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Taki: Should I just move to a cave in France?
Gstaad Do any of you know what cisgender is? I just found out. Cisgender is a term that describes…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
Despite me virtually sexting him, my blacksmith is ignoring me — just like all the others before him
Splitting the atom is nothing compared to figuring out how to get hold of your farrier. Why is the farrier…
Why 1919 wasn’t the year it’s cracked up to be
Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read…
I ended New Year’s Eve more sober than I started it
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would…
The Kafkaesque nightmare of cancelling my BT broadband
Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge:…
In praise of pomposity
Gstaad My annual end-of-year party in the Bagel was a bust. Too many people brought their friends and I ended…
From Baroness Trumpington to bad sex: my Christmas party week
The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as…
A festive rapprochement with the ex-builder boyfriend
1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no…
Why I have fallen out of love with Donald Trump
Here we are, 41 years down the road, and I’m once again writing for The Spectator’s Christmas issue. This is…
Why you should never read your own diary
At the turn of the century, I started a diary. I’ve mostly typed it on old typewriters, bashing out a…
How Ebenezer Grayling destroyed the Kite family Christmas
Ebenezer Grayling sat busy in his counting house. It was a cold, bleak day at the Department for Transport. Big…
New York: the fact – and fiction
New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…
We lost our elderly, dementing French charge
I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs…
My Christmas tree health-and-safety nightmare
Decorating a tree on the unfinished minstrels’ gallery was an appealing idea if only for the health and safety violations.…
Human evolution: a short essay
This makes Brexit take a back seat: hints of ancient life have appeared on Mars. Carbon building blocks and other…
Only a Leaver would be stupid enough to go to the wrong airport
Three of us on a cold metal bench waiting for the bus. It’s almost dark. Winter arrived yesterday and we…
I was right; the vet was wrong; and the scary sexy dentist sorted out the horses
The horse dentist is handsome, with blond windswept hair and a weather-beaten face. There is something Heathcliffian about him, something…
An extraordinary encounter in a New York taxi
New York If I wrote this in one of those newspaper diaries about metropolitan life, no one would believe…
It was carnage in our French cave
Evenings, I sit in a chair facing the cave interior and Catriona lies on the new sofa facing me (and,…
How to destroy a house from the ground up
Lying in bed one night as the rain pounded down, I became aware of a yellow patch forming on the…
I love life – and girls – too much to act my age
New York A little Austrian count was born to my daughter last week in Salzburg, early in the morning of…
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
Education, spiritual guidance and a good cappuccino: the new face of the NHS
Left at the Dementia Café, right at the Sleep Office, past the Spiritual Care Centre… This was my journey through…
Why I’ve changed my name
As someone who has recently discovered he is black, I have watched with incredulity the treatment doled out by the…
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