Life
Tenerife is a soap opera in the sun
A warm Sahara wind was blowing and by late afternoon the western sky where it met the sea was the…
Advent is the season for revelling in fine wine
Crime. Fear not: none of us was planning to break the law, with the possible exception of hate speech. Where…
The joy of the Turkish barber
Just as you always hope will happen, I knew I had met the man of my dreams almost on sight.…
The Ginger Rogers theory of information
I had a friend whose approach to entrepreneurialism was to take two separate things that seemed stupidly popular and somehow…
Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society
In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things,…
Dear Mary: How do I avoid my friend’s gropey partner?
Q. I have a dear friend who is in a newish relationship. The partner – whom I hardly know –…
Aussie life
Let me be absolutely clear: when I referred to the next president of Australia’s most important military ally and economic…
Language
Speccie reader Doug writes to ask about ‘mansplaining’. This comes from the same feminist language cauldron as ‘toxic masculinity’ (meaning…
Is being ‘infamous’ a bad thing?
John Prescott, so Dominic Sandbrook observed last week, ‘infamously exchanged punches with a protestor in full view of the cameras’.…
Dear Mary: How do I stop my neighbour sending WhatsApp messages IN CAPITALS?
Q. My husband has a stressful job and needs to quietly decompress at the end of the week. This is…
At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’
I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to…
Ideal for winter: The Dover reviewed
For British people, America is an idea brought by cinema, and The Dover, the New York Italian bar and restaurant…
Who says Test cricket is boring?
Under a dark sapphire sky, tearing across grass as green as a lick of new paint, Mitchell Starc raced in…
