Life
Two bottles to help eradicate cabin fever
The virus is in retreat, the lock-down is crumbling, the sherbet dispensaries will shortly reopen and there is a second…
Who watches the broadcast watchdog?
At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…
The inappropriate history of ‘ventriloquising’
‘What! No one told me,’ my husband shouted when I explained that the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford no longer existed…
What if Oxford PPE graduates on TV were made to wear pink conical hats?
You can’t discuss racial inequality without using the N-word. And you can’t debate social justice without adding the C-word and…
The Battle for Britain | 27 June 2020
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The abominable selfishness of the Surrey middle classes
‘Have you met the man who keeps his horses in this field?’ said one silver-haired lady to the other, as…
Royal Ascot was a triumph – even without the cheers and the hats
Royal Ascot it wasn’t: for the first time in her 68-year reign, thanks to Covid-19, the Queen was not there.…
Bridge | 27 June 2020
I’m not a great fan of online bridge but I must admit, lockdown has provided a real opportunity for players…
Dear Mary: How can I stop predatory kisses at social gatherings?
Q. How can one politely stop predatory kissers? I am (or was) an affectionate and demonstrative person but I don’t…
‘Merrie sing Rishi!’: variations on ‘Sumer is icumen in’
In Competition No. 3154 you were invited to supply your own variations on the medieval round ‘Sumer is icumen in’.…
2460: Sleaze solution
The word is TACK. In the order of the headwords in Chambers, except for the fifth, their meanings are indicated…
What angry young French men want
Chatting on the café terrace with my new friends Didier and Emile made me aware that certain political ideas, which…
The mob mentality of the elite
Gstaad I thought of Nietzsche while the mayhem and destruction of monuments was going on. Decadent bourgeois society was in…
Clutch fun
‘May the best scoring system win!’ is hardly a sentiment to stoke the passions. In the 2011 referendum, the alternative…
2463: Tongue twisters
The unclued lights are of a kind and are entered in the grid in a thematically appropriate manner. Across 11…
No. 610
White to play. Grischuk–Aronian, Clutch Chess 2020. Only one rook move draws here. Which one? Answers should be emailed to…
Lockdown Diary
90 Days in lockdown – a retrospective Day 1 – you configure your bathroom into a replica of your…
The death of free speech
Oh, to be in America, where cultural decay and self-destruction compete equally with hyper-feminist and anti-racist agendas. Gone with the…
My organ donation opt-out hell
Opting out of organ donation was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a while. I don’t mean the…
Dear Mary: How can I accept a party invitation when I don’t know who’s going?
Q. I know it is rude to ask, when invited to a dinner party, ‘who else is coming?’ I assumed,…
The antibody test that proved my wife wrong
Back in April, The Spectator ran a feature in which the partners of regular contributors wrote about what it was…
More drug than nutrient: KFC drive-through reviewed
Drive-through restaurants were invented so Americans could spend more time in their cars. I don’t blame them. American cars are…
Was Priti Patel really ‘gaslighting’ MPs?
Gaslight has been a useful word meaning ‘to manipulate a person by psychological means into questioning his or her own…
Cars weren’t invented for transportation, but conversation
When I first heard Abba’s magnificent 1982 swansong ‘The Day Before You Came’, I’d never come across the Americanised use…
Is left the new right?
I took a table on the terrace of the reopened bar and ordered une pression from the waitress. ‘Back to…
