Life
Autumn is the season of magic mushrooms and psychedelic maple trees
The fag end of October. Dark evenings. My smelly old Barbour. Chopping and splitting wood. Uncanny stillnesses. Psychedelic maple trees.…
If there were bones sticking out, I’m out — midlife crisis or no midlife crisis
‘This is a two Voltarol day,’ I thought, as I popped another pill and settled into the bath after Darcy’s…
President Obama’s ‘secret’ lunch was no secret to me
The Metropolitan Club in Washington is so close to the White House that President Obama chose to walk there for…
The joys of jump racing
Thank God for jump racing. The Flat has its glitz and speed and glamour, and we could not help but…
Bridge
If you like extremely high-level Pairs tournaments you would love Pierre Zimmermann’s Cavendish Monaco. Sixty pairs are auctioned off and…
Doctor Hou
Hou Yifan has won what must be considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, all-women chess tournaments ever…
No. 385
White to play. This position is from Koneru-Zhukova, Monaco 2015. How did White quickly exploit the constricted position of the…
Fictihew
In Competition No. 2921 you were invited to write a clerihew about a fictional character. The clerihew is a comic…
Sorry, but the Bullingdon Club really doesn’t help your career
I’m getting a lot of abuse on Twitter for saying that having been a member of the Bullingdon is more…
Battle for Britain
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Rugby referee Craig Joubert is just the man to sort out Syria
Not since Walter Palmer, a cudddly Minnesota dentist, put down his drill and vanished off the face of the earth…
Dear Mary: How can we make our dinner guests go?
Q. Many of our best and oldest friends have done so well they have stopped work. Meanwhile my husband still…
The Old Vic’s Pit Bar has fallen to the hipsters – Penny reviewed
Penny is an all-day café in the former Pit Bar in the basement of the Old Vic, a famous and…
Should we just stop using ‘fulsome’?
It’s funny that two much misused words end in —some: fulsome and noisome. Noisome is the less often used at…
I’m not surprised that my friend Donald Trump is leading in the polls
As everyone knows, journalists tend to take themselves seriously, especially American journalists, who take themselves very, very seriously. Dan Rather…
Curry and Modafinil with Winston Churchill
The bar at the Special Forces club has the marvellous rule for newcomers that they should talk to the person…
Sabs don’t want to stop fox-hunting; they never did
Devotee of the old ways though I am, I can just about understand why a misguided animal lover might oppose…
To tip or not to tip
As I grow older, I find myself increasingly reluctant to travel, which is why it’s been a few years now…
What Ryszard Kapuscinski airbrushed out of his bestselling book
I once found myself on a lonely road in southern Ethiopia with the famous Polish author Ryszard Kapuscinski. We were…
Bridge
It’s not surprising that so many bridge players feel such a sentimental attachment to The Young Chelsea. The club was…
Ex libris
When I first studied chess I thought it was a golden age for chess literature. There were the classics such…
No. 384
Black to play. This position is from Inarkiev-Salem, World Blitz, Berlin 2015. How did Black conclude the attack? Answers to…
Rocker to writer
In Competition No. 2920 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel written by a rock star of…
2234: A greater measure
One unclued light is the name of a drink which can be measured into three ingredients. Each ingredient has three…
To 2231: On the side
Unclued lights made mottoes around the rim of one-pound coins: (33) NEMO ME (12) IMPUNE (40) LACESSIT, (18) DECUS ET…
