Long life
Like the prisoners released from their dungeons at the end of Fidelio, they came blinking into the sunlight
Bridge
Richard Selway was one of the first friends I made in the bridge world. Long-standing ‘host’ at TGR’s, he was…
Witsch craft
The ever reliable Steve Giddins has just published a new book on that great strategist Aron Nimzowitsch. This is the…
no. 324
White to play. This is from Storey–Jarmany, -British Championship, Aberystwyth 2014. White’s position is overwhelming but what is the quickest…
Spinning Jenny
In Competition No. 2857 you were invited to take the first line of Leigh Hunt’s mini rondeau ‘Jenny Kissed me’,…
2172: Para
In June we lost a popular 40. Clockwise round the grid from 3 run the titles of two of his…
to 2169: Land
The grid represents Germany, with six bordering countries round the edge, and four cities in the interior, positioned roughly appropriately…
Following in my father’s neglectful footsteps
Since I set up the West London Free School, I've been a much less hands-on parent
Autonomy
Apparently, it means you should have the right to die – but not the right to climb a ladder without permission
Brown Study
Being an insomniac, I woke about 4 a.m. last Friday, turned on the BBC and there was the news already,…
Battered and beaten down
It’s surely a fancy, the conviction that my first memory of newspapering came as a three-year-old, but I swear the…
Chemo Notes
It’s now six months since I was diagnosed with cancer. That was a terrible start to the year. The surgeon…
Qualities of a leader
Decisiveness. Perseverance. Effectiveness. These are the three key words being bandied around by the world’s top diplomats to describe Australian…
Australian Notes
At first Moscow dubbed ‘unacceptable’ Tony Abbott’s brief speeches in Parliament and elsewhere on the downing of the Malaysian airliner…
Magic moments
Peter Oborne’s masterly new book on cricket recalls a special Test rivalry between Australia and Pakistan
Diary Australia
After years of arguments, days of negotiations and hours of speeches from the Greens, the carbon tax was finally abolished.…
The art of celebrity
‘The Picture of the Prime Minister hangs above the Chimney of his own Closet, but I have seen that of…
