Should I grow old gracefully – or disgracefully?
Now that I’m about to turn 70, I’m wondering: shall I grow old gracefully, or disgracefully? Everyone I know, young…
The thrill of being recognized
I had just left Tate Britain and was heading toward the Pimlico underground station when I noticed an attractive woman…
The tantric sex retreat that wasn’t
When my girlfriend suggested we go away to a tantric retreat for the weekend in the English countryside, I couldn’t…
How to be friends with young people
Can an older person like me ever really be friends with a young person? At one time I would have…
The death of good conversation
London At London parties you can find plenty of smart beautiful women and handsome charming men. You can find a cornucopia…
My life of genteel poverty
Every year at the beginning of April, I tell myself I must top up my Isa before the 5 April…
Confessions of a closeted bourgeois boy
Recently, I got very stoned. I haven’t been that stoned since I was at Woodstock. Or was it the first…
My friends keep dumping me
T.S. Eliot was wrong. April is not the cruelest month — January is. It’s cold and bleak and days end…
Why have parties suddenly gotten good?
Not long ago this month’s column would have been one long gripe about how the party — as a forum…
Why BDSM is innately conservative
My friend Evie complains that I never want to go out and have fun anymore. “You’ve become a boring old…
The cult of cleverness
Whenever I’m at a dinner party with very clever people, I always feel like I’m the dumbest person in the…
Can this dating gimmick help me find love?
Could a new gimmick help me find love?
I can’t make up my mind about microdosing
I know that microdosing — the practice of taking a very small amount of a mood enhancing drug — has…
Why I won’t grow up
Recently, a famous American novelist came to stay at my place in London. In her later Substack post she described…
Literary festivals are no fun
This is the season when literary festivals start to happen all over the UK. From the highlands of Scotland to…
Can I be a woman?
How I tried — and failed — to become a woman
The joy of missing out
As I write this the coronation of King Charles hasn’t happened yet, but I’m having great fun watching the procession…
The sex lives of writers
A fellow writer recently asked me if I would prefer to be famous as a great writer or famous as…
Confessions of a class tourist
Why I used to pretend to be working class
The day I sold my destroyed piano to the Tate
One day in October 1966 I came home from school and found a large man stripped to the waist, attacking…
Why your more successful friends will drop you
How success kills friendships
In defence of staring
The criminalisation of people-watching
Why men of a certain age love to get naked
Why men of a certain age love to get naked
