Life
The Battle for Britain | 31 July 2021
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The true cost of my week in Wales
Rather miraculously, my daughter managed to leave the country last week to go on holiday with a group of friends.…
Dear Mary: What is the etiquette of greeting a friend who is engaged in a ceremonial display?
Q. Passing Buckingham Palace in a taxi the other day, I saw the ceremonial wing of the Household Division prancing…
A date with destiny – and chemotherapy
I was shown to a room divided into three cubicles, each with a reclining chair and bed table. In the…
To be jabbed – or not to be jabbed?
The doctor’s receptionist was adamant. ‘If you had not had the vaccine you would have been even more ill with…
Is today the day I become a Kenyan citizen?
Nairobi Since my father first caught sight of Mombasa from his ship in late 1929, at least some of my…
Double dutch: the many meanings of ‘Holland’
The title of the keenly awaited volume of memoirs by John Martin Robinson sounds like a crossword clue: Holland Blind…
The beauty of wine from the Rhine
In an apparently benign — almost prelapsarian — setting, the Rhine is an epitome of the human condition. Scenery is…
What do oven chips have to do with virtue signalling?
Why does virtue-signalling matter? It’s a fair question. After all, if people display virtuous behaviour, need we care about their…
Bridge | 31 July 2021
When I started learning bridge (about 20 years ago) I was taught the basic guidelines of play and defence and…
The joys of uninhabitable islands
Isle of Patmos Two hundred years ago last March, the Greeks rose up against the hated Turks who had occupied…
Aussie Life
It used to be that sporting endeavour was regarded as a noble cause, and that our sporting pastimes were governed…
Aussie Language
Talking to Peta Credlin on Sky News I coined a new expression, ‘language communists’. I used to call the bullies…
The Battle for Britain | 24 July 2021
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A Damascene moment in London: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen reviewed
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers…
Can the Lions prise open the strong Boks?
You would need a digger to explore the levels of irony in a Springbok chief slagging off an opponent’s dirty…
Dear Mary: How can I stop friends asking to stay in my holiday cottage?
Q. My beloved wife has been studying Chinese metaphysics for 18 months. Our house and garden have been badly neglected…
The poetry behind ‘leather and prunella’
‘Oh, yes,’ said my husband, enthusiastically, ‘a loathsome disease. The tongue goes black and dry.’ He was referring to an…
In defence of footballers taking the knee
Before the television presenter Guto Harri took the knee live on air — which cost him his job at GB…
Bridge | 24 July 2021
Bridge is a game you can never fully master, which is why it’s so endlessly stimulating. No sooner have you…
No. 663
White to play. A variation from Grandelius – Xiong, Fide World Cup, Sochi 2021. With an accurate queen check,White can…
2516: Such childish vocabulary
The nouns from the first sentence of a book (in the ODQ) appear as unclued lights — apart from two.…
Solution to 2513: Golden anniversary
The announcement reads: ‘Fifty years ago, on July the third, Jac’s first crossword in this series was published.’ The shaded…
Kasparov’s tailspin
In a game between top players, the opening moves signify not only the battleground they have embraced, but also the…
A very annoying guide to the Somme battlefields
We arranged to meet the second, more expensive, guide of our Somme battlefield visit at the Thiepval Memorial visitor centre…
