Life
Spectator competition winners: cheerful poems for 2023 after Tennyson
In Competition No. 3281, you were invited to provide 16 lines of cheerful welcome to 2023 in the metre of…
The case for maths to 18
Recently Chinese 11-year-olds faced the following question in a maths exam. ‘If a ship has 26 sheep and ten goats…
My fall into sobriety
I am occasionally teased. In a column devoted to drink, which in practice usually means wine and often the products…
The trans rights conflict doesn’t add up
Last week, the Office for National Statistics published the data on gender identity in England and Wales, as revealed in…
The magic of Veterans’ Chase Day
Like most people in racing I began 2023 down in the dumps, moaning about insufficient prize money, small fields and…
My deliriously happy primary school days
I remember my first day at South Benfleet County Primary School with rare clarity. My mother left me at the…
Aussie life
There has been some high-brow analysis of Australian boganhood recently. The 2022 compilation of essays, Class in Australia, where writers…
Language
The latest edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (published by Merriam-Webster) has now appeared – and it contains 500…
Spectator competition winners: ‘Email’: poems after Auden’s ‘Night Mail’
In Competition No. 3280, you were invited to submit an updating of W.H. Auden’s ‘Night Mail’ entitled ‘Email’. ‘Night Mail’…
Rich pickings: Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal reviewed
Alex Dilling at the Hotel Café Royal is a minute restaurant above Regent Street, which has the type of British…
In defence of duck à l’orange
Duck à l’orange is so deliciously retro, it’s almost a cliché of kitsch. It seems hard to believe that there…
Let’s scrap the January transfer window
Norwich City are a likeable club, and currently run by a pleasant-seeming bloke called Allan Russell. He used to be…
