Can a home really be forever?
Graham Norton’s latest novel ‘blends dark humour and emotional weight with ease’, says the Radio Times. That may well be,…
The Tories have only themselves to blame
I was amused the other week to read George Osborne’s Diary in this magazine. In it the man now in…
Ageing well
A classic opera production ages like wine. When David McVicar’s staging of Handel’s Giulio Cesare first opened at Glyndebourne in…
Dear Mary: can you leave a party without saying goodbye?
Q. Often at parties strangers bear down on me looking excited and are then offended when I don’t recognise them.…
The key to dealing with this election? Wine
An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually…
Sly, sexy and smart: The Nature of Love reviewed
The Nature of Love is a French-Canadian film about an academic who considers herself happily married but then encounters a…
How Elon Musk could solve the housing crisis
People sometimes ask me why I don’t go into politics. Why on earth would I do that? No, if you…
My nights with the eagle owls
Provence Summer has arrived. The evenings are warm enough to sit out on the balcony terrace and watch the lights…
Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?
Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped,…
Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne
‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when…
The funny side of being cancelled
Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching…
History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly
Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and…
Our new MPs should read Cicero
It would make a pleasant change if every elected MP was to make it their ambition to be honestus, Latin…
‘I have to forge my own path’: Rachel Reeves on her plans for the economy
Outside a café on the outskirts of Reading, Rachel Reeves is listening to the concerns of small-business owners. ‘Something that…
How we became addicted to vaping
For those of us with a poor grasp of time, who can still recall when a night at the pub…
Brexit has helped the EU
There was hardly an election poster to be seen on the roadside during a two-hour drive from London to the…
A manifesto for Labour
Never has an opposition leader with ratings as dismal as Keir Starmer’s gone on to win an election. In any…
If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV
The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
I will miss my vote
I feel as if I first took part in a general election even before I was born. My father was…
