Life
The ‘Clooney effect’ hasn’t touched my corner of Provence
Provence My eldest daughter’s husband is from Como. In the early 2000s George Clooney caused a stir in the town…
Is beekeeping left-wing?
‘Zip my head in,’ he said, after climbing into a white jumpsuit with a mesh helmet. It was a beekeeper’s…
Grandmaster Royal
The British Championships, which concluded in Hull earlier this month, saw a notable achievement for 15-year-old Shreyas Royal, whose stellar…
Language
A Speccie reader has been in touch to complain about the use of the expressions ‘wind farm’ and ‘solar farm’.…
Aussie life
Off the beach of Ipanema where the tall and tanned girls go, they’ve found Brazilian sharks with cocaine in their…
Free speech stops riots
With depressing predictability, the riots have led to calls for more censorship. Historically, it was the authoritarian right who blamed…
Dear Mary: how do I set up two young people?
Q. I have invited some younger friends to stay with me at a family house in Spain. Among the party…
This Olympics belongs to the female athletes
You knew it was going to be a superb Olympics from the moment Celine Dion belted out an Edith Piaf…
What is ‘thuggery’?
The word that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, chose to describe the action of rioters was more interesting than…
Being mugged changes you forever
Being mugged changes you forever. My encounter with highwaymen occurred three decades ago in a south London street, in the…
Spectator Competition: To the letter
In Competition 3361 you were invited to submit a passage or poem whose meaning was affected by some missing, substituted…
British Championships
The stench of burning rubber hung in the air as I trudged back to my hotel in Hull city centre last…
Yorkshire curd tart: a well-kept, delicious secret
There are many old dishes in the UK that are hyper-regional, whose reach has never extended beyond geographical boundaries but…
The glory of Glorious Goodwood
You wouldn’t want to have been collecting the empties from Robins Farm, Chiddingfold, last week. There is no more sociable…
Bridge | 10 August 2024
What can you say about the Rimstedt brothers that hasn’t already been said? They returned from the American Nationals in…
An ode to the builder boyfriend
Relationships are about compromise and no wonder so many of us come a cropper in this department when we don’t…
A French restaurant Glastonbury would be proud to host: Café Lapérouse reviewed
I am working my way around the restaurants of the Old War Office (OWO), now an acronym and Raffles hotel…
