Dinner parties
The skull beneath the skin: Ghost Pains, by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, reviewed
Pain lurks below the surface of these sardonic short stories. Happiness is fleeting, and ‘we carry death within us like a stone within a fruit’, one narrator observes
The horrors of dining with a Roman emperor
Elagabalus’s suffocating party tricks may have been exaggerated, but Domitian’s sinister, death-themed feasts could be seen as a dictator’s flamboyant threat
Dear Mary: How can I deal with overly demonstrative colleagues?
Q. A friend constantly walks around with his bootlaces undone. His wife declines to nag him on the grounds she…
Dear Mary: When I woke up at 3 a.m., my dinner party guests hadn’t gone
How do you persuade your pleasant dinner guests to go home when they will stay into the early hours if…
Dear Mary: How can I make a conversation-stopping gaffe go away?
Q. What should a host do when a guest says something so embarrassing in front of the assembled company that…
Dear Mary: How can we make our dinner guests go?
Q. Many of our best and oldest friends have done so well they have stopped work. Meanwhile my husband still…
Dear Mary: How to give a dinner party and still get an early night
Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter…
Dear Mary
Q. When sending wedding invitations, does one put the full titles on the card, or can one just put, for…
Dear Mary: What can I do to make couples split the bill fairly?
Q. I’m a single bloke now and for various reasons don’t foresee any change to that status. I have moved…
Dear Mary: When is it all right not to bring something to a dinner party?
Q. A wonderful and generous woman invites me, on a regular basis, to dinner parties at her house. What is…
When did we become a nation of police informers?
There’s a danger that in what follows your columnist may seem to be recommending an attitude. Please don’t think that.…
Dear Mary: How to talk to friends whose book you haven’t read
Q. What is the correct thing to say to a writer friend whose book you haven’t read? I buy most…
Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to shorten the guest list for my 21st?
Q. I am organising my 21st birthday party at our family house in Italy. It is a fantastic location, but…
Dear Mary: Is there a polite way to ask for the return of a handbag full of cash?
Q. A friend regularly hires a stall at a general neighbourhood market in order to sell surplus second-hand clothes and…
Dear Mary: How can I make my polite English husband interrupt like a German?
Q. My dear English husband has never mastered the knack of timing his interventions in conversation. He hesitates politely, and…
Dear Mary: How can I make my host pour me a drink?
Q. Some years ago, on holiday in Egypt, we found ourselves in the company of a couple who wanted to…
