Life
The real contest at Eurovision: worst lyric
Like a reluctantly remembered nightmare, last week’s Eurovision Song Contest already seems very distant. But, in the manner of the…
Battle for Britain
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Shuffleduck
There are some odd opening moves in chess, such as 1 a3 and 1 g4. The former was used by…
No. 364
Black to play. This is from Westman-Walther, Havana 1966. Black has the possibility of a discovered check against the white…
Occasional verse
In Competition No. 2899 you were invited to write a poem commemorating the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. The…
Dear Mary
Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had…
High anxiety
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
High life
An operation on my hand after a karate injury has had me reading more than usual. I even attempted Don…
Long life
From reading the newspapers you might get the impression that honeybees were on the way to extinction. In Europe, it…
Long life
From reading the newspapers you might get the impression that honeybees were on the way to extinction. In Europe, it…
Low life
On 26 June there is a party at the Spectator office at 22 Old Queen Street to launch a paperback…
Low life
On 26 June there is a party at the Spectator office at 22 Old Queen Street to launch a paperback…
Eurovision-speak
Like a reluctantly remembered nightmare, last week’s Eurovision Song Contest already seems very distant. But, in the manner of the…
Real life
Andy the tech guy looked delighted when I told him I had done the stupidest thing ever. He is one…
Thrills and chivalry at the most civilised place on earth
If heaven is a place on earth, as Belinda Carlisle so wisely observed, then surely that place has to be…
Sturgeon doth protest too much, me thinks
I couldn’t believe it when Nicola Sturgeon called for the resignation of Alistair Carmichael, the former Scottish Secretary, over his…
Sturgeon doth protest too much, me thinks
I couldn’t believe it when Nicola Sturgeon called for the resignation of Alistair Carmichael, the former Scottish Secretary, over his…
Flat pack
Getting to Goodwood last Saturday was an achievement in itself. On the Bank Holiday weekend I calculated a cross-country route…
I once tried to buy coke from the head of Manhattan detectives
This is as good as it gets. A light rain is falling on a soft May evening and I’m walking…
The ant mind is right up there with the medieval one
From somewhere in the tree canopy, a nightingale song. The virtuoso trilling and warbling, the underwater bubbling, the teetering on…
My podgy thumbs will never be iPhone-compatible
You can’t always get what you want. And you can never get what you want if you want a phone…
A Finnish man was fined £83,000 for speeding because his annual income is £10.1 million
I have rather a poor record for speeding over the years. I have been caught by cameras quite often, sometimes…
The Kenya Fly Fishers’ club makes the Bullingdon look rather left-wing
Nairobi Trout were first introduced into Kenya’s highland streams in 1905. Men like Ewart Grogan, ‘baddest and boldest of…
Bridge
I was lucky enough to sit next to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at a friend’s dinner the other night.…
Reichenbach falls
The former world champion Vladimir Kramnik recently espoused an opening system which I elaborated in a tournament in Germany in 1975.…
