Life
At last, a PM I can look down to
Rishi Sunak’s victory is a testament to how much progress we have made on the equalities front. As recently as…
Aussie life
Australian manufacturers have long been obliged to alert consumers to health hazards. As soon as we found out that peanuts…
Language
Richard Littlejohn wrote recently in Britain’s Daily Mail about an 18-page Inclusive Language Guide which has been sent out to…
The death of humour
New York Rodney Dangerfield was the American Benny Hill: lewd, funny and not exactly politically correct where the weaker sex…
My grandsons have sensed weakness – and it’s costing me
The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…
2575: Problem XIII - solution
5 (the number of GOLD RINGS, from ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’: 34/22A) x 103 (the number of the PSALM…
What makes a ‘crisis’?
In his picture from 1932, ‘Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare’, Henri Cartier-Bresson caught the moment when a man in a hat…
Echoes of John Lewis: Piazza at Royal Opera House reviewed
The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves…
Rugby union needs its own Richard Thompson
Dear oh dear, as exasperated kings are known to murmur – just look at the state of rugby union. But…
Dear Mary: How do I curb my brother’s unsavoury language?
Q. My brother, who lives in southern France, uses unsavoury words to gain my attention, such as ‘infernal swine’, ‘schweinhund’…
The embarrassing truth about how I got injured
I had a bicycle accident last week. Not terrible, but not great either. Of the five I’ve had since I…
Spectator competition winners: poems about the Oxford comma
In Competition No. 3271, you were invited to submit a poem about the Oxford comma. Thérèse Coffey’s much-maligned edict about…
Class of the 1980s: my Balliol reunion
Laikipia, Kenya No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise,…
Wanted: a trap for a happy mouse
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for something to catch a mouse that won’t cause it any distress,’ said the young chap…
The Battle for Britain | 22 October 2022
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2578: Torture
The same word appears as eight headwords in Chambers. Unclued lights indicate what they mean. The word will appear in…
No. 725
White to play. Mamedyarov-J. Polgar, Fide World Blitz, Dubai 2014. Black is lagging in development, and her last move, 10…Nb8-d7,…
Awestruck
‘I can comprehend Alekhine’s combinations well enough; but where he gets his attacking chances from and how he infuses such…
Bridge | 22 October 2022
High-level online bridge tournaments started almost as soon as lockdown began. It was going to take more than a worldwide…
Aussie life
I have barracked for the Essendon football team since I was a youngster. Amongst the mementos of my childhood days…
Language
Now we tiptoe carefully into the area of the derogatory and offensive – those being the words used by the…
Will I be PayPal’s downfall?
Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good…
Moules mouclade, as big a hit as Beyoncé
Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired…
2574: A Chinese – solution
Each unclued Across light (including the pair at 16/7) is a SWEET and the unclued Down lights can be preceded…
The problem with Liz Truss’s ‘growth, growth, growth’ slogan
‘You’re easily pleased.’ said my husband when I told him how satisfying I found a chance discovery. It was about…
