How your funeral director is ripping you off
Funerals are a rip-off. But you can do something about that
Monopoly is fascinating – as long as you don’t try to play it
I knew there had to be a point to Monopoly. The game itself is tedium made cardboard, the strongest known…
The mobility scooter plague
The mobility scooter plague
Tourists are trickling back to Egypt – to beat the crowds, go now
Egypt’s revolution of 2011 didn’t just get rid of President Mubarak: it did a pretty good job of clearing out…
2,500 years of gyms (and you’re still better off walking the dog)
My favourite fact about gyms before reading this book was that the average British gym member covers 468 miles per…
Attack of the personal space invaders
Who are these chaps who insist on standing so close?
Why tomorrow’s parents won’t want their children to go to university
Why being a graduate is about to lose its prestige
Check yourself: have you succumbed to this corporate speak epidemic?
Is there any cure for this piece of corporate speak?
A museum of dirty postcards and Britain’s coolest bulldog: visit the strange side of the Isle of Wight
Every day the Isle of Wight becomes England’s smallest county: when-ever the tide comes in, the island steals the crown…
Life is full of little endings. We should pay them more attention
Life is full of little endings. We should pay them more attention
Did anyone ever really love Bob Hope?
Why does everything these days have to be a superlative? Why must writers scream for our attention, yelling that the…
The deep Britishness of fish and chips
During the D-day landings, members of the parachute regiment, finding themselves behind enemy lines at night, needed a way of…
A compendium to match Radio 4: boring, but somehow gripping
When you think about it, Radio 4 is mostly a pile of old toss. Money Box qualifies as an anaesthetic,…
The images from the Apollo missions will reduce you to tears
Mark Mason on the images that make grown men cry
Switching on to a new generation gap
In the world of YouTube and Netflix, generations no longer share a culture
Nira Alpina, St Moritz: A cool Alpine hotel that's perfect for the under-tens
It’s a terrible moment, the realisation that you’ve spawned a monster. Parenthood, it becomes clear, has wiped stylish holidays off…
What’s wrong with sunglasses
People who wear sunglasses all the time seem to radiate disdain
From prisons to offices to police stations – London's turning everything into hotels
The test of a truly great city is reinvention. Does it have the courage to change? London holds a PhD…
When Geoff Boycott was a DJ in a Sydney nightclub
Sport isn’t about putting a ball into a net or over a bar or into a hole. It’s about the…
Kindles will kill off the bookish loner (thank God)
Kindle highlights turn the lonely pleasures of reading into a communal event
When the English cricket team toured Nazi Germany – and got smashed
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
Subterranea is sexy
The strange fascination of tunnels and bunkers
The train stations that don’t really exist
In 1964, as part of his railway cuts, Dr Beeching ordered the closure of Duncraig, a small, little-used station in…
Mortar fire, weddings, camels, the French revolution: all kind of things get in the way of cricket
It isn’t just the elk, either. Also bringing proceedings to a halt in this wonderful anthology are camels (Bahrain), cows…
Whistling is a bloody nuisance
Paul McCartney says he can remember the exact moment he knew the Beatles had made it. Early one morning, getting…
