Life
To 2182: Tops
The unclued lights are ROMAN CROWNS. First prize Philip Hawkins, Wirksworth, Matlock, Derbyshire Runners-up G.H.Willetts, London SW19; Chris Edwards, Pudsey,…
Russell Brand and Nigel Farage remind me of myself five years ago
I’m often asked by other free school proposers what lessons I’ve learnt over the past five years. Any pearls of…
Battle for Britain
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The best navigation idea I’ve seen since the Tube map
I stopped using London buses when some coward put doors on them. Twenty years ago, you could board any bus…
Dear Mary: Learning to love a man who whistles through his nose
Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but…
The secret kinship of good wine and good cricket
A high proportion of wine-lovers also enjoy cricket, and vice versa. This might seem natural. Anyone with an aesthetic temperament…
How Ebola got its name
It should perhaps be called Yambuku fever, since that was the village in Zaire (as it was then, now the…
The willow and the vine
A high proportion of wine-lovers also enjoy cricket, and vice versa. This might seem natural. Anyone with an aesthetic temperament…
Putting words on the map
I stopped using London buses when some coward put doors on them. Twenty years ago, you could board any bus…
Wild life
Kenya I perused the brochure produced by Tanzania’s state corporation for livestock ranching, aimed at attracting foreign investors. Under ‘beef…
The battle for decency has been lost
An intelligent letter from a reader, Stanislas Yassukovich CBE, warms my heart. It’s nice to know there are others as…
The karmic rewards of becoming a vegetarian
‘Is that you, Sister?’ It was Tom misdialling again with those thick, stubby fingers of his. ‘No, it’s me: Jerry,’…
I tried to escape the confines of Balham in Oxshott
My London flat now has so little space in it I’ve begun storing stuff at the dry cleaners. Back in…
Here’s how to remain cheerful in the face of such a multitude of scares
I don’t think I can remember a time when there have been so many scares about. They come at us…
My first Arc de Triomph was a triumph
Aboard our coach from Rouen to Paris for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe our lady guide put it succinctly:…
Bridge
The EBU’s Premier League is upon us again, the pain of relegation ever-present as my team battles it out in…
Tigran Tigran
Tigran Petrosian seized the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended the title against Boris Spassky in 1966 and…
No. 336
White to play. This is from Petrosian-Rosetto, Portoroz 1958. White’s knight is threatened and appears to lack a safe escape…
Spooner verse
In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written…
2184: Airline
Nine unclued lights each contain a different 20 from the same source. The title suggests a further such 20. Elsewhere,…
To 2181: Obit II
The END (19) of Rameau, a great COMPOSER (1A) of OPERAS (6) and for the CLAVECIN (1D), occurred in PARIS…
I nearly missed out on The Walking Dead. You shouldn’t
I’m ashamed to say it took me a while to watch an episode of The Walking Dead, the fifth season…
Battle for Britain
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Pietersen’s unlikely Passage to India
A typical Merchant-Ivory film, their biography informs me, features ‘genteel characters’ whose lives are blighted by ‘disillusionment and tragic entanglements’.…
Dear Mary: Can I ask for a lift on my friend’s private jet?
Q. We have moved to the country and my husband often prefers me to drive — not because he wants to…
