Life
Kiwi life
Softly, softly, catchee monkey – the alphabet community’s grab for our children Somewhat naively, a New Zealand commentator thinks there’s…
Language
The University of Chicago has what it calls a ‘Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse’ – aimed at teaching students to…
How Linzer torte stood the test of time
Linzer torte has quite the claim to fame: some assert that it’s the oldest cake in the world; others that…
‘Five stars, no notes’: Arlington reviewed
Arlington is named for the 1st Earl of Arlington and his street behind the Ritz Hotel. It used to be…
My (surprisingly) decent proposal
‘Like being chained to a lunatic.’ That’s how a man feels in relation to his libido. And the lunatic latches…
Manchester City are surely unstoppable
Well it was fun while it lasted, the closest three-way race for the Premier League in history, a title challenge…
Lefties don’t know anything about farming
The artists and hippies are re-wilding their land, which is to say doing nothing at all to it and watching…
Amol Rajan is right to change his ways on ‘aitch’
My husband thought it brave and manly of the BBC’s Amol Rajan to resolve publicly to change his pronunciation of…
Even Orwell’s Thought Police didn’t go as far as Trudeau
You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar…
The magic of Aintree
However hard some people try to make it a business, jump racing remains a sport and the Grand National its…
Dear Mary: How do I choose who to sponsor for the London Marathon?
Q. For the past couple of years, many of my sons’ friends have been gamely running the London Marathon for…
Aussie life
It’s been a long time since the beer garden of the iconic Oaks Hotel in Sydney’s Neutral Bay lost all…
Language
We all know what it means when someone is said to have been ‘thrown under the bus’ by their colleagues…
The glory of German wines
I have had three recent conversations, all lively if unrelated – and all well lubricated. The first concerned Anglo-Saxon England…
Will I ever get my HRT?
The novelty of living in a place where a policeman called Ambrose lives in a house whose door you can…
My father’s greatest act of kindness
I’ve been busy planning a trip to New Zealand and Australia. I’ll be gone for about five weeks from mid-June,…
