Social class
Everywhere should be more like Essex
Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent…
Why my friends love the idea of a nasty, stupid mansion tax
I see all the flaws with a mansion tax, I really do. And yet some little piece of me, some…
Nigel Farage’s class war
I initially thought Nigel Farage had made a mistake in unveiling Mark Reckless on the final day of his party…
The ‘no’ campaign’s problem was that it sounded like me
Journalistically speaking, it’s been a good year to be Scottish and Jewish. Had I been a Welsh Zoroastrian, say, I…
The moaning middle
With soaring house prices and low interest rates, the middle classes are doing rather well. But you’d never think so to hear them
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…
Born to be famous
The old paths to the top for working-class children – sport, music, acting, writing – are now closed by nepotism
It’ll be game over for all of us if the cyber crimewave continues to advance
‘The internet is broken,’ a corporate chieftain told me last week. It was an arresting remark, but he did not…
Caesar and Farage
Our politicians are desperately keen to turn the toast of the people, Nigel Farage, into toast himself. But is that…
Ken Loach is a bore
He hasn’t made anything worth watching since Kes
Oxford blues
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
A far cry from Chelsea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
Letters
Why we need a free press Sir: As bereaved parents and (to borrow from some signatories of last week’s advertisement)…
Must every quality TV show begin with a young woman’s corpse?
It was Shetland that tipped me over the edge. Not the place, but the TV series. Although that’s set in…
Time for posh Scotland to break its silence
I took part in a documentary about Scottishness a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t bad at all. I mused,…
Notes on a scandal
I was ten when the Profumo affair began at my home, Cliveden. Andrew Lloyd Webber has captured some of the story – but not all
Don’t blame sugar
Obesity isn’t a matter of addiction. It’s a question of self-control
Is this really a pub?
The Wild Rabbit is a pub in the Cotswolds, that small corner of Britain full of evil grinning cottages; if…
Letters
Piggies in the middle Sir: Your feature ‘The strange death of the middle class’ (24 August) assumes that young people…
Unpaid internships turned me into a banker – but I still think they’re a good thing
My thanks to ‘AndyB’, the only reader who posted an online comment on my column last week. It was ‘Don’t…
A touch of class
Usually it is annoying when you have to board an aeroplane via a shuttle bus rather than an airbridge. The…
It’s the summer of the topless man,and there’s nothing we can do to stop it
Topless men. What does that mean, then? I was opposite one on the tube the other day, heading north from…
Why don’t any of my friends own holiday homes?
Hugo Rifkind 9 August 2014 9:00 am
This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would…