Life
Why we’ll never go back to smoking indoors
What would happen, I wonder, were we to rescind the smoking ban as Nigel Farage wants? My guess is not…
Dear Mary: How do I train my husband not to shout for me from far-flung rooms?
Q. My former cleaner has now retired and lives nearby. I visit her with clockwork regularity and always enjoy seeing…
A toast to all bottles
Where two or three British males are gathered together, the agenda often includes a glass or two. One thing can…
Origins of the toe-rag
‘I am glad to say that I have never seen a toe-rag,’ said my husband, assuming, as unconvincingly as one…
A toast to all bottles
Where two or three British males are gathered together, the agenda often includes a glass or two. One thing can…
How good laws change our ways
What would happen, I wonder, were we to rescind the smoking ban as Nigel Farage wants? My guess is not…
Wild life
Kenya Highlands I’ve just descended Mount Kenya with Eve, my 13-year-old daughter, and her class of school leavers from Pembroke…
With a hangover like this, my soul is ready to be saved
Island of Rhodes When I’m on the water, I feel I was born to it. Yachting has always been a…
Honesty, simplicity, integrity: not what I want the morning after
Tap tap tap at the door. I opened my eyes. ‘Check-out 10.30,’ said a neutral or possibly slightly hostile female…
Since when is it too much trouble to serve proper tomato juice?
‘I have a feeling,’ said my father, ‘that this evening is not going to go well.’ We were sitting in…
I thought paedophiles were rare – but then I read the newspapers
One problem from which I am confident I don’t suffer is paedophilia. I have always liked picking up babies and…
Ralph Beckett's winning way with the fillies
Fretful horses who waste their energies — and often their racing potential — ceaselessly pacing their stable dormitories are known…
Bridge
The European Team Championships drew to a close last week and the most successful country overall was …England! The doughty…
Attack
This was the watchword of Grandmaster Dragoljub Velimirovic, one of the leading players of the former Yugoslavia. I first encountered…
No. 322
White to play. This position is from Velimirovic-Gipslis, Havana 1971. How did White conclude? Answers to me at The Spectator…
Dead-end job
In Competition No. 2855 you were invited to compose an elegy for an endangered profession. Estate agents, travel agents, publishers,…
2170: Hector’s Summer Nights
The unclued lights (one of three words and three of two), as three pairs and three individually, are of a…
to 2167: Groupies
The unclued lights are ‘nouns of assemblage’, all listed on page 6 of the Word Lover’s Miscellany section in Chambers…
If John Bercow were two-and-a-half inches taller, he'd never have been such a big success
Unlike 99 per cent of my colleagues, I was quite touched by John Bercow’s comment about how fed up he…
Battle for Britain
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The crazy rush to run down Alastair Cook
A jaw-dropping moment on the front page of Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph the other day: ‘How to fix England’, read…
Dear Mary: Our holiday hosts swim naked
Q. We have recently returned from Provence where we stayed the first night with distant relatives. We woke on a…
Dean Street Townhouse – at last! Somewhere I'd pay to eat
Occasionally a critic must review a restaurant in which they are prepared to spend their own money. So here is…
Just how old-fashioned is Labour's 'cost of living' campaign?
Labour’s appeal to the cost of living has a rather old-fashioned feel to it: as if the whole nation still…
Simple pleasures in Soho
Occasionally a critic must review a restaurant in which they are prepared to spend their own money. So here is…
