Social class
Sly and saucy
At last, and finally: literary sex is back. The Bad Sex Prize has a lot to answer for in British…
Does anyone care about the middle class?
The American middle class is in a precarious position. After decades of decline — the percentage of Americans in the…
Student loan forgiveness is a giveaway to the rich
Joe Biden said on Monday that Congress should ‘immediately’ take action to forgive student loan debt through its next COVID…
Trump’s Burkean moment
President Trump surprised some on Saturday when he shared a video from Business Insider explaining that billionaires have amassed half-a-trillion…
Why marriage is increasingly for the royals – and the rich
Whatever their views about the monarchy, most people will warm to the news of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement.…
Aristotle vs the civil service
The civil service is to be allowed to find out what job applicants’ ‘socio-economic background’ is. What abject drivel is…
The game of the name
How Wolf and Skylar pushed out John and Mary
Diary
Killing time in a Heathrow first-class lounge, I notice how many men adopt an unmistakable ‘first-class lounge’ persona. They stand…
The smelly, snobbish death of the public loo
I blame Nancy Mitford: she made the English so frightened of saying ‘toilet’ that now they have hardly any left…
Want to leave the EU? You must be an oik like me
If you need to know how properly posh you are there’s a very simple test: are you pro- or anti-Brexit?…
Don’t act white, act migrant
Black British boys are being held back by fear of betraying their background. Immigrant children know how to deal with that
The questions you don’t ask at the BBC
There was a remarkable scene in one BBC Today programme morning meeting in about 1995, as all the producers gathered…
Barometer
Dropping the Clangers The Clangers made a comeback on BBC television. Some Clanger facts: — The actors doing the voices…
The best way to end the ‘poshness test’
There’s a warning buried in the detail of the new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission on…
In praise of the pit bull
Last night I saw a woman dancing with a pit bull terrier. It was about 9 p.m. and her curtains…
Letters
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
Your problems solved
Q. A wonderful and generous woman invites me, on a regular basis, to dinner parties at her house. What is…
Let posh people run the arts – if it means they stop running the country
What should we do with James Blunt? This is what I have been asking myself. And I am not looking…
Tony’s toxic legacy
Labour's attitude to wealth is sliding back into the 1970s - and Tony Blair's new career is one reason why
Uni’s out
Why being a graduate is about to lose its prestige
Litter is a class issue
David Sedaris is my new hero. Not because he’s such a funny writer, but because he’s obsessed with litter. He…
Want an argument against positive discrimination? Just look at me
I read with some interest the proposal for Oxford and Cambridge to set up state-school-only colleges in the Guardian this…
I’ve got a new passion – and I’m in far too deep
I have fallen in love with an unsuitable male. My wife isn’t totally happy about this relationship because she recognises…
Ukip has turned itself into a confidence trick
I think I’ve cracked it. If you want to springboard your minor political party into the mainstream and take British…
There’s no such thing as an Etonian
Finally, just in the last few years I’d say, we’ve all begun to accept the role of nature in the…
