The James Herriot of Africa
Great Rift Valley The mare hangs her head; her neck is swollen, her eyes bloody red, crammed by flies. She…
Be your own boss
There is much talk today of the enthusiasm with which young entrepreneurs are setting up businesses. One reason why this…
Barometer
Christmas birthday Next year has a claim to be the 400th birthday of Father Christmas. Ben Jonson wrote a short…
Diary
Flying home to New York, I noticed a disturbing innovation in pre-flight cabin announcements. After the welcomes, exhortations, and promotions…
Communion in the trenches
From ‘The Sacrament’, The Spectator, 25 December 1915: We were fairly fagged out, all of us, after a heavy day…
Portrait of the year
January David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a…
The art of Beatrix Potter
‘I will do something sooner or later,’ wrote Beatrix Potter in the secret diary she kept in a private code.…
Grandma: a feminist comedy that punches magnificently above its weight
Apologies if you were expecting a review of Star Wars here, but Disney is not allowing critics access prior to…
Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?
A young Polynesian woman lies outstretched on sheets of a soft lemon yellow. She is wrapped in deep blue cloth,…
Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?
The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events…
The rise and fall of Sony
Here is a Japanese fairy tale for Christmas. An allegory of insight, opportunism and a fall from favour. It is…
A paean to the fleshy delights and tacky excess of Soho
The other evening, surrounded by Christmas shoppers in the West End of London, I happened to glance up at the…
Darth Vader is dirty and it’s not just me that thinks so
Malcolm Tucker delivered the best description of Star Wars, in The Thick of It: ‘The one about the fucking hairdresser,…
Darth Vader is dirty and it’s not just me that thinks so
Malcolm Tucker delivered the best description of Star Wars, in The Thick of It: ‘The one about the fucking hairdresser,…
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…
Royal Opera’s Cavalleria rusticana isn’t nearly vulgar enough
How often do you get a chance to see two operas by Leoncavallo in the same city in the same…
Royal Opera’s Cavalleria rusticana isn’t nearly vulgar enough
How often do you get a chance to see two operas by Leoncavallo in the same city in the same…
Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality – a masterpiece of nothing
It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing?…
Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality – a masterpiece of nothing
It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing?…
Answers to ‘Spot the Line of Poetry’
1. Ill-met by moonlight (Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) 2. Hope springs eternal in the human breast (Pope’s ‘An Essay…
Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV
Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images…
Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV
Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images…
Australian diary
Turnbull the blackbird has been obsessing me, stealing what’s not his. He’s hovering by a nest right outside my study…
Spot the line of poetry
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