Life
The Chancellor’s strange connection to cancel culture
The cancel culture wants to obliterate people who do, or more often say, the wrong thing (for example, that there…
My plans for a Covid inquiry
The public inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has already started. Not the official one, which won’t…
Bridge | 25 July 2020
Gunnar Hallberg moved to England from Sweden 25 years ago to play professional bridge, and made such a success of…
Jam and Opium on the Somme
Phone calls aside, the only human contact I had on my ten-day Somme battlefield tour was with the lady who…
You wait ages for an ambulance, then five come along at once
‘I need an ambulance!’ yelled the builder boyfriend into his mobile phone as the cyclist lay bleeding from a head…
Dear Mary: Where should we seat wedding guests who hold unfashionable views?
Q. Our daughter is going ahead with her wedding despite the restriction on guest numbers. Although it is a relief…
In memory of the man who never slept
The enforced boredom of lockdown has been replaced by a feeling of loss. My nephew by marriage, Hansie Schoenburg, died…
Why I won’t patent my brilliant idea
In the past 30 years, I have driven about 8,000 miles in France in right-hand-drive cars. And I would be…
The Battle for Britain 25 July 2020
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Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer meets Spock
In Competition No. 3158 you were invited to supply an extract describing a well-known fictional detective who finds themselves catapulted…
How did I end up in Epstein’s little black book?
Every time Jeffrey Epstein is in the news, I start getting calls from strangers wanting to scream abuse at me.…
The Battle for Britain | 18 July 2020
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Was there ever any transparency in football?
So all that sound and fury about Manchester City’s sins signified precisely nothing. Well, a €10 million fine isn’t nothing,…
What has ‘deadweight’ got to do with Rishi Sunak’s magic money tree?
I was trying to understand what they meant on the wireless by deadweight costs. These were something to do with…
Returning to what makes us happy: Brasserie Zedel reviewed
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased…
My advice to Johnny Depp
Gstaad Are any of you tired of reading about Ghislaine Maxwell and her sleazy life? Bored by old news repeated…
The beauty of military cemeteries
They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…
The politics of hair dye
‘What are you going to put on my head to protect me?’ said the man outside the barber’s shop to…
T.S. Eliot goes to Glastonbury
In Competition No. 3157 you were invited to describe a visit to Glastonbury or Glyndebourne in the style of an…
Dear Mary: How can I help the host at a socially-distant dinner party?
Q. As we attend socially distant events, we expect of our hosts a scrupulous accommodation of our preferences around physical…
2463: Tongue Twisters solution
The unclued lights were all languages which are written from right to left, entered in that manner in the grid.…
Bridge | 18 July 2020
The French Online Open, in which 32 teams competed over a marathon two weeks — seven days round robin and…
2466: Gender bender
Clockwise round the grid from 11 run, in chronological order, the titles (7,7,7,9,2,8,2,10) of five works by an author whose…
An ugly duckling problem
The position shown in this week’s main diagram is the starter problem for the Winton British Chess Solving Championship, an…
No. 613
White to play and mate in three moves. A problem composed by grandmaster Jonathan Levitt (British Chess Magazine, 1995). One…
