Connie Bensley

Tina

13 February 2016 9:00 am

Dearest, I’d love to have your Tina to stay — what are aunts for? — but I’m not sure if…

Losing a Crown in the National Portrait Gallery

6 February 2016 9:00 am

The cafe was full of connoisseurs of the scones. As he bit into his flapjack a sinister uncoupling took place…

Sharing the Dog

30 January 2016 9:00 am

The Dog share didn’t work out well in the end. For a start, Dog — no mean manipulator — cadged…

December

12 December 2015 9:00 am

The ferns around the badgers’ sett are dying down, and fine webs fret the brambles. By late afternoon the moon…

Heron

5 December 2015 9:00 am

Walking to the bus stop after a hospital visit, in an unfamiliar, dusty suburb, I pass a small park on…

New Neighbour

21 November 2015 9:00 am

The trellis between her garden and her new neighbour’s garden is heavy with passion flower, honeysuckle and roses, so that…

The Time of Shoring Up

3 October 2015 8:00 am

After the years at the gym, the diets and the supplements, he comes — nevertheless — to the time of…

On the way to Plumpton

19 September 2015 8:00 am

We pull up at Wivelsfield, under a blue sky, and glance out at the one figure on the platform: a…

Hermit

12 September 2015 9:00 am

Let’s celebrate the solitary meal: the serendipitous trawl through the fridge; the hopeful foray into the deep freeze, the obliging…

Love-lies-bleeding

11 July 2015 9:00 am

Of course the bride’s dog came to the wedding and was allotted a chair at the top table at which…

Message

13 June 2015 9:00 am

A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…

i.m. AMSTRAD

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Dear Lord Sugar, it’s been a sad week. A kind of bereavement, really. Today, a council employee in a yellow…

For the Time Being

28 March 2015 9:00 am

Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…

Don’t Look Back

21 March 2015 9:00 am

No, let’s not look at the old photographs any more: our hair was so full and shiny then, and anyway…

Wendy Cope on hating school, meeting Billy Graham and enduring Freudian analysis

15 November 2014 9:00 am

A surprise! I took this book from its envelope expecting a fresh collection of Wendy Cope’s poems, and opened it…

Mr Dixon

20 September 2014 9:00 am

I can’t think of anyone else still alive who knew him, and could reminisce with me about his special kindness,…

Sometimes it’s Better to Give than to Receive

13 September 2014 9:00 am

I can see your teeth clench with rage at the gift I have pressed on you, which manoeuvres you into…

Portrait of Jeanne Duval by Edouard Manet

The breasts that launched Les Fleurs du Mal

21 June 2014 8:00 am

This novel is based on the life of Charles Baudelaire and the relationship he enjoyed — or endured — with…

A Short Attachment

22 March 2014 9:00 am

I was in love for a whole week after Episode One: Your voice so tender, so knowledgeable, your slender hands…

Forgiveness

4 January 2014 9:00 am

The bunting was hardly down, and the bones of the feast hardly buried in sand, when the prodigal son started…

Decorous Confessions

17 August 2013 9:00 am

Unexpectedly, he made a sober success with his self-published book of decorous confessions. It eschewed turmoil in the bedchamber and…