Dear Mary: How do I stop my friend’s banal WhatsApp messages?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in Scotland, so we rarely see each other. Before the internet…

Why the young are fleeing to Portugal

26 October 2024 9:00 am

The legendary music producer Rick Rubin once asked me why I had never moved to the United States. The answer,…

Do you ‘cock a snook’ – or snoot?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

‘This is interesting, darling,’ my husband called out from beside his whisky while I was doing the washing-up. The interesting…

WR Masters

26 October 2024 9:00 am

2677: What’s in a name?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

The lessons of the Chris Kaba case

26 October 2024 9:00 am

I wonder if we should join with the radical campaigning organisation Buy Larger Mansions (BLM) in order to protest about…

Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the health service?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service? Is this undoubtedly talented and thoughtful young Labour prince fatally irresolute…

Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912…

Portrait of the week: Budget leaks, prisoners released and Israel kills Hamas leader

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expected to freeze tax thresholds in the Budget on 30 October,…

Is it really too much to ask students to read children’s books?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

The Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate recently claimed that students are struggling to read long books. Depressingly, he’s right. I…

In the budget I promise

26 October 2024 9:00 am

He’s never open with me

26 October 2024 9:00 am

This is our forever home

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Let us hope and pray

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Greeting cards

26 October 2024 9:00 am

You’ll even hate the cat: Disclaimer, on Apple TV+, reviewed

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Sometimes spoilers can be your friend. For example, I have just cheated and looked up on the internet the shocking…

Mandy Rice-Davies saw the Profumo affair as an adventure, not a scandal

26 October 2024 9:00 am

In the decades since the Profumo scandal gripped a nation, Mandy Rice-Davies has been fixed in the public imagination largely…

Kemi vs Robert: who would be the best Tory leader?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Ed West on Robert Jenrick It’s a testimony to the sheer unpopularity of Keir Starmer’s government that only three months…

At Japan House humanity has arrived at the perfect future: food for ogling, not eating

26 October 2024 9:00 am

There is a popular Japanese television show that features a segment called ‘Candy Or Not Candy?’. Contestants are presented with…

Great knits – shame about the film: Almodovar’s The Room Next Door reviewed

26 October 2024 9:00 am

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodovar’s first film in the English language and if it is his last we…