Bookends: Circling the Square Mile
You want the two-word review of this new book about the City? ‘London porn.’ For those of you with more…
Latham’s Law
Bob Carr needs a good dose of the Central Coast water which has perked up the lives of John Della…
Bookends: Squelch of the bladder-wrack
What’s not to like about Candida Lycett Green’s Seaside Resorts (Oldie Publications, £14.99)? Lovely colour photographs of over 100 of…
House rules
Britain needs more houses, and the government’s highly unpopular draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) at least asks how to…
Wild life
Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life Israel Jerusalem was once a very sad place for me and I feared returning. I was…
House rules
Britain needs more houses, and the government’s highly unpopular draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) at least asks how to…
Bookends: Getting it perfect
There is an old joke which says that if you are lost in the desert, start making a salad dressing…
Bookends
Political sketchwriting, like most humorous writing, is one of those things that looks easy, especially to people who would never…
Latham’s Law
Rugby union used to be known as the game they play in heaven. On the evidence displayed at the Rugby…
Bookends
Joan Collins first came to public notice in the 1950s, as a Rank starlet and sex kitten. In the 1970s…
Bookends
One day in the late 17th century, goes the legend, a French monk named Pierre called out to his colleagues:…
Latham’s Law
Not many people see Laurie Ferguson, the Labor member for my old seat of Werriwa, as a raconteur. With his…
Wild Life
Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life Nairobi My friend Philip Coulson was shot at midnight while driving home after the theatre in…
Bookends
Harry Enfield has said that ‘comedy without Galton and Simpson would be like literature without Dickens,’ and he may be…
Latham’s law
When people retire from politics and are recognised for their service, there is an established hierarchy of naming rights. Local…
Bookends
Dr Temperance Brenner, like her creator, Kathy Reichs, is a forensic anthropologist. She works in North Carolina, specialising in ‘decomps…
Bookends
‘Owl?’ said Pooh. ‘What’s a biography?’ ‘A biography,’ replied Owl, ‘is an Important Book. Such as an Interested Person might…
Bookends: The Jazz Baroness
She was born Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild. Her father, Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, an ardent lepidopterist, named her Pannonica, Nica for…
Latham’s Law
The British Prime Minister David Cameron promised to build a big society. Yet all his nation has seen is a…
Latham’s law
What is it about Q&A? People who despise the show feel compelled to watch it every Monday night. It has…
Wild life
Indian Ocean On Hassan’s dhow, shaped like Vasco da Gama’s caravel, I can forget about dry land for a fortnight…
Bookends: Laughing by the book
Comedy is a serious business. The number of young people who seek to make a living making other people laugh…
Bookends
Of all the great cultural shifts of recent years, the rise to respectability of American comics may be the strangest.…
Latham’s law
In re-reading William Shawcross’s biography of Rupert Murdoch I was struck by the ideological extremism of its subject matter. In…
Bookends: Corpses in the coal hole
Ruth Rendell has probably pulled more surprises on her readers than any other crime writer. But the one she produces…
