Family
A life worth living
I know that people with Down’s syndrome are not better off dead, because I know my son
Dear Mary
Q. When someone gives you anti-ageing cream as a present, is that an insult or a compliment? — A.O., Provence…
Dear Mary
Q. My neighbour is really lovely and always helps me chainsaw trees. He used to be the herdsman at the…
Dear Mary
Q. We have taken a flat in Edinburgh for a month and a young girl, temporarily homeless and a friend…
The case for being wed
I’m due to speak at an Intelligence Squared debate on Saturday and I’m worried that I might be on the…
A noble tradition of benign neglect
I spent last weekend at Port Eliot in Cornwall. This is supposed to be a literary and music festival and…
Dear Mary
Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the…
How I joined the 99 per cent
In The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s a poignant shot towards the end in which we see an FBI agent…
Yes, Britain is a Christian country
I can’t say it was a great surprise to read a letter from a group of well-known authors, academics, comedians…
How the Delingpoles triumphed over the Vikings
Have you managed to book tickets to the Viking exhibition at the British Museum yet? If you haven’t, my advice…
Dear Mary
Q. Our son, aged l6, has a medical condition which, although not life-threatening, requires surgery by a specialist to pre-empt…
The wrong kind of granny
When I told a friend that my nine-year-old son was staying with his grandparents for the whole week of the…
You shouldn’t lose your children for disagreeing with Boris Johnson
Do your children have a bleak and nihilistic view of the world? It’s hard to tell, really, when they spend…
Agitprop for toddlers
The oddly strident politics of CBeebies
When scaremongering stops being funny
My grandmother, Nanny Nancy, is 99 and going strong. But it can’t be denied that while she’s all there mentally,…
Once more, the spectre of Enoch Powell is raised to stop debate about immigration
One of the genuine seasonal pleasures to be enjoyed as 2013 slipped around the U-bend was Enoch Powell making his…
Don’t blame sugar
Obesity isn’t a matter of addiction. It’s a question of self-control
Meet the parents
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
My 50 weddings
The lessons of a perpetual guest
Diary
It’s been a strange summer. After a stroke, holidays are not what they used to be. We went to Juan-les-Pins…
Low life
This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the…
Dear Mary
Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience?…
Diary
Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked…
Plato on Today
A woman is invited to join the Today programme, and the chatteratae are immediately a-twitter on the subject of female…
The contented little prince
On raising a royal baby
