Life
Dear Mary: what do you say to neighbours who find you in your nightdress?
Q. I recently gave a jolly dinner for eight friends (some old, some rather famous), all home cooking, ending with…
Can my inner feminist cope with another restaurant named after a prostitute? Cora Pearl reviewed
Cora Pearl is the new, and second, restaurant from the people who made Kitty Fisher’s in Shepherd Market, Mayfair. Kitty…
Was everyone a psychopath before 1909?
My husband is enjoying Do No Harm, the arresting memoir of the brain surgeon Henry Marsh who was on Desert…
I’m an equal of Socrates and Wittgenstein — and if anyone disputes it they can go to hell
The grandest view of Gstaad and the surrounding Saanen valley bar none — and that includes the vista from my…
450 bottles of red? What more could I want from a neighbour
I have a friend here in this French village to which we moved just over a week ago. He is…
Why mutilate a perfectly good pronoun?
‘I’m just going to pop yourself on hold,’ said the girl from the online shopping firm who was trying to…
The joy of a rainy Newbury
Mill Reef, who won the Derby, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Eclipse and the King George by far…
Batumi Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad for national teams is now underway in Batumi, Georgia. Over 200 teams are competing and the lavish…
no. 525
White to play. This position is from Rogers-Milos, Manila Olympiad 1992. How can White do better than recapturing on c3?…
Holiday hell
In Competition No. 3067 you were invited to provide a tale of travel misery on behalf of a well-known traveller…
2378: Boundary
One unclued light, a term for a boundary of an area whose name is formed by two unclued lights, is…
to 2375: 2
Unclued lights are MOONS OF (1A) SATURN (9), which are OTHERWORLDLY (2). First prize Don Young, Shaw, OldhamRunners-up Samantha Pine,…
Of course the young like socialism – they’re taught to
It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn can, with a straight face, announce that capitalism has failed and we’d all be…
Battle for Britain
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Markets are clever precisely because people are silly
A month ago I wanted to travel to Bath for a 60th birthday party. From Kent, this either involves a…
Dear Mary: Is it really forbidden to eat with a fork’s tines facing upwards?
Q. My husband and I have been invited to the birthday party of a distinguished public figure with whom we…
Stockbridge, Hampshire: an unexpected gastronomical haven
‘The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers / Pass me the bottle, old lad, there’s an end of summer.’…
Why ‘embolden’ is a word in a million — and it’s currently in vogue
Embolden is a word in a million. In other words it is quite common. Using data from Google Books, the…
An audience with the Pope
Perception and reality, truth and falsehood, black and white; nowadays the salivating chattering classes don’t know their arse from a…
A foretaste of Frexit
Moving day. The contents of a hillside shack to be moved four miles to a cave house perched high on…
Why my lodger has to be a girl
The little lodger is moving in. I chose her after an exhaustive search of twentysomethings looking for accommodation, during which…
Bridge
Around this time each September, I get to say, ‘I’m off to Tangier for a few days to play high-stakes…
Interregnum
The only official interregnum in the reigns of the world chess champions was that between the death of Alekhine in…
no. 524
Black to play. This position is from Gurgenidze-Tal, Moscow 1957. What is the most direct way to break into the…
This sporting life
In Competition No. 3066 you were invited to submit an ode to a piece of sporting equipment. There is a…
