Life
A moral dilemma on my freebie holiday
We drove north and parked in the designated car park with a quarter of an hour to spare before the…
The truth is messy. Village gossip is even messier
An angry villager accosted me outside my house as I came through my front door. ‘You’re wrong about those horses,’…
Bridge
You’re probably familiar with the old bridge adage: ‘Never put down an 8-card suit in dummy’. If you’re lucky enough…
Carlsen the Great
I cannot conceal the feeling over the years of Magnus Carlsen’s leading position at the head of world chess, that…
no. 550
Black to play. This position is a variation from Navara-Carlsen, Shamkir 2019. What is Black’s only winning move? Answers to…
That way madness lies
In Competition No. 3094 you were invited to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. G.K. Chesterton once…
2404: 1+2 = 3+4
The unclued lights (one of two words) share a feature, different in each case, and one is a past participle.…
to 2401: sign here please
The unclued lights are ACCENTS or DIACRITICAL SIGNS and any appearing on letters in the grid had to be ignored. First…
No mere mortal could possibly keep up with Game of Thrones
By the time you read this, James Delingpole and I will have made our first podcast in 596 days. That’s…
The Battle for Britain
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Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, master of the seas and model Englishman
Something very odd happened on the Today programme the other morning. Amid the mountains of bombast that usually fill the…
Dear Mary: how can I stop myself procrastinating?
Q. I am not a professional writer but on the strength of a short piece I contributed to a Festschrift…
The ideal restaurant for the mythical Spectator reader: Bellamy’s reviewed
Bellamy’s is a Franco-Belgian brasserie in Bruton Place, a dim alley in the charismatic part of Mayfair; the part that…
Epics are hard and dull – but today’s are ‘great’ and ‘nice’
Spoiler alert: in Henry Fielding’s play Tom Thumb, the hero is swallowed by a cow ‘of larger than the usual…
My advice to men and women
OK chaps, keep your hands where people can see them, and don’t touch. And try not to look. Soon that…
I took Oscar to Provence – in business class!
In the Easter holidays, plus two school days, for which his mother will be fined or, as a serial offender,…
I will never, ever, vote Conservative again
With very little expectation they would care, I sent an email to Mole Valley Conservatives. It always amuses me, that…
The Grand National is one of the great days out
If you’ve never been to a Grand National and are approaching an age when it is appropriate to list ten…
Bridge
When did International Women’s Day become an official fixture? I have never been aware of it before this year and…
Be prepared
Last week I wrote about Cyrus Lakdawala’s new book, which provides an aggressive repertoire based on the solid move 1…
no. 549
White to play. This is from Gukesh-Paramzina, Sharjah 2019. Twelve-year-old Gukesh is the second youngest grandmaster of all time (behind…
Write of passage
In Competition No. 3093 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of…
2403: Hexad
The second and fourth letters of six unclued lights (defined by surplus single words in six clues) form a set…
to 2400: Unclued
The preamble suggests that unclued entries are partial anagrams of UNCLUED. The ‘repeated cryptic clue (= anagram of CLUE)’ ‘fixes…
Being ‘down with the kids’ has turned the Tories into a laughing stock
The news that 83 per cent of Conservative voters are over 45, compared to 53 per cent of Labour voters,…
