Life
2484: Troubled
The unclued lights are of a kind. Across 9 Go in with force, showing initiative (10) 14 Cast is enormous,…
The perils of being a Kenyan farmer’s wife
Laikipia As the train pulled into Victoria my wife Claire, back home on the farm in Kenya, revealed that a…
My neighbour’s dinner party was a near-death experience
At dawn, starving, I drove to a commercial laboratory in the town centre where five phials of blood were taken…
The language of lounging around
At the Austrian embassy in Naples, a German diplomatist asked the great beauty Madame de Ventadour if she had been…
Dear Mary: Will my friend be offended if I buy her an XL dress?
Q. My son has moved his girlfriend into our fairly small house for the second lockdown. I am grateful for…
‘This Be The Prequel’ (and other poetic prequels)
In Competition No. 3175 you were invited to submit a prequel to a well-known poem. C. Paul Evans’s opening to…
Farewell to Graham Cowdrey, cricket’s king of the dressing room
So the Good Lord really wants to fill out his team: how else to interpret the passing in recent months…
Speed freaks
Writing in January, I described internet bullet chess, where the players have one minute for all their moves, as ‘popular,…
In praise of femininity
New York Who was it that first coined the expression ‘It ain’t over until the fat lady sings’? The great…
The strange case of the ‘alleged bonfire’
The council has told me that what I saw was an ‘alleged bonfire’. When I described flames towering into the…
The Battle for Britain | 21 November 2020
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The dangers of censoring anti-vaxxers
Earlier this week, the Labour party wrote to the government urging it to bring forward legislation so that social media…
Aussie Life & Language
Simon Collins A British newspaper once ran a TV ad extolling the virtues of journalistic objectivity. ‘Point of view’, which…
The Brick
I own a few chess books that could serve as a murder weapon, but none so hefty as Chess: 5334…
Spectator competition winners: poems for a qwerty keyboard
In Competition No. 3174 you were invited to write a poem in which each line begins with the letters A…
Drinking to the glories of Burns and follies of Boris
At least in London, midwinter spring has not been entirely vanquished, and the trees are still a couple of strong…
Where’s the slogan saying ‘Lose Weight. Stop Boozing. Survive the virus!’?
Panic at the country feed store. Panic in the horse and pony aisle. I wonder to myself: could life ever…
I was the only Trump supporter among the olive-pickers
We bums find ourselves sought after at this time of year to lend a hand with the olive harvest. So…
This week’s guest woke cartoonist is Sally Woke
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2480: Warning - solution
Ten symmetrically placed unclued lights are synonyms for the warning ‘WATCH OUT’. First prize Andy Wallace, Ash Green, CoventryRunners-upCaroline Arms,…
The cultural elite has a new enemy
New York Election night parties are usually dreadful affairs, with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the…
Our Twelve to Follow have generated a record-breaking profit
First the company report. Readers who invested a tenner on the nose each time our Twelve to Follow for the…
The ludicrousness of stemmed wine glasses
In 1989 I answered my first mobile phone call on Oxford Street using a brick-sized Motorola borrowed from work. Several…
Bridge | 14 November 2020
It’s been a busy week of bridge. First came the Lady Milne, the women’s home internationals. As the host nation,…
What’s the difference between ‘gifting’ and ‘giving’?
Boris Johnson, the Telegraphsuggested last week, is understood to have a personal interest in rewilding, ‘recently gifting his father beavers…
