More from life
The real reason I don’t drink
It’s been 30 years this month since I last touched alcohol and I still can’t face the prospect of a…
How to make ham and parsley sauce
Poor old parsley sauce. As someone who writes regularly about old-fashioned food, it often feels that we are living through…
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…
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…
Tricky but delicious: how to make the perfect pretzels
My husband is obsessed with pretzels. The joy that a slightly warm, soft baked pretzel brings him is disproportionate. And,…
Under the Italian sun, the insects are stirring
The sun was setting on the first day of spring and I felt unusually happy as I fed the donkey.…
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…
How I ran away to Italy
A quarter of a century ago I somehow managed to get out of Paris where I had haunted a cheap…
I’ve finally solved the mystery of the Mayerling Affair
It was the mother of royal scandalabras, as Walt Winchell might have said, and remains one of the greatest historical…
The handmade suit I’ll never wear
Someone somewhere must surely have calculated that Bangkok has more doctors and tailors per capita than anywhere on Earth. These…
The beauty – and tragedy – of our nesting swans
There won’t be any cygnets this year. The cob was on the lake this morning on his own, occasionally slapping…
The wonder of Jon Pertwee and his frilly shirt
When a friend asked if I wanted anything for Christmas I took a deep breath and replied: ‘Well, maybe I…
The Spectator’s 2023 Christmas quiz
Fairly odd 1. What had for 50 years been the name for Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit before it was changed…
The new status symbol of the super rich: headlice
To help out friends, I sometimes collect a boy from his primary school near Sloane Square. This part of London…
The heady, hedonistic summer in which I became a life-long foreigner
Rome I have spent almost all my adult life as a foreigner. When I graduated from Oxford I faced a…
