Jacobite dream died?…
Life on the edge
The grandmaster Nigel Davies has just written a new book on the Pirc Defence, a variation in which Black sacrifices…
No. 411
Black to play. This is from Cherin-Pedini, Italy 2016. Black has just sacrificed some material as he could foresee a…
The law is an ass
In Competition No. 2950 you were invited to propose a new and ludicrous piece of legislation along with a justification…
Your problems solved
Q. We moved recently and new neighbours invited us to join them for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I planned…
A hell-cat in heaven
Over the weekend I officiated at a funeral. Earlier in the morning there had been lowering rain clouds, but by…
Continental drift
It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now…
High life
Write about things you really know was the advice Papa Hemingway offered wannabe writers, so here goes: the French Open…
Long life
It was a famous American editor and columnist Michael Kinsley who once defined the political ‘gaffe’ as something that occurs…
Long life
It was a famous American editor and columnist Michael Kinsley who once defined the political ‘gaffe’ as something that occurs…
Low life
Hours before boarding the cross-Channel car ferry, I received a text message from the company warning of severe fuel shortages…
Low life
Hours before boarding the cross-Channel car ferry, I received a text message from the company warning of severe fuel shortages…
Including
Just as, in writing, many people use an exclamation mark to indicate that they have made a joke, so there…
Real life
Turns out you can’t eat grass. A horse does something clever to it in its mouth that humans can’t. Fine,…
Call yourself a friend?
Should we be surprised that friendship isn’t always mutual? That is one of the findings of a team of researchers…
Call yourself a friend?
Should we be surprised that friendship isn’t always mutual? That is one of the findings of a team of researchers…
A monkey-brained case for Donald Trump
A few years ago I was asked to speak at a conference in New York. ‘Where would be the best…
Aristotle vs the civil service
The civil service is to be allowed to find out what job applicants’ ‘socio-economic background’ is. What abject drivel is…
Barometer
Gorilla warfare Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was shot at Cincinnati Zoo after he started dragging away a boy aged four…
Diary
In 1873, when Jules Verne published his Around the World in Eighty Days, it seemed worth betting that a circumnavigation…
Against armistice
From ‘President Wilson and the Lessons of History’, 2 June 1916: Emphatically it is not a war of what we…
Letters
Cameron’s bluster Sir: Peter Oborne is surely right that lying and cheating are now commonplace in the heart of government…
Portrait of the week
Home Two British men were charged with immigration offences after the rescue by night of 18 Albanian migrants, two of…
