No hint of vanity
The new documentary I Am: Celine Dion which just started on Amazon Prime Video and in cinemas begins with Maria…
Aussie life
For most of China’s 1.4 billion population, 2024 has been the Year of the Dragon, which makes it, according to…
Language
I’ve been searching through the language used to describe the train wreck of a presidential debate between Joe Biden and…
No brains to drain
The Greek tragedy that is our education system
Israel says it’s ready for another war
According to my phone, I’m in Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. Except I’m not. The Israel Defence Forces have scrambled the…
Gins in tins – the Yummy Mummy’s ruin
I’m writing this in my car, laptop on knees and a delicious can of Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla gin and…
Biden is as big a narcissist as Trump
The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the…
Can a home really be forever?
Graham Norton’s latest novel ‘blends dark humour and emotional weight with ease’, says the Radio Times. That may well be,…
The Tories have only themselves to blame
I was amused the other week to read George Osborne’s Diary in this magazine. In it the man now in…
An ensemble achievement that dances and sparkles: Glyndebourne’s Giulio Cesare reviewed
A classic opera production ages like wine. When David McVicar’s staging of Handel’s Giulio Cesare first opened at Glyndebourne in…
Dear Mary: can you leave a party without saying goodbye?
Q. Often at parties strangers bear down on me looking excited and are then offended when I don’t recognise them.…
The key to dealing with this election? Wine
An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually…
Sly, sexy and smart: The Nature of Love reviewed
The Nature of Love is a French-Canadian film about an academic who considers herself happily married but then encounters a…
How Elon Musk could solve the housing crisis
People sometimes ask me why I don’t go into politics. Why on earth would I do that? No, if you…
My nights with the eagle owls
Provence Summer has arrived. The evenings are warm enough to sit out on the balcony terrace and watch the lights…
Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?
Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped,…
Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne
‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when…
The funny side of being cancelled
Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching…
History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly
Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and…
Our new MPs should read Cicero
It would make a pleasant change if every elected MP was to make it their ambition to be honestus, Latin…
‘I have to forge my own path’: Rachel Reeves on her plans for the economy
Outside a café on the outskirts of Reading, Rachel Reeves is listening to the concerns of small-business owners. ‘Something that…
How we became addicted to vaping
For those of us with a poor grasp of time, who can still recall when a night at the pub…
