Etiquette
Dear Mary solves problems for Nicky Haslam, Nigel Slater, Professor Mary Beard and others
From Nicky Haslam Q. Being considered something of a guru on the subject of things common, can you advise me…
Dear Mary
Q. I work in the London art market. Often, when I run into a fellow dealer and ask how they…
The secret brilliance of Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’
I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was…
Dear Mary: I always end up subsidising my greedy friend’s lunch
Q. I have lunch once a month with an old university friend. Over the years we have both thickened out…
Dear Mary: How can I greet friends without clashing specs?
Q. As an old trout, large in height and breadth, I have taken a leaf out of the documentary Advanced…
Dear Mary: Another way to deal with a maddening blackhead
Q. Might I suggest an alternative solution to E.B. of London’s problem (3 October) about the person sporting a ‘maddening’…
Dear Mary: How can girls avoid freezing in cold marquees?
Q. What do you do when you are so cold at a party that you cannot enjoy it? At a…
Dear Mary
Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love…
Dear Mary
Q. I regularly travel on the Ashford-St Pancras train and usually put my case on the seat next to me…
Dear Mary
Q. I am going on a late holiday with a group of people who are keen on nude swimming, which…
Your problems solved
Q. How do you persuade someone drunk to leave a party when it doesn’t make sense for them to stay?…
Your problems solved
Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre…
Your problems solved
Q. Is there a polite way of not letting someone hold your baby? I love giving mine to people to…
Your problems solved
Q. While renting in Rock last week, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to join her large house…
Your problems solved
Q. I have learned that someone I much admired in youth is about to become single again. I only have…
Your problems solved
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me,…
Dear Mary
Q. At a recent literary festival I attended a talk with a high-profile octogenarian writer. I had already bought her…
Your problems solved
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the…
Your problems solved
Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory.…
Your problems solved
Q. What should I say the next time I run into a woman with whom I was at art school…
Dear Mary
Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had…
Your problems solved
Q. I have a friend who can be shy and inhibited. Recently, he was invited to stay on a Caribbean…
Your problems solved
Q. As a writer I find working at home too distracting. I am a longstanding member of the London Library…
Your problems solved
Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter…
Dear Sirs and Madams
Peter Oborne 4 July 2015 9:00 am
In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer