Life
The Field Marshal, the restaurateur and the wine family
As the bottles flowed, the talk ranged, to a serious vineyard, an awesome Field Marshal and a delightful restauranteur. For…
Is your quotation secretly Nazi?
I couldn’t help laughing when I found that an Australian senator, Cory Bernardi, had deleted all his tweets from Twitter,…
Battle for Britain
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Banking on chess
As the new year begins, I pay a final tribute to the city financier Jim Slater, who did so much to…
Chess puzzle
Black to play. This position is from Wright-Keene, Slater Tournament, Southend 1968. Black’s next move destroyed the white kingside and…
No thanks
In Competition No. 2928 you were invited to submit a thank-you letter for a particularly unenjoyable Christmas visit to relatives…
Dear Mary
I have been alone in the country this festive season as my adult children and most of my friends are…
Commanding vintages
As the bottles flowed, the talk ranged, to a serious vineyard, an awesome Field Marshal and a delightful restauranteur. For…
High life
This is going to be one hell of a year, hell being the operative word. It will be the year…
Long life
The Egyptian driver of a London minicab said almost nothing during our journey but dropped me off at my destination…
Long life
The Egyptian driver of a London minicab said almost nothing during our journey but dropped me off at my destination…
Low life
For me, last year started with an appalling whitey outside a pub after swallowing a second ecstasy tablet because I…
Low life
For me, last year started with an appalling whitey outside a pub after swallowing a second ecstasy tablet because I…
Quotations
I couldn’t help laughing when I found that an Australian senator, Cory Bernardi, had deleted all his tweets from Twitter,…
Real life
‘Sadly, the world is filled with apathy,’ said my friend, as we looked at our sad little list of conscripts…
The plot to save our allotments
Since turning 50 I have become a gardening enthusiast. It started with tomatoes, then spread to raspberries and last year…
The plot to save our allotments
Since turning 50 I have become a gardening enthusiast. It started with tomatoes, then spread to raspberries and last year…
Things we don’t mind paying for
Here’s a challenge for film buffs: can anyone remember, from the entire canon of cinema and television, a single scene…
Bridge
This might be the most beautiful hand I’ve ever seen. I came across it while reading one of the old…
We need Christianity more than ever in this Age of Atheists
Have we ever needed Christianity more than we do today? It’s a rhetorical question, for sure, because the loss of…
She was Ariadne to my Theseus
My contempt for vaping deepened as vaping contraptions became more ostentatious and people started hanging them from lanyards around their…
My part-time boyfriend and I bonded over the Tooting Honey Toilets
A boyfriend’s for life, not just for Christmas. It’s no good me getting myself a nice cuddly man with whom…
The Lord’s Prayer is no more offensive than Jeremy Clarkson or deodorant
There was a time not so very long ago when the most common complaint about Christmas was that it had…
The James Herriot of Africa
Great Rift Valley The mare hangs her head; her neck is swollen, her eyes bloody red, crammed by flies. She…
Wear The Fox Hat looks innocent enough but try saying it in an Irish accent
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s image never quite recovered in many people’s view from the photograph of him picking up his…
