Long life
The birth of a royal baby is hardly an exciting event
There are already people camping outside St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, to await the birth shortly of another royal baby, the…
The tortoises are alive! (And sitting on the duck’s eggs)
No sooner had I written last week’s column about the sad disappearance of the two tortoises in my care than…
Have I inadvertently killed my friend’s tortoises?
It’s April. It’s spring. The daffodils and the cowslips are in flower. The birds are chirping merrily. But where are…
The fox that killed my chickens depressed me more than 250,000 tsunami deaths
It is hard to know how a tragedy is going to move a person who is not directly affected by…
Be different, be original: that’s what makes a popular politician
I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I…
An Episcopalian vicar made me warm to the principle of women joining gentlemen’s clubs
In 1993, when I was living in Manhattan working for the New Yorker magazine, I was chosen as ‘distinguished visitor’…
It’s a pointless waste of time for David Cameron to resurrect the hunting debate
Of all the election promises politicians make in the run-up to a general election the one most certain to remain…
I’ve been sacked more times than I can exactly remember. It teaches you nothing
The Oldie magazine — of which, until otherwise advised, I appear to be the editor — runs an occasional article…
You can’t force low-income people to go to an art gallery or the theatre if they don’t want to
I went last week to see the justly praised production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers at English National Opera, and I…
The elderly are society’s new baddies
The gulf in understanding between the old and the young has widened with the news that the young are beginning…
How the driverless car will liberate us all (except smokers, of course)
I was listening to the radio the other morning to hear people complaining about the huge cuts in the number…
You realise how little you know of anybody when they die
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…
The quiet pleasure of washing up (and why I'm still buying a new dishwasher)
I have been having trouble with my dishwasher. It’s seven and a half years old, and it’s manufactured by a…
Do your patriotic duty and shoot wild boar
It’s 15 years since I first wrote an article about the threat to the nation of the wild boar; but…
Here I am on Twelfth Night with nothing but benevolence to look back on
For the past two and a half years my brother John has been living next door to me in the…
I think I’ve found a miracle cure for a bad back
I’ve had various ailments during my first 74 years — the worst being those induced by smoking, such as emphysema…
Without Jesus and with less Santa, what does Christmas mostly consist of?
More than ever this year I find friends planning to go abroad for Christmas, some to countries such as India…
Will anyone admit to being in the establishment? (No, not you, David Mellor)
This is a tremendous time for ‘ordinary’ people. The elitists, the members of the ‘establishment’, are all on the run.…
Westminster Abbey was a fitting setting in which to celebrate the life of Winston Churchill’s last child
The Times has given way to the Daily Telegraph as the bastion of the established order, for— with the one…
Lottery winners are strikingly unimaginative about spending money
I thought that this week I might write about memory loss, but couldn’t remember if I’d written about it last…
A trip to Berlin with John Smith before the wall came down
Last Sunday night 8,000 illuminated balloons, tethered along eight miles of Berlin’s former inner-city border between East and West Germany,…
Two ways to disgrace a president
On 21 October Ben Bradlee, the famous ex-editor of the Washington Post, died, aged 93. The day before that, on…
The only good thing about Halloween is that it makes people hate bats
I always dread Hallowe’en. It may have originated in Europe as a Christian celebration for remembering the virtuous dead and…
If you don’t like this stupid survey, there’ll be a contradictory one along in a minute
Perhaps it is because newspapers are going through such hard times that they fill their pages with items that cost…
Here’s how to remain cheerful in the face of such a multitude of scares
I don’t think I can remember a time when there have been so many scares about. They come at us…
